A cleaning contractor sells posts and shifts to client sites, and the business lives on whether each one is staffed. Because the contract is paid by posts filled, one empty shift at one client can undo the margin of several well-staffed ones.
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Share your requirementsA commercial cleaning company is paid for people at posts: attendants, supervisors and specialist crews at office parks, hospitals, malls, factories and apartment complexes. Each contract states how many people are needed, on which shifts, and often what they must wear and what equipment they must use. The owner's income depends on every post being filled and provable. Staff work at the client's premises, often alone or in small teams, under a supervisor who may look after several sites. Hiring is constant, because the work is physical, pay is modest and turnover is high. See also HR for facility management.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
A person does not turn up and the post is empty until someone is found. The client sees the gap first, and a deduction follows.
Billing is built from attendance, so a missing or disputed record becomes lost income. Registers kept at the site and reconciled late invite arguments.
The person sent to cover a post has not seen the site rules, the client's expectations or the equipment, and the client notices straight away.
One supervisor covers several locations, so most posts go days without anyone senior visiting.
Cleaning agents and machines are used by people who were not shown how, and records of who was taught what are thin.
Many leavers go within the first month, over pay timing, an unsuitable site or a poor start, and each exit repeats the cycle.
A deduction or a complaint reaches the owner weeks after the shift that caused it, with no easy way to trace who was on the post and what happened.
Items issued at joining are not tracked, so cost and security both leak when people leave.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Recruitment and Talent Acquisition; Employee Administration; Retention and Attrition Management. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for facility management, not in general.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a commercial cleaning companies business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A group of verified, inducted people who can cover absences across sites, sized from how often posts actually go empty.
What this coversHideA group of verified, inducted people who can cover absences across sites, sized from how often posts actually go empty. The recruitment process keeps it topped up.
A phone or biometric record by person, post and shift that reaches payroll and billing the same day, with a weekly reconciliation against the client's record.
What this coversHideA phone or biometric record by person, post and shift that reaches payroll and billing the same day, with a weekly reconciliation against the client's record. The attendance and leave process defines it.
The client's rules, access arrangements, contacts and tasks for the post, handed to every new and replacement person before the first shift.
What this coversHideThe client's rules, access arrangements, contacts and tasks for the post, handed to every new and replacement person before the first shift.
A limit on the posts and sites each supervisor carries, and a visiting schedule that includes early mornings and weekends.
What this coversHideA limit on the posts and sites each supervisor carries, and a visiting schedule that includes early mornings and weekends.
A short practical session with a check, and a record against the person.
What this coversHideA short practical session with a check, and a record against the person. The health, safety and wellbeing work covers the routine.
Each client deduction is traced to absence, lateness, uniform or conduct, so the largest cause is fixed first.
What this coversHideEach client deduction is traced to absence, lateness, uniform or conduct, so the largest cause is fixed first. The reporting and analytics work shows how to do it.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
One attendance record that supports the wage and the invoice, reconciled with the client each week.
A verified reliever pool and a pipeline for new contracts, so a start date is met with people who are cleared.
A short induction and a site brief, so the person on the post, including a replacement, knows what is expected.
A look at where people leave, at which site and under which supervisor, and what the cycle costs you.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in facility management, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Housekeeping, technician and security staff at client sites leave for reasons head office rarely hears. How to ask, what to look for and how to act on it.
7 min readRead article
Candidates who accept and never arrive are usually lost in the silence between offer and joining. What actually causes it, and a contact plan that closes the gap.
8 min readRead article
Payroll says one joining date, the personal file says another and the manager remembers a third. How to establish a single trustworthy employee record and keep it that way.
7 min readRead article
How to spot an unmanageable workload before it becomes an exit or an error, what to look at, how to talk about it and what to change, without guessing.
5 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Enough to cover weekly offs, leave and the absence and exits you actually see. Work it out from your own records of empty posts, not a rule of thumb, and hold the extra as a reliever pool shared across sites.
Because the invoice is built from it. If you cannot show who stood the post, the client can deduct, and small gaps across many posts add up to a large loss.
The client's rules for the site, the tasks for the post, how to use the chemicals and equipment safely, how pay works and who to call. An hour with a short check prevents most early problems.
Pay on time, place people near home where the contract allows, give a proper first week and check in on the second and fifth day. Most early leavers cite pay, distance or a poor start.
Use one standard and list the exceptions. Client-specific requirements go on the site brief, so staff follow one set of rules plus a short page for the site.
We would look at how many posts went unfilled last month, how your attendance record for one site compares with the client's, and how many sites each supervisor carries. A good first piece of work is a reliever pool and a one-page brief for your biggest site. Scope is agreed in writing afterwards.
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