Take Action & Provide Solutions

In the housekeeping business everything is rarely perfect. We spent a lot of years pulling our hair out because our housekeepers weren’t doing things perfectly. It dawned on us that when using a subjective thing like cleaning that perfection was impossible. One person wanted us to hand wipe down their entire work space, while the other across the cubical didn’t want us to touch anything except the partition dusting. It’s tough to put a repeatable process in place and ask your team to be perfect with two completely opposite requests. But this was true too. Our partners didn’t need us to be perfect. They didn’t expect it and certainly didn’t want to find out how much that would cost to guarantee it. What we found out they wanted was action. When a problem arose, they wanted to tell us and then they wanted to move on. They didn’t want to have the same conversations over and over again. This is still true today. When we have failed it is because someone on our team didn’t take action and provide solutions. The solutions to solve the problem are as important as taking the action to find out all the facts.

We had an account that called us two days in a row that their area had not be vacuumed. The supervisor took action and went to the account. They found out this. We vacuumed their area at 7:40pm every night. At 8:30pm the person who sat in that area returned to their desk to finish up work. This worker was also eating their dinner at 8:30pm at their desk. Since our crews were still in the building until midnight, the person eating at their desk doing their work assumed we would return later to again dump their trash and vacuum up the area. They had no idea that we had already performed that task in the area. The solution the supervisor brought was to either change our vacuuming scheduled areas to accommodate this late worker or have the supervisor circle back before we left and check on this one person’s desk. The customer had no idea that we had actually been cleaning that area. They had no idea that their employee was returning later to finish up work. The fact that our supervisor took action to go and observe what was happening was great. Providing two different solutions was even better. That is what good partners do. They give choices or solutions when we need them. It is always better to have choices.