I have two guys per crew. We are doing all residential right now. One has about a year of experience with a few other companies and the other guy has been with me for 1.5 years. Now he’s not a fast cleaner, but he’s great with people he’s reliable. Yesterday my guys made $45.00 per crew hour and today they made $59.00 …
Its not my prices, I’m the highest in the area. Is it just my guys are slow? If so what are some good ways to fix that? Just experience?
More experience? More incentives? Just a thought.
There has to be a even mix of quality and speed. If your super slow but your doing great work its nice, but it kills our profitability. Id like to offer more money if they do a certain dollar amount in a certain time, but I don’t want them to fly through stuff and have the quality drop
Implement some sort of “bonus” if the job is done under the budget hours and gets no complaints or call backs. That’ll give the incentive to work faster and keep the quality up to your standards.
Mike Radzik
Pro Window Cleaning
Central Massachusetts
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Swap the members with other crews. An old pair might get in a rut.
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I have the feeling this is going to tun into a good thread…
Contrary to popular opinion, a year or so is NOT a long time, experience-wise.
but the more important thing is, no matter how long you’ve been doing something,
if you’re doing things in a way that could be better… You’ve simply been doing the wrong thing, for a long time.
Thats where you/we come in.
Experience doesn’t simply come from time worked, it comes from what is learned along the way.
It CAN be passed on. it Should be passed on.
I have a deal with my guys, for every thing I correct, I will give a reason WHY they should.
That’s the problem with a lot of guys, they have blah blah years of doing hacky stuff.
A good percentage of window cleaners will rush around, barking about saving milliseconds…
But they can’t figure out that if you have your arm hanging from a rung two rungs above you, you can’t reach the spot you missed just out of reach below you.
Keep your hand on the rung at eye level, so you have room to move.
help your guys realize how stuff works, and they will become faster out of simple muscle memory, rather than hurrying around because you say ‘they are moving too slow.’
Yeah that’s a good way to put it D. I really feel that cleaning windows is a gentle balance between quality and quantity. Find the medium and you will breeze through windows without a streak.
Streaks will happen.
But WHY they happen is what matters.
Perfect example: Guy jumping around how he’s been 'doing this 9 years.'
yet he runs around doing half a house without rinsing/wringing out his mop.
We’re in Michigan, so this only works in some places…
But I mentioned how his windshield looked driving down the freeway during the winter.
How the salt covers it.
Does the wiper clear the salt?
does a quick squirt of fluid clear the salt?
No. It takes a decent amount of fluid to clear the salt away.
Its all relative, the salt is the fine grit that gets between the rubber and the glass.
The fluid is the liquid that washes away the grit.
Genius says ‘Yeah I guess that makes sense.’
“you guess?!?”
Gotta change that bucket water
And hey if streaks happen dry em and move on. That’s life. These things happen. No biggie. If you want your guys to move faster tell them there’s another widow cleaner in town talking about how much you guys’s work sucks. That’ll get em movin.
It can be a number of things why they’re slow. Are they taking to long to unload truck? Talking to home owner to long? Setting up equipment ? Are they working side by side ? Or if one works outside and one inside , is the inside guy waiting for the outside guy to finish so they can work together ? Sounds like they need training on how to work together . Just my 2 cents
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Man, this is so right! This behavior kills me! I always am telling guys to rinse their mops, drives me mad, its so simple and easy. I have especially had this problem with guys coming from other companies. They’ll be at a job with me and I’ll be near the bucket and not see them for a while and be like, “Why haven’t you gotten a dip yet?”, they just can’t put it together in their head that their mop is getting dryer and dirtier after a certain amount of windows, therefore lowering the quality of their work and making them work harder.
Its especially unbearable when they’re wetting windows with extension poles on commercial jobs.
Man I’m so glad I don’t have to deal with that crap.
My suggestions, and no one likes doing it
first, what’s the goal? if there’s no goal, there’s no way to track it
what would be YOUR man hour $? start with that as the goal
does your pricing produce rock solid consistent times for you? good
remember, a 2 man team will only do 1.5x what you do by yourself in an 8 hour day (for window jobs only in the day)
first time, as neededs and regular repeats all have their own pmh’s, a reminder that one cant bark that employees arent doing first times as fast as the owner does regular repeats
then, with that goal amount track the teams daily production in a spreadsheet, watch it over time, you will get a feel over time when they are really slacking or exceeding expectations
do year to date or last 12 months daily average, you will be amazed. by doing this I got so good my guys could go to old jobs, new jobs, first time jobs, repeat jobs and pull in within a few minutes of 8 hours every day with few exceptions. Still helps to this day.
so if you do 600 a day for example, a 2 man team will do about 900 a day
they need goal times and goal $ so they know when they are doing well, they need that measuring stick or they will languish.
any job or day is fixed by the sum total of all the movements it takes to complete the jobs. “going faster” is not a business model, they need help, work within the existing fixed parameters (anchoring to price with rock solid pricing) and find “leverage” instead. work with that phrase with them, encourage them to “find leverage” instead of the nebulous “go faster”
just what comes to mind when i read your post
just my 2 cents to help
I used to be the worker part of a team. We found as long as we did around what was expected and jobs got done within the average time we would never rush. after a while people get used to plodding along cuz they are just on hourly rate. As soon as you put an bonus or % structure in place the jobs should get done faster, unless you have lazy workers and they don’t want to earn more $$.
I dont have employees but I do have helpers that I can call upon when I have a big job and need an extra hand.
i found that the first thing i needed to do was train them properly and tell them exactly what I expected, no skipping windows or cutting corners. I would do quality control checks on all their work and nit pick every detail. They didnt mind because the more tedious and longer the work took the more hours they made.
Once I felt that they got to the level that I could trust their quality of work I told them. “OK this job shouldnt take us more then 5 hours. So regardless if we go over or under 5 hours you are getting paid for 5 hours.” They started working faster and still maintained the quality. That 5 hour job turned into 4 hours and we were all happy to be going home at lunch time.
I only run one person per truck unless there is at least $750 or more in revenue for one day. So as an example, today one truck is doing $1,100 and the other is doing $450. So there will be 2 people on the $1100 and 1 person on the $450 truck. I found that having a 2nd person on the truck doesn’t increase productivity all that much. Also, if there is even an hour or so of drive time, its usually better to pay an hour of overtime for one guy than have 2 guys finish the day an hour quicker. Drive time is a killer
I use to work for a carpet cleaning company. He had 15 trucks and we all went out solo. When we demanded a helper he told us we would all be making less money. He was right and we went back to one man on a truck.
definitely!
large crews are better suited for large buildings, 12k sft homes and for cal trans lol
Yeah its kind of hard to wrap your head around. Let’s say a $500 home takes one guy 6 hours. If you have 2 people working that same job, it will only get done about 1 hour quicker. I don’t know why, it’s just the way it is. And you’ve just spent way more in labor plus drive time on 2 guys.
