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Introduction
Hello, everyone. Welcome or welcome back to the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast. I’m your host, Stephanie from Serene Clean, and in today’s episode, by popular demand, I will be going through our performance review and wage guidelines document that we have created this past year at Serene Clean. I know I had touched briefly on this when it came to a couple of videos ago where I did the history of Serene Clean from a how much were we paying and how much we’re charging perspective, and several of you had expressed interest in having this broken down as well.
I know it may seem, as you guys are listening to episodes, that we just have a million documents, a million guidelines, a million policies, and you’d be correct, because that’s what it takes in a proper business to be able to protect yourself and to hold people accountable and have something to point to that you can confidently take action off of.
Table of contents
- Introduction
- The Relief of Having Clear Policies
- Implementation and Benefits
- Why We Avoid Creating Policies
- Previous Raise System vs Current System
- Different Payment Models
- The Psychology of Wage Progression
- Strategic Decision Making on Compensation
- Critical Thinking About Payment Structure
- Longevity and Wage Guidelines
- Hourly Payment Challenges
- Simplified Pricing Structure
- Different Business Philosophies
- Previous Raise System – “Giving Raises on Vibes”
- The Problem with Subjective Raises
- Three Goals of the New System
- Historical Context and Fairness
- The Document Structure
- Early Raise Timeline
- Specific Raise Amounts
- How We Decided on These Numbers
- Owner Perspective vs Employee Perspective
- Maximum Wage and Future Flexibility
- Three Categories for Evaluation
- Why Attendance is Only 10%
- Quality of Work Standards
- Company Policy Compliance
- ZenMaid Key Management Feature
- Attendance and Punctuality
- Bonus Structure
- The Mathematical Breakdown
- Real Example Calculation
- Employee Response and Long-term Results
- The Importance of Documentation
- Practical Documentation Tips
- Dealing with Message Deletion
- Final Thoughts and Recommendations
- Employee Empowerment Through Clear Expectations
The Relief of Having Clear Policies
It is such a relief to have these types of things in place and not have to wonder at every single situation, how should I behave? Because there is no standard set. It’s very hard on your brain to have to come up with, what do I do here in every situation? And obviously not saying that that does not happen in Serene Clean, still all the time. But we can always have something that’s, okay, this situation happens. Well, what does it say in this policy? What does it say in this policy? Or if we need to fire somebody and we need to document it, well, they clearly violated this guideline or this policy that they had signed, and it makes it very cut and dry when we are doing a termination letter, or if somebody is behaving in a way that’s not conducive to one of the policies, we have something to point to.
It also really takes off this kind of pressure, at least for me as somebody who doesn’t really enjoy disciplining employees, that instead of it being me disciplining, it’s, hey, you signed and agreed to this, and you’re not doing this. And I can kind of point to the document, and that makes me feel a lot less anxious about it, because it’s a third entity, almost. It’s not me and the cleaning tech, it’s me, cleaning tech and document that they agreed to, right, and things that they said that they were going to do and that they are not. So it just makes it a lot easier for everybody involved, I think, to have very clear guidelines, and that is what we’re going to be talking about today.
Implementation and Benefits
In the performance review and wage guidelines document that we put together, I believe it was at the beginning of 2025, and we have already seen such a benefit from introducing this into Serene Clean and I’ll explain why, of course, and explain what we used to do when it came to performance reviews, but we did before when it came to raises and wages. And in the past six months since we’ve introduced this, it has really just provided a lot of clarity for not only us, but all of the techs.
And that is my biggest kind of take away from implementing something like this is people really appreciate clarity when it comes to what they can expect financially from you as an employer. Previously, there was a lot of gray area and a lot of confusion on both their parts and our parts, because we had never spelled out, how is it and when are you going to get a raise? Why will you not get a raise? What’s going to take away from a raise? Because we had not sat down and ironed out all of these details.
Why We Avoid Creating Policies
A lot of times when we avoid putting policies into place, into our cleaning business, I find it’s because we do not want to take the hour long, hard thinking moment it’s going to take in order to think through the different scenarios and does this make sense from all angles, etc. And it really is so much easier now with AI, we definitely use that heavily to critique our own policies and try to poke holes in it. I find that that’s a very useful thing to do. Saying, hey, you are an expert, HR executive, please poke holes in this document or policy. Is there any type of gap? Is there anything that you could see arguing against, we’re in the state of Wisconsin, blah, blah, blah. Doing these types of things is very helpful.
Previous Raise System vs Current System
So previous to, you know, sitting down at the beginning of the year with my managers and saying, okay, we need to iron this out. We want to go about raises differently. We want to go about communicating what the expectations are and what it means to violate an expectation. And so the reason that we felt that this was really necessary was we wanted to increase the upper wage ceiling of what our cleaning techs can make. Previous to this being implemented, they could be making up to $21 an hour, and as of now, they now can make up to $25 an hour.
Remember that we all have potentially different things when it comes to how much we’re going to pay people, what we’re charging versus what we’re going to pay and I will say all of this, what I’m about to go over in our document, it’s wildly different than the pay for performance model that many of you have been introduced to or are using currently in your business.
Different Payment Models
As I always say, there is so many ways to skin the cat of our cleaning business, and that truly applies to every area of business, whether that be the types of tasks you do, how you charge and how you pay staff. All of these things can be done in a successful manner in a variety of ways. So I am not necessarily knocking pay for performance. And so what that means is typically paying a percentage of what the appointment cost is, and perhaps having different percentage tiers. I’ve seen it work very, very well. I’ve also seen some negatives about it as well.
Potential Drawbacks of Pay for Performance
Just from my own consulting client experience, talking to folks who do it that way, there is a lot of benefits, but some of the detracting things that have been communicated to me are things along the lines of people getting complacent or basically having nothing to strive towards, because they are immediately introduced into the business and paid this wage from day one. And I don’t mean that’s clearly a positive thing, because they’re getting those higher wages, but from a stagnation perspective, if you are giving them that top pay right away, and they have nowhere to go from there, and they’re planning to work for you for years. It really is a psychological thing. We’re talking about when you have nothing to strive for.
Perhaps there is no upward mobility in your business. Oftentimes in a cleaning business, there’s not a lot of upward mobility. There’s just not that many positions until we’re talking Corporation size, right? My business, you know, has been over a million for several years now, where, you know, we are around 1.4 or wherever we’re at a year now, and we are six years in, and we have three full time managers. I operate remotely, and do not work full time, nowhere near in the business. And then we have one person who is kind of, you know, in the field, Hannah, my field development and quality controller and trainer. We’ve got one of those. And I know a lot of you guys have, you know, lead trainer positions and things like that. But we’re really just not talking about a ton of upward mobility from a position perspective.
The Need for Progression Within Positions
So the reason I say this as a possible detractor to paying for performance is, if most of our employees are going to long term, be in one position, we need to have things that they can strive for while staying in that position. Again, in our business and Serene Clean, we don’t do lead cleaners. We don’t do anything like that because we don’t run teams. So if you run teams that may work, you may have some, you know, upward mobility within the actual field work, but for us, we don’t. And so that is one of the reasons that for me, paying a percentage of the job, or paying a flat rate per job, or anything like that, which is much more easily done on an IC level, and it gets really complicated when you’re charging hourly as well, to be paying a percentage or be paying a flat rate, it just gets way more challenging charging hourly, which is what we do.
How Charging Method Affects Payment
And the reason I’m kind of giving all of these caveats before we actually get into thing is, as you can see, how you charge can wildly affect how you pay. And if it makes sense, we charge hourly for a residential, we pay hourly for residential, we charge flat rate for commercial, and we still pay hourly for commercial. And all of these things can work. It just can change things.
Why don’t I pay percentage? Why don’t I pay a flat rate for commercial? Well, all of my commercial cleaners have been trained to be able to jump into a house if necessary, and a lot of our commercial cleaners are actually, in fact, hybrid cleaners, and all of a sudden they’re doing residential and they’re doing commercial. And things get more complicated than from a payroll perspective, keeping it simple, stupid and keeping it all hourly is a lot easier.
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Employee Comfort with Hourly Wages
Another detractor of paying for performance model is that a lot of the people who are going to be applying and working for us, are used to being paid an hourly job. So say they’re looking for jobs on Indeed, it either says an hourly wage range or it says a flat rate, you can make up to $1,000 a week. And then when you bring them on and trying to explain, from a financial perspective, how much they’re going to make, even if they’re going to make more on the pay for performance model, a lot of times they don’t like the uneasiness of not knowing, right, not knowing explicitly, I am working this many hours, this is how much I’m going to make. This is what I can expect for raises. And just there is something incredibly comforting of having clarity and having it all explicitly spelled out. And we’ve definitely seen this in our techs even just since implementing this and we were already paying hourly.
The Psychology of Wage Progression
So coming back to the whole stagnation thing of why do we have such a wide wage range when it comes to what our techs can make, it’s so that they feel they’re having something to strive towards, and there is no stagnation in their performance for years and years and years. Not saying it can’t happen, but it’s not going to happen from a wage perspective, where, if you start paying them 35 or 40 or 42% of the appointment price from day one. Well, you can never go higher than that. You may be able to go bonuses and stuff, but from an industry perspective, nobody’s going to recommend you pay W2 employees more than that, because that’s their take home, right? That is their wage. What about all of the other things that go into costs of having employees and paying them. I’m talking about the insurance costs, the payroll costs, you know, if you want to do bonuses, if you ever want to do benefits, all of these things come into play.
When we’re talking about a compensation package, it’s not just strictly what is the hourly rate or what is the take home pay. All of these other things do add a lot of value, and this is where talking to your techs and being willing to adjust and reflect on what is it that they actually want. And the reason it’s taken several years for us to get to this higher wage, because you might be, Stephanie, you totally could afford to have paid them up to $25 an hour several years ago. You’re right, if I hadn’t introduced all of the benefits that had been requested. That was an absolute strategic decision.
Strategic Decision Making on Compensation
I remember having that conversation and saying, okay, we can either raise the wages or we can introduce these benefits. What do you guys want? And then coming back and none of them saying a higher wage. They wanted a 401K. They wanted additional stuff related to car care and reimbursement for gas and all of these things, meaning higher reimbursement for gas. I already was doing that right so, and making that more fair and feasible and higher mileage pay, meaning while they’re driving, because that was on a lower amount as well.
So this is where you need to not just blindly follow what anybody on the internet is saying. You can absolutely take advice, but we need to be malleable. We need to be able to try things and adjust and not feel because, you know, someone else is doing it this way. That’s the way I have to do I want you guys to critically think about how do you charge and what is the structure that’s going to make sense for you?
Critical Thinking About Payment Structure
And if you do pay for performance, maybe don’t start out with the highest being 42% of the appointment, right? Because then there’s nowhere to go from there, and especially if you don’t ever anticipate having a ton of upwards mobility from a position standpoint, maybe that’s not the way to go. It can work really beautifully. It also can increase people’s speed and efficiency and things like that. So when it comes to profit, that’s great. And also, as long as you have some type of you get a complaint, you’re not. Down to this percentage, or some type of caveat. It can work really, really beautifully. But I’ve had many consulting sessions with folks who actually came back from that version and went back to hourly.
And I also had a conversation, what was the interview that I did where the gentleman said that, after a certain amount of cleaners, it made sense to come back to hourly for a second. I’m picturing him is the person who I could pronounce his name again, Carfagno. He talked about his buddy who once he got to 25-30 folks on the team. It just kind of fell apart when paying a flat rate or percentage for the work and switching back to hourly again, especially from hiring and hiring post people knowing what it’s going to be hourly, because then they can compare, and it doesn’t feel, well, what am I gonna be making every week or whatever again, can be done.
Longevity and Wage Guidelines
I know I am 15 minutes into this before even talking about ours, but I just want you guys to think about this and also critically look at longevity of your wage guidelines and how you expect to do this. If you’re opening and you’re starting out the gate at this super high wage, which, again, that’s a great thing, but if they have nothing to strive for, it really just makes you kind of apathetic, especially when you’re, you know, you’re not going to be getting a promotion, right?
And another way to kind of build this in is you could have, you know, cleaning tech one, cleaning tech two, all of these types of things. But for me, I expect all of my cleaners to be able to perform well out of training, whether they’re a newbie or been with me four years, they’re all held to the same standard. So I guess that’s just more, frankly, that is a psychological title that you can then tie to, you know, raises. Or you could just do it this way and it be kind of time based and based on their behavior and things like that. So again, lots of ways to skin this cat before I go into this.
Hourly Payment Challenges
And I’m definitely not poo pooing on pay for performance. But there is some negatives. It’s not this perfect system, just there’s negatives here. You know, paying hourly can get challenging at times because, you know, there’s not a huge incentive to haul ass at cleanings, right for us. And how we kind of circumvent that, and how, I always have is every single appointment, they have their approved number of hours that they must stay in. They cannot go over that without explicit approval from the office and explanation from them as to why it’s happening. Because we charge hourly and we pay hourly, it’s very important that they stay within the approved time.
And how do we know what that approved time is? Well, of course, that’s where doing audits on production rates, meaning how fast does your typical cleaner clean? How long do first times take? How long do maintenance cleans take? And having that range and so be again, all of this is influenced because when we’re quoting out projects, we’re giving them a range of what that upper price is going to be, and if it comes in lower, we’re only charging them for that actual time.
Simplified Pricing Structure
Again, I know that there’s more profitable ways for maintenance cleans 100% but this is simple, and considering a huge amount of our clientele do limited hour cleans, because it’s a budgetary thing, it just makes it a lot easier to say you bought three hours. What’s the priority list, as opposed to changing the scope of work every time. So again, this is all kind of, I know it seems I’m all over the place, but these things are very interconnected in our cleaning businesses, and that’s why I’m even talking about, how do you charge? Could potentially influence how are you going to pay? It’s very easy to charge an hourly and pay an hourly, right? It’s just, it’s very simple. If you are charging hourly and paying a percentage or flat rate, that’s very complicated, and I would not recommend that way. I think that that’s probably going to get complicated for you. But you know, if you charge flat rate and pay hourly, that can absolutely work. Obviously, we do that on commercial.
Commercial Cleaning Approach
They just are, you know, approved for a certain amount of hours, and they just have to get that dictates how fast they’re going to go. And for us, because we’re such a we sell on detail, they’re approved up to that time. If they get through their normal stuff, they can either ask us, if you know, they’ve checked all of their work, they can leave early at a commercial account, or they can work on extra detail stuff, and that’s from a client satisfaction and longevity.
So for me, I would much rather my cleaners be doing detail work up to that approved time. Say, this office building, we’re approved for up to four hours based on our bid. And that is a, you know, flat rate, and we estimated that they could get everything done. And say they could get it done in three hours and 45 minutes to do, you know what, what is expected, they could leave. Sometimes we’re fine with that. But if they take an extra 15 minutes and really go in on some details, to me, that’s a longevity thing. I want that client to be dazzled, and they’re gonna probably keep us because we’re so detailed, and I’m very willing to give up that little bit of profit and make sure that the place is just looking spectacular.
Different Business Philosophies
So that’s just my two cents and how my philosophy on things, and it’s totally okay if you’re, no, no, I want to milk as much profit out of this thing. We’re gonna do whatever is possible to the client and move on. And that is 100% valid. And you know, I’ve had guests on this podcast who run things that way, and again, totally valid. And it’s not a wrong way of thinking. It’s just different than what I think all of this caveats to be said, guys, let’s get into this.
Previous Raise System – “Giving Raises on Vibes”
So previous to introducing this method into Serene Clean earlier this year, what we had been doing is basically giving raises on vibes, giving raises when it felt appropriate. And we explicitly said raises do not coincide necessarily with performance reviews, because we were still doing performance reviews on a yearly basis, obviously, checking in with newbies much more frequently than that. But then on a yearly basis, you are having a traditional performance review where we sit down, we talk about, you know, the past year, what we can work on for the next year, how we are doing for them. That’s very important to go over that in the performance review, and it’s a huge chunk of the conversation actually is how they feel about the workplace, and any suggestions that they have, some great ideas have came from those conversations with techs at these performance reviews. So remember, Performance Review is also reviewing your performance as an employer. So keep that in mind that’s very important. It’s not just sitting there and wagging your finger at that.
We had been doing that already, but again, it truly was giving raises based on how US managers were feeling in the moment. And you know, it’s not those feelings were not based on fact, but it just wasn’t very scientific, and it could be in a lot of ways unfair now that I look back at it, meaning, well, we gave them, say, we have two techs, right? And we gave somebody a good size bump. They were doing great being consistent. And another person, you know, maybe we gave them slightly less of a big bump, you know, three months later, looking at this other tech, because we had nothing to really go off, it was, oh yeah, they should get a raise. And, here’s $1 more, or something and it was totally off of what we were feeling.
The Problem with Subjective Raises
And I’m not saying feelings aren’t valid, or that feelings cannot come into play, of course, when making decisions in our business, but when it comes to other people’s income, no, I don’t think so. And so that’s something reflecting back on, that people were getting great raises. You know, I oftentimes was giving raises, $1 at a time, and that’s something that actually we have, backed down on. And you’ll see once I go through this, that is really not the case, but it is all spelled out as to what exactly the raise is going to be, and it’s not all over the place.
So this has really introduced consistency that was absolutely lacking previously when it came to raises, and how we how we judged if somebody deserved a raise, and that’s really what the the crux of the issue was, is we were just judging internally. Do we feel this person is deserving of a raise? And if so, how much, and there was no rhyme or reason to it across the board from, a scalability and company wide perspective, and that’s really what this comes down to, is we wanted it to be completely fair, I want our race schedule to be completely fair, and additionally, we really didn’t. I mean, we had all of our policies that they signed, but it felt very just kind of passive as to what is going to cause them to get the raise or not, and it just wasn’t explicitly spelled out.
Three Goals of the New System
And that was the goal of this performance review and wage guidelines document, was we want to put the ball into the cleaning tech’s court. We wanted it to be empowering and not feel here’s management lording over you and we’ll decide when you get a raise. Right? I didn’t want that to be the case anymore, and even if it wasn’t intentional that very well could have been how it was feeling to folks of, well, I feel I’m deserving of a raise. And they could, they could come to us and and request a raise. That would happen, and we would almost always give it right, unless they just gotten a raise. That happened a couple times, where people just got a huge raise, and then a month later, after, you know, some performance issues, they needed more money. So they come to us for a raise, and we’ve turned that down, of course, hey, you just got this, and you’ve been acting, right? And it was just very uncomfortable, where this takes all guesswork out of it.
Additionally, it allows us to hold them way more accountable. And that was, I would say, the secondary so there’s really three goals of this review and wage guideline revamp that we did this year. Number one was to put the ball in their court and to empower them to feel they are in control of how fast and how much of a raise that they are going to get, and explicitly explain what that’s going to look when. We also wanted to be able to hold them more accountable. And then I guess the third one really is spelling out explicitly how much to the scent, is it going to affect your raised potential when you do this behavior?
And then just every time that they did the behavior that we are not looking for. We’re, okay, this is affecting this, and it’s tying their action to the consequence without any emotion, okay, you’ve chosen to do this, or you’ve done this, and so this is how that’s going to affect your race potential next year. And you know, they could still not care, or it still maybe is not enough to make them perhaps change their actions very much, but at least it’s doing something of immediate, you know, action and consequence, and it’s just very obvious to them. And again, it’s it’s on them, then it’s not on us being meanies or anything, they know what they’re doing. And remember, these are fully capable adults. Let’s not patronize or act they’re incapable of making decisions. Our staff are very smart, right? So if we can just respect them and spell it out I feel this just it feels very respectful to have this spelled out, and it just made us feel kind of a proper workplace that wasn’t just flying by the seat of our pants when it came to this, especially considering, you know now we’re several years in.
Historical Context and Fairness
That’s another aspect of this, is we weren’t starting everybody out necessarily at the same wage, because when I started, we’re starting people out at $12 an hour. So all of a sudden, we’ve had techs who, for years, have been with us, and they started out lower, and they’ve been getting raises it’s the Wild West, and there’s, there’s literally no rhyme or reason to it, and so we really wanted to just create some structure where there wasn’t any previously, and kind of have a line in the sand of, okay, this is where things are changing. This is what it’s going to look in all of our techs who have been with us long term. They understand that starting wages have have risen. They don’t have a problem with that. They understand and they they want that they’re all making, you know, more, of course, than than what they the newbies are making coming in. So that’s not a problem, and that’s definitely a thing. I would not suggest, is ever hiring somebody that would be making more starting out than what your season techs are making. Obviously, bad. Look, totally unfair. So make sure that when you are implementing things, think about it from that perspective too. Of, oh, is this going to push them higher than than where our older techs are? Um, so keep that in mind as well.
So all of that to be said, that was the goals and what we wanted to achieve from implementing this change. So all of that to be said. 27 minutes into this, I’m going to start reading through this guys and stopping pausing and explaining what that’s going to look. So this is a six page document that we have, and the first page is going to just have a little chart that is the raise timeline and raise potential.
The Document Structure
Just summarize, so that they can see, okay, 60 days after higher all the way up to the nine year anniversary, what is the raise potential at that time? Increment and the first paragraph, I’ll just read it for you, Serene Clean performance reviews and wage guidelines. Raises are provided 60 days after hire, 90 days after hire, and then all raises after that will be aligned with performance evaluations, which occur on or after each staff members work anniversary evaluations will cover the period from one anniversary date to the next with raises applied retroactively from the day after the anniversary to the day of the review.
So even thinking there, you might be, that’s really specific. Well, a lot of times we just logistically cannot get to a performance review on the day of their anniversary. It might be a weekend, might be the day, that they have off, or it just doesn’t make sense in the schedule to pull them from a cleaning to do that. So when we’re doing performance reviews, we’re just finding natural gaps in their schedule, or having to actually, reassign a cleaning. So it’s kind of a big deal. So that may happen a week after their anniversary date. So what’s going to happen is, whatever raise that they get at that performance review, we’re gonna back date that to and pay them the difference of what it would be from their actual anniversary day. Again, trying to be as fair as possible, and really show we’re trying to be fair. We’re trying to make as much sense as possible to them.
Early Raise Timeline
And the reason we’re doing the 60 days after higher, 90 days after higher, we want them to get to that higher, a higher wage relatively quickly, in their in their journey with us, to give them a little, you know, dopamine boost. And also, they have rapidly changed since they came on with us, right? So again, our starting wage is $16 an hour, and that is negotiable, just so, you know, if somebody requests a higher and we really want them, it’s not we won’t go up to, I think the highest we’ll go up to as a starting wage is $17.50, but only they have to, you know, really impress us, and we want, want them, and again, because we want everybody to be in the same kind of range when they’re starting out. And because, you know, previous cleaning experience doesn’t really matter to us. It’s more, do we really this person? Do we think that they would be a good fit from a. Core values and just a work ethic and being a good person standpoint, right?
So we hit them with a raise immediately at 60 days, and then 90 days as well, just to give them those little boosts and to settle in for the next year at a good wage, right? And something to look forward to at the one year anniversary. Because again, that first year, they’re really learning a lot. They’re really adapting, and honestly, most people, if they’re gonna leave, it’s gonna be within the first year. I’ve found, that’s when the most turnover happens. So frankly, I don’t want them to be at, you know, $25 an hour, and then I get six months out of them. I want them to have something to strive to and also something that they’re settling into this, it’s a career that you you can kind of climb the wage ladder, if you will. So and that is obviously going to be rewarded by all of the behaviors that we are going to be showcasing in this document.
Specific Raise Amounts
So again, we have the little chart that says a raised timeline, 60 days, 90 days, one year two, year three, year, all the way up to nine year. And on the right hand side of that column is going to be the actual dollar amount. So 60 days after higher, they can have up to $1 an hour raise potential, and all of them are pretty much getting that 90 days after higher, another 25 cents. So that’s going to bring them up to $17.25, 90 days. And then at one year, we have another 75 cent out per hour raise potential. So that would get them up to $18 after a year, and then from there, we go up 75 cents an hour per year, except at the five year anniversary, which we jump them to $1.75 an hour at that five year because for us, that’s a very long time, and we want to really, give them a big bump potentially at the five year anniversary, because that’s that’s huge, if somebody makes it to that, and then from there on again, 75 cents per hour every single year.
How We Decided on These Numbers
And when it came to, how we decided these numbers, I leaned heavily onto my managers, actually exclusively. This was based on their experiences, because all of them had worked in a corporate environment before. Stephanie had not. I mean, I worked at a credit union, a local credit union when I was, 20, but that really just, it wasn’t the same. You know, all of my managers, have been in very professional settings where they these were careers that they were in. And so previously, I had been giving, yeah, $1 or $1.50 an hour, bumps, every single time. And they’re, listen, this is not That’s not That’s That’s great. It’s unusual, though. And is it really sustainable? If we want to have them again, having things to strive for long term from a income perspective, then maybe we draw this out more, and they’re, listen, if we got a 75 cent, 75 cent an hour raise every single year, that would be fantastic. Where I was working, that was good. And obviously, you know, they have bonuses, they have tips, they have great benefits here. So all of these things go into the compensation package. So keep that in mind when you’re laying yours out. If you choose to go this route, you can, you can do whatever amounts you want. This is just what we went off of. And again, this was me, me, not as the boss even really having anything to say about this, because I’m not knowledgeable on this. Of what is fair, I have no bearing.
Owner Perspective vs Employee Perspective
And frankly, this is gonna sound once you start making, you know, a salary. I have no idea what I make hourly, right, as as the owner, that’s totally not even in my mind. So if any of you watched, Arrested Development, which is a great show, and one of the most meme able quotes of the whole show is, it’s one banana. What could it be $10 that? As ridiculous as that sounds, once you get to a certain level in your business, that’s what starts to happen, is this good? Is this bad? Because you’re no longer or behaving a tech anymore. And so this is where I kind of step aside and say, I my, my brain doesn’t know. Okay, my brain does not know. Is this good enough? Is this bad? So this is where I ask people who have been in more traditional settings and say, hey, what is normal here? What is good considering all of these other factors of the compensation model?
So not saying I’m, you know, at $10 a banana, being cheap levels, or anything, that’s definitely not what I’m saying. However, point being is, you may not be the expert here as to what is fair and appropriate. So ask those who have more knowledge, who have more experience when it comes to this, of what is fair and right? And, you know, people may in the comments be, that’s terrible. This is, this is a terrible thing. That’s okay. All of my staff really this, and they they’re very happy with the wages, especially in rural Wisconsin. So keeping that in mind of I know that at some point this is probably gonna piss somebody off this. Is how we’re doing it. That’s okay. I want to put it out for those are actually watching this to get value. So it is what it is.
Maximum Wage and Future Flexibility
So that is the first page we also put down on this page, the maximum hourly wage for cleaning technicians is $25 an hour, with potential for increases, just knowing that we can always adapt this in the future, maybe we get everybody to 10 years they’ve been with us, and we need to revamp this, right? Or maybe we’ve added a bunch of benefits at that point too, and they’re pleased with that, because, again, somebody’s making $25 an hour with, a full benefits package in our area as a cleaning technician, that’s that’s stellar. So keep that in mind. Of, what is appropriate? These are not independent contractors guys, right? They are employees, totally different things when we’re talking about how to pay people. So keep that in mind. Keep it in mind where my business is and what is competitive wages in my area, working anywhere without a college degree, and not working there for years and making $25 an hour in our area, meaning Wisconsin is in rural. Wisconsin is very good. It’s a good wage. And again, you know, maybe inflation goes crazy and and all of these things can be changed. All of our documents can be changed at any moment, right? So this is what makes sense now, in five to 10 years, maybe we need to adjust. Maybe we need to adjust next year or tomorrow, because something happens.
Okay, raises will be based upon the employee’s quality of work, company policy compliance, as well as attendance and punctuality. Further clarification provided within the next five pages of this document, and this is where we get into the bread and butter really.
Three Categories for Evaluation
Page Two is what I’m going to be focusing on, because page three through six is literally a chart explaining, from a dollars and cents amount explicitly, what is the potential for a raise at each tiered raise potential, meaning, if they’re up for potentially 25 cents an hour, 75 cents an hour, $1 per hour, or $1.75 per hour, we literally have a chart spelling out how much each violation in each area of this policy is going to be deducted from that potential raise it is explicit, and maybe I’ll put in some some imagery next to me on the YouTube video of this, so that you guys can see what that looks. Because it’s kind of hard to describe charts and things, but we’ll put that in there. I’ll make sure that we edit that in here for you.
So page two is going to be explaining exactly how the compensation breakdown for the total amount of potential raises will be calculated. So we I sat down with my managers and we really discussed what is important to us, and what do we look for when we are deciding upon raises and behavior and performance and things? So we break down our compensation, you know, potential into three areas. One is going to be quality of work. Two is going to be company policy compliance, and then three is attendance and punctuality. These are the three areas that we are going to be judging somebody on for their raises, and not even judging just watching how they behave, right? Because they already know all the policies. They’re in the driver’s seat here.
So quality of work is going to be responsible for 50% of the potential of the raise. Because for us, quality of work is huge. If we’re getting complaints on somebody this is a huge, huge issue, if QC are not going well. being that the basis of all of Serene Clean success is on having high quality of work. That is why 50% of the raise potential is based on that number two, company policy compliance. 40% of the raise potential is based on this, and then the last 10% that’s attendance and punctuality.
Why Attendance is Only 10%
And I know that that might be shocking to you, and you’re, how can that not be bigger? But for us, company policy compliance is is vast and broad, and it covers literally so many things, because when we looked at the headaches that we were getting from our staff members, or when we looked at folks who did not work out they were so non compliant with all of the company policies that we had laid out, and this covers so many things, and I’ll get into that momentarily, but it really is we’re, that’s actually the biggest problem. And frankly, when we look at our behavior at Serene Clean over the past six years, because that’s what we did, we critically looked at, how do we actually behave as managers when it comes to, you know, disciplining or having some kind of action upon a staff member. Attendance? Do we ever fire somebody over poor attendance? Very rarely, and it is 100% of fact that most of our staff members are going to call in at least once a month. 100% they are almost all parents, and they are almost. All the primary parent and they are responsible for when their kid is sick and they can’t go to daycare or what have you. they’re the ones who are going to have to go deal with that.
And so for us, we’re, we never are going to really, punish somebody for that. We’ll know that if they’re having attendance issues 100% and that will affect their raise. But it just is not, that’s not a deal breaker for me, honestly, and I’m totally cool if some if somebody calls in only once a month, that’s great as a full time staff member, I am pleased as punch with that. So we just don’t want it to really affect their their raises. And obviously, if they’re calling on all the time, this, meaning multiple times a week, or five times a month, well, then we they just might not be a good fit for us as a person. And we’re, you know, right to work state that can be a reason for termination is poor attendance, and we have absolutely fired people for that. It’s just so much more likely to be quality of work. But really the most likely reason somebody’s getting fired is company policy compliance, they are being non compliant. And they, they know it, and they, they know what they should be doing, and they’re not doing it. They are acting unprofessional, or all of the other things that that fall under the umbrella of company policy compliance.
Quality of Work Standards
So I’m going to now go through each section so quality of work, company policy compliance and attendance and punctuality, what the expectations and standards, as well as how many violations are going to disqualify them from that component of the raise. So what this is going to look is, again, let’s think of a pie, right? I to do a pie analogy. So 100% of the raise is 100% of the pie, half of that pie is related to quality, 40% of that pie is related to company policy compliance, and then the last 10% slice is punctuality and attendance. So as they have violations in each section of that pie, a chunk of that pie potential is taken away. So as they have complaints or QCS and things, we’re taking away chunks of that till there’s nothing left right, and each of those categories have different amounts tied to that.
So for us, 50% of the compensation raise potential is going to be related to quality of work in that slice of the pie. If they have five violations in one calendar year from their last performance review, that will disqualify them completely from getting any of that part of the raise, if that makes sense. I know that this might get a little complicated without visually seeing it, but I’m trying to visualize it for you. So if they have five complaints in a year, all of a sudden, half of that raise potential is gone. They no longer can get it. And honestly, that’s a lot of complaints. So we’re probably, you know, there’s other discussions that are being had, but this is strictly when it comes to raise potential, right?
So going into quality of work, regular quality checks will be conducted with failures clearly documented. Subsequent failures in the same area will count as violations. Each instance of below standard performance counts as one violation. So they basically get a freebie in each area where it’s a warning, and so if they have a complaint again on so they get a complaint on their floors, right? That’s not going to affect their raise, because we want them to be able to learn and not, get that slap on the wrist immediately. But then they get complaint on the floors again. Now all of a sudden, they were just told about that, right? So now that’s where it’s going to affect their wage.
So a client complaint that reflects the cleaning technician not meeting a quality performance standard counts as one violation. So there’s a difference between a complaint and for us, a quality quality check too. A client cancelation due to cleaning quality removes the entire quality component of the raise. So if somebody cancels because they were so appalled by the quality, then your quality potential neck for this year, it’s gone right? Because that’s a huge deal, if we lose a client because of a quality complaint that is to us just an egregious sin, that’s her Inkling. So that’s why we’re focusing on that. And then finally, five violations in this area will disqualify the quality component of the raise. So that’s everything related to quality of work. Again, it’s super important to us. That’s why it’s 50% of the total potential raise. So again, if they get a QC and you know, then they have subsequent failures on that same particular type of cleaning task, that’s when that’s going to count as a violation, right? So whereas a complaint, a complaint is a complaint that that’s what’s going to happen there.
Company Policy Compliance
All right, so that’s quality of work. Number two, 40% of the total potential raise is company policy compliance. And a couple of bulleted points into this, all signed policies and company expectations must be followed, including, but not limited to dress code, tool use, conduct, picking up and returning keys appropriately and responding to management messages and requests. Each instance of violating policies and expectations will count as one violation, and four violations in this area will disqualify this component of the race so they can have four issues per year in the company policy.
Compliance before they’re just not getting any of that each each issue is going to chomp away at that piece of the pie, and then once they hit four, boom, that whole piece of the pie is gone, potentially. So what this does for us and why we we listed these things out right, dress code, tool use, conduct, picking up and returning keys, appropriately, responding to management messages and requests. These were all of the areas that we just consistently have had, just so many frustrations with cleaning techs not behaving in the way that they are supposed to and have agreed to, right?
So things, you know, not responding to management messages, requests, just leaving us on red say they get a complaint, or we ask them an explicit question, they just don’t respond. I know that that’s an issue for you guys, right? So we’re calling it out and that, that’s not okay. It’s inappropriate to do that. We expect a response within a reasonable timeframe. Of course, obviously, you know, we’re not texting them at 10 o’clock at night expecting a response or anything, but that is the expectation that we are communicating effectively. And communication is such, I would say, ongoing, one of the biggest issues that we’ve had at Serene Clean is is lack of proper communication. And we try to communicate as best as possible. And you know, if we mess up, we always own up to it. From a man, hey, I did not tell you this, you know, I’m trying to get you the information as soon as possible. Blah, blah, blah. And really being, you know, casting a critical eye on us. Of we can’t expect great communication if we do not give great communication, right? So make sure you know you’re looking in the mirror when you’re expecting people to do things right and Own your mistakes when you make them.
However, this was such an issue of just they’re not communicating well, they’re not picking up and returning keys appropriately the important notes and the key pickup notes that have just been added to ZenMaid, this is going to help our techs be more successful, right? Because then this is what I was telling ZenMaid, this is a problem. This is a huge problem, and it’s always going to be a problem, right? And obviously we don’t want to hold our customers keys as much as possible, but for commercial accounts, potentially, Airbnb is this is just what needs to happen. Sometimes we have to hold keys, right? And so if the if this is something that we have to do, this is an issue where the techs they get to it, they forgot to pick it up, or more often than not, they forgot to return it. And then the next time a cleaning rolls around and we realize it’s on a different tech for whatever reason now, all of a sudden, it’s just pure chaos for us to hunt down that key. So it’s such a frustrating and disruptive experience to not have the keys back where they need to be, this is a huge problem.
ZenMaid Key Management Feature
And so shout out to ZenMaid for the new keynote thing. So basically, on the day for your cleaners, when they’re looking at their appointments, instead of having to go into the appointments to read the key information, as long as you put it in the client’s notes properly, it will show outside of the individual appointments, it’ll literally be a thing right at the top of their day. It’s, hey, you need to return this key, right? So, or you need to pick up these keys. You need to return this key. So, very excited, especially going to help our techs be more successful here and not make it so hard on them. So really looking at how can we make our techs more successful? That’s what, and make their day easier and make everything just run more smoothly? That’s really where ZenMaid is focused on when it comes to features. Is what’s going to make us operate more smoothly, right? And that is a big one. So very excited about that.
So, you know, dress code, tool use, that might be crazy to you. tool use, but, we were so sick of people improperly using tools that they have been trained on. And, you know, certain things in our kits could damage things, and they know not to use them on on certain surfaces or what have you. So if they’re continually making mistakes related to that, that that can cause a lot of issues for us. Conduct. Obviously, that covers a lot of things, and it’s covered in the in the code of conduct. And so all of the things that they have signed, you know, we have so many documents, I think we have 19 or 20 new hire documents that they sign. And, you know, so all of these is, is going to be something that we can point to as they are in violation. And we go over these so explicitly in orientation, and they’re reminded of these things. So it’s not we’re pulling the wool over, right? So that that’s the thing is, we’re reminding we’re talking about what this looks and what the expectations are. So they are, they know what they should be doing, right?
Attendance and Punctuality
And then finally, the final little 10, 10% chunk is going to be attendance and punctuality. So refer to the attendance policy for standards. So that is company policy compliance. But we don’t want to basically spell out another whole comp, policy in a policy that just felt silly. So we’re, just refer to this, the amount of violations in this area that will disqualify this component of the raises will vary depending on the race potential. See page three to five for more details, because we couldn’t actually say how my this was, a math thing. And you know that meme with the lady and all the numbers this was us this was crystal trying to figure out, how, how does this work? Right? from a math perspective, of, it always makes sense always, and it didn’t make sense unless we said it this way. So that’s what that looks, and I’ll explain that in a moment.
So management reserves the right to withhold any portion of a rate. So if somebody acts egregiously, say, let’s say company policy compliance, right, and they do only one violation, but. They fucked up so badly. We’re, no, you do not get this portion of the raise. You’re lucky. You’re even still working here, depending on what it is, and obviously, if it’s something really crazy, we’re gonna fire them for it. But say they really, really just they messed up, right? They messed up so badly. Then, you know, they don’t, they don’t get to have that portion of the raise. And again, we get to reserve the right for that right. And we’re never going, we will never, ever, ever abuse that rule. But we just want to have that caveat in place. And that’s really what all of these documents are about, is having caveats in place that we can fall back to in the event of an extreme situation, 99.9% of the time, it’s never an extreme situation. But you want to have that at least written down and agreed to so that when the crazy stuff happens, you have something to point to, right.
Bonus Structure
And then bonuses are at the owner’s discretion and may follow similar criteria as raises, because that’s where we really wanted to leave that to be open ended, because I exclusively am the one who makes decisions on bonuses. That is still 100% within my jurisdiction, if you will. So that can be Christmas bonuses, other bonuses, Christmas in July, bonuses, when the business is doing well enough to do that. Those are based on my discretion. And I’m looking at these same things, but mostly I’m looking at longevity. So how long has somebody what been with me? I look at what I gave them last year for Christmas, right? And I always am upping that. That’s just my personal preference of, I want to up everybody I honestly, this is what I do. I take whatever I gave them last year for a Christmas bonus, and if they bet i i bump it up by $50 to $100 depending on if they’re part time or full time. If they’re part time, I’m probably doing $50. If they’re full time, I’m gonna give them $100 more. And I just increase that every single year, because the business should be hypothetically growing. And if they’ve been with me for five years, yes, they should be getting a much heftier bonus than somebody who just started, you know, six months ago, right? So I try to be again as fair as possible, knowing people can talk obviously, and you know, they will look a gift horse in the mouth, but I do try to be as fair as possible.
The Mathematical Breakdown
So then see page three to five for further clarification regarding raise guidelines. And this is where let’s pop you know that image again up here, so you guys can see what this looks. It’s just a big chart, and on each section is going to be dependent on the potential for the raise that year. So 25 cents, 75 cents, $1 or $1.75 those are the amounts that we have specified on that first page that they could be getting that year, right? So only one instance is there a chance to get 25 cents for a raise, and that’s after, what was that? Nine months? Yep, or, I’m sorry, nine months, 90 days after a higher there, that’s where that little bump is going to come up to get them to that $18, ideally, if they’re starting at $16, right? So that’s the only time. But we still need to spell out each portion of that set, you know, 25 cents, right?
So let me go to $1 to make this easy. So we have these several charts that explain that are broken into three different parts of the pie, right? So quality of work is 50% of the total raise. So if you were on a on a year that you were up for $1 an hour, or you’re at a moment where you’re up for $1 an hour, which is really, I think, just going to be that, that first phrase, but for quality of work, you can have up to five violations, and one violation is and then it’s just It spells it out specifically, From a sense perspective, one violation, 10 cents an hour deducted from potential raise. Two violations, 20 cents an hour deducted from potential raises. 334, 4550 and a client cancelation due to clean quality removes the entire quality component of the raise. 50 cents an hour deducted from the potential raise.
So what this means is when they are on the that, when they are at the moment that they are up for potentially $1 an hour that year, it’s that time, and they say they have four violations, 40 cents an hour will be deducted From that potential raise, right? Because if $1 is available, they just lost 40 cents of that potential dollar because they had four violations. If they have 550 cents an hour deducted from potential raise, the whole the whole chunk is because 50, 50 cents is 50% of the total potential raise. And I know I’m throwing a lot of numbers at you, but this is the only way to explain it, so I hope that that makes sense.
Company policy, compliance, 40% of total raise. So they are they can have up to four violations. So if they get four violations, the 40 cents that was available to them for this potential raise is now gone, right? So this is literally how we’re calculating. it, attendance and punctuality, which is 10% of the total raise. If they have one violation, two cents an hour deducted for potential raise. Five violations, 10 cents an hour is deducted from potential raise, right? So it, and this is what, because this is why this had to happen. So 10% of the total potential raise if they’re looking at $1 or. Hours is going to be 10 cents, right? So what we had to do is, how many violations make it to that 10 cents an hour? So five violations would get you to the whole 10 cents is gone. So that number changes depending on how much raise potential we’re looking at.
Whereas if we’re looking at $1.75 they can have up to seven violations in attendance and punctuality, which would take away that portion of the raise, which would be 17 cents an hour, based on the math of 10% of $1.75 right? So that’s where things get into the weeds. But, and I know that this might be, oh my gosh, this is so complicated. It’s really not once you have it spelled out, right? And this way, when we are actually looking at calculating the raise, crystal is preparing for the performance review, all she needs to do is go back to our documentation of their behavior, which we literally have a spreadsheet in our Google Drive that’s named every single employee. And every time they do one of these things, we just put it on that spreadsheet with the date. What happened, right? And so then when crystal is, okay, Sally’s performance review time. What did she do this past year? Boom, how much was she up for? Oh, she was up for $1 at this performance review.
Real Example Calculation
Well, she had two violations in here. Take, let’s use this actual example here. Sally is up for her performance review and the raise potential this year is $1 an hour. Sally had two complaints over the past year. She did great, right? So that’s quality of work. Let’s say she had three company policy compliance and let’s say she had five attendance and punctuality violations. So to this example, she had three violations of quality of work. She is going to have 30 cents an hour deducted from potential rates. So $1 minus 30, we are down to 70 cents that total that she could potentially get right now. Now she had four violations in company policy compliance. So where we take which is 40 cents an hour. So now we have that 70 cents that was remaining after the quality of work. 70 minus 40 is going to be she now can get 30 cents of a raise, okay, and attendance and punctuality. She had five violations, 10 cents an hour deducted from potential raise. So now 30 minus another 10 cents, she’s only getting a 20 cent raise because of her behavior.
And I know that that seems really strict, but we’re expecting excellence, and if you’re having this many violations in all of these different areas, then should you really be getting a big raise? Or, you know, maybe you need to not, maybe you need to be adjusting things right? That’s the goal. And so this really spells out. So when you know doing Sally’s performance raise, it’s, okay, there’s no question here. It’s, you did this, this, this, these are your actions caused this to occur, right? And it’s just so cut and dry. It takes out any anger or, hopefully animosity. Yeah, they may be angry at the policy, but really it should be more disappointment in themselves, because their actions are what dictated this, and it is explicitly explained down to the penny, how it’s going to affect the raise.
Employee Response and Long-term Results
And so once they get to that first performance review, and this happens based on their actions, hopefully it is, you know, Man in the Mirror time and saying, okay, I’m responsible for what my raise is going to be coming up, so I’m gonna either adjust my actions or expect this to keep happening every year. Based on my behavior, and honestly, looking at my longest techs, they have so few instances of all of this stuff. So they are just excellent at their job. They’re very excellent what they do, and they just don’t do this shit, right? They don’t do this shit. So they get that raise. They get that raise every single year. And so they’re gonna climb as quickly as they possibly can, up to that high amount.
For example, you know, some of my techs say they’re at their three or four years in right now because they’ve been grandfathered in. They’re already at, you know, $21 an hour. Well, we’re just gonna follow this until they get to that $25 so it’s not going to take them, obviously, nine years to get there, but that’s what it’s going to do, right? So it grandfathers the folks in who have already been at a different amount than where the schedule was laid out here.
The Importance of Documentation
So honestly, this is so useful, and what this forces you to do is it forces you to document correctly. It forces you to document a proper HR department is supposed to document. And I know that that sounds a lot of work on your part, tough guys, that’s part of managing people. If you don’t want to put in the work of managing people, then you need to not have, you know, people to manage, and just just work for yourself this. Is the shitty part about being a small business is that’s very overwhelming. But what I will say is, if you can put into place, even from an early on stage, when you hire somebody, just simply make the spreadsheet, and I have this template available where it’s based. Basically the employee documentation, and we have a little drop down. It’s the date is one column, the drop down is, what did they do, what kind of violation, and then describe what happened, right? And who is this being documented by, so that at the end of the year, you can have something to look back at.
And so all it takes is in that moment when something happens, whether that just be screenshotting it and sending it to yourself, emailing it to yourself that honestly, I find it easiest to screenshot an email if you’re out in the field and something happens and you don’t want to forget immediately, screenshot that send an email to yourself or set a reminder for yourself to get back to it, so that when you’re sitting down at your computer you have stuff to work through. Of, okay, these three cleaners did these three different things, and when it happens, you don’t have to think about anything other than dealing with it in the moment. But then, from a documentation standpoint, you can then just work through it in your email, of, okay, I have these three things to document real quick. All I need to do is this, and you can even attack, we to attach the screenshots and everything so that we have all the stuff properly documented. And then when it comes to, unemployment claims, or when you need to fire somebody, you are already documenting it properly, because you should be doing this anyway.
Practical Documentation Tips
Take all of this shit that I’m talking about right now. When it comes to raises, you should be documenting all of these issues anyway. And honestly, this is one of the worst parts, in my opinion, of owning a business and managing people, is this administrative stuff. And that’s where, you know, a VA can come in, a manager can come in, of, if you have anybody outside of yourself right now that’s assisting in the business, this is a perfect thing for them to be doing, where, if you’re communicating directly with your cleaners, and something happens. Screenshot it, send it to this other person. I know a lot of you don’t have that, but that is a perfectly reasonable thing to expect some other administrative person to be doing is documenting this stuff. Obviously, I have an HR director who is handling this. But you know, we’re, we’re bigger team, right? So you can work in baby steps if you don’t have anybody either way, guys, it’s gonna save you so much headache to be documenting this stuff you need to be doing this, because otherwise, you sit down and you know that this person has been a shit bag to you, and they’ve been a terrible employee, but all of a sudden you’re sifting through months of text messages that maybe even a message up, they even deleted shit, right? And so you’re trying to find all this documentation when you’re finally fed up enough and you need to fire them, or whatever is happening, right? Or they’re trying to get unemployment, and they’ve violated document policies, and now you have to find all of this stuff in this proof.
It’s just so much easier to do it as you go. It’s just cleaning. I’d imagine it’s much easier to do your dishes, hypothetically, every day, than letting them pile up, right? And then you have a mountain to to clean. I mean, hypothetically, because I do that all the time. So I’m just saying, I’m saying one would assume that that would be easier, right? So this is exactly how we want to tackle kind of this administrative labor is we don’t want it to pile up, or we don’t want to simply just not ever do it. And then once we, you know, finally sit down we’re going to start doing this all of a sudden, we have all this backlog of things to do.
Dealing with Message Deletion
And again, some of our messaging apps, we can delete our messages. And so that’s why, in the moment that it’s happening, somebody’s calling in, whatever your policy is, we actually have the message. We don’t have them call. They message their management group. And so we screenshot that, we send it to ourselves, right? And then it can be documented properly, because oftentimes we’re not sitting at a computer when a cleaner is doing something. So that’s why I really think that that’s a practical way to handle it. Just screenshot. You already screenshot and shit anyway, right? Screenshot it. Email it to yourself. So then when you are in the mindset or frame of mind to be doing administrative labor at your computer and properly documenting everything from a staffing perspective, then you’re you’re being very methodical about it, and so that’s how you practically do things from the field. I find and and Did I do any of this in the first year? Hell no. Did I do any of this in the second year? Hell no, right, but the point of this podcast is for you guys to implement things earlier in your business journey than I did. That’s going to save you headaches.
Final Thoughts and Recommendations
So all of that to be said, guys, I hope that this has been useful to you. I know it’s been a lot. Here we are yet again, in another hour solo episode, but there’s just so much I have to say about this topic. And I really hope that you, if you if you glean anything, and you’re, nope, I don’t want to do my raises this way. What I would suggest is having it very clearly defined. What is going to cause them to have a raise or cause them to not get a raise? Number one and number two be properly documenting as things occur, so that when you do get the to the performance review stage, or you’re getting to the firing stage, or whatever you need to do, you’ve already got it all documented and laid out, and just makes your life so much easier. You’re thinking about your future self in this moment, and you’re thinking about not just you, but the future administrative staff that you’re going to have working for you. It’s going to make their lives easier. And also just have everything very clear as to what is going on in the business. It really is a security blanket. Is this, this level of documentation? It sounds complicated. It’s really not. Not it. Just getting into the habit is truly the hard part, but once it’s a habit and it sticks, it’s going to just make you feel a lot more empowered and control in your business.
Employee Empowerment Through Clear Expectations
And this whole thing that I’ve talked about this will empower your staff, right? I know it sounds it’s really, really strict or something. It empowers them to strive for excellence, because it’s actually going to positively affect their wages, right? They’re not just one and done. They have something to strive for continually, to continually improve their performance in your business. So I hope that this has been helpful, guys. Definitely let me know in the comments any further questions. Or if you have found this useful, let me know anything else related to this topic I’d love to talk about in future episodes. Definitely give this hit that subscribe, go join the ZenMaid mastermind on Facebook. It’s an excellent group that we can all talk about our experiences. Put out questions. It’s a great place to be. And finally, as always, my email inbox is always open. Guys stephanie@serene-clean.com if you have any specific questions that you would like me to answer to you directly, or maybe do an episode about if you are free to email me, I am here for you to reference so I will see you guys on the next episode, and I hope you’re having a great day. Thanks so much. Bye.
Note: This transcript has been edited for clarity and readability.
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