A home and small-office cleaning company sends crews into private spaces for a few hours at a time. Bookings come by phone and app, crews change daily and the customer's trust rests on a stranger at the door.
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Share your requirementsA home cleaning company sells bookings: a two-hour regular clean, a deep clean before a festival, a move-in clean, a sofa or kitchen specialist job. Crews of two to four go out by scooter or van, work in a customer's flat with the customer sometimes at home and sometimes not, and move on to the next booking. Demand peaks at weekends, before festivals and at move-in seasons. Crew leaders carry the customer relationship and the supplies. This differs from contract cleaning at large sites, which is covered under HR for facility management and the home services hub.
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.
Bookings bunch on Saturdays and before festivals, so crews are stretched at the peak and idle in between.
A late, untidy or silent cleaner loses a regular customer, while a friendly one wins referrals and tips.
A missing item or a rumour, true or not, can end a customer relationship and damage the firm's name.
A crew leader has no easy way to see who is doing what, and a last-minute cancellation leaves people travelling for nothing.
Machines, ladders and cleaning agents are needed on some jobs only, and they end up missing or misused.
Many cleaners are engaged for peak weeks and gone after Diwali, leaving the firm to start again.
Start with the topics that matter most here: HR Strategy and Workforce Planning; Employee Administration; Retention and Attrition Management. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for facility management, not in general.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
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 cleaning companies business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Look back at last year's bookings by week, decide how many crews are needed at peak and off-peak, and fix a core team plus a bench.
What this coversHideLook back at last year's bookings by week, decide how many crews are needed at peak and off-peak, and fix a core team plus a bench. See HR strategy and workforce planning.
A checklist for regular clean, deep clean and move-in clean, including what to do with belongings and what to leave untouched.
What this coversHideA checklist for regular clean, deep clean and move-in clean, including what to do with belongings and what to leave untouched.
Rules on bags, phones, cameras, entry and exit, and what to do if something is moved or broken, taught and signed by each cleaner.
What this coversHideRules on bags, phones, cameras, entry and exit, and what to do if something is moved or broken, taught and signed by each cleaner.
Training in running the crew, speaking to the customer, handling complaints and reporting.
What this coversHideTraining in running the crew, speaking to the customer, handling complaints and reporting. The manager development programme fits here.
Machines, ladders and supplies signed out and back for each job, so loss is traced and crews are not blamed unfairly.
What this coversHideMachines, ladders and supplies signed out and back for each job, so loss is traced and crews are not blamed unfairly.
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.
Crew-based attendance and leave planning around weekend and festival peaks.
Training for crew leaders in running the crew, speaking to customers and reporting problems.
A seasonal plan for core crews, bench and extra hands so peaks are met without constant scrambling.
Practical sessions on punctuality, conduct in homes and respect for customers' belongings.
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
Hiring decisions made one request at a time, in the month the pain is worst. What a workforce plan contains and why a twelve-month view changes what you hire.
7 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.
Offer a core team a steady minimum of work, use quiet months for training and specialist jobs, and keep contact with the bench so they return for the peak. Reliability in the quiet months earns loyalty in the busy ones.
Be clear about the rules, tell customers what they are, use crew leaders who know the customer, and handle any complaint calmly and with facts. Never accuse without evidence and take advice on anything serious.
Reliability, a good manner with customers, the ability to teach others and the sense to ask when unsure. Pick for these qualities, then give training and a small extra for the role.
Set a clear policy with customers, tell crews as early as you can and decide what the crew is paid when a booking is cancelled late. Fairness to crews keeps them willing to travel.
Customers feel safer with a uniform and an ID card, and crews feel part of the firm. Keep a record of what is issued and collect it when someone leaves.
We would look at your weekly bookings against crew numbers, how crew leaders are chosen and what cleaners are told about customers' homes. A seasonal crew plan with a trust code is a natural first piece, and scope goes into writing for your approval.
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