Here are four more mistakes cleaning companies make when it comes to quality control. Use quality control management software to support your company’s mission and more.
We have discussed the first four quality control mistakes that cleaning companies make in the first of our two-part series. These mistakes include:
- Using quality control to criticize more than educate
- Not informing employees of expectations
- Using pen and paper instead of quality control software
- Training some staff members more than others
Now we will talk about the last four quality control mistakes and how to prevent them. If you missed part one of our series, you can read more about these four points in our last blog post.
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Quality control staff not qualified
Assigning one or more employees to manage quality control for your cleaning company is important, but there is more to the job than just going around with a checklist.
Mickey Crowe, a consultant in the cleaning industry, lists several requirements for a good quality control employee such as:
- Suggests tasks for janitors that they excel at
- Can spot subpar work and know how to correct it
- Performs customer inspections day and night
- Observes cleaning staff to improve their performance
If you currently use tools such as quality control management software, your quality control staff need to be efficient with both using it and training other personnel on it.
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Irregular reviewing process
“Holding management reviews frequently allows you to review real-time data so that actions can be preventive,” said Craig Cochran of Georgia Manufacturing Extension Partnership at Georgia Tech.
“If these meetings are held only once or twice a year, however, you will not get the information that is necessary to make important decisions for your company’s success.”
Make a plan for how often you will meet with your cleaning staff each quarter to review quality performance. Even if you meet only once a quarter, it’s still better than once or twice every year.
This suggestion also supports the second point of this series that addressed the need to inform your employees about expectations. If review times are not regular enough, employees could forget those expectations and their work quality might decline over time.
This will create more work for you in the long run because you will have to re-train them on how they should meet standards.
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Results are ignored
Why set up a quality control program and gather results but not implement needed changes? That’s like getting bad grades on tests but still deciding not to change the way you study.
Here are a few consequences your cleaning business could experience if you are not always diligent about altering bad quality trends:
- Slower business growth
- Less enthusiastic quality staff
- Increase of flawed inspections results
Spend a good amount of time reviewing results from your quality control program. During your review meetings with employees, determine the best course of action to help eliminate mistakes they have made. Follow-up on the results of that plan in the next meeting and make necessary adjustments.
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Quality is left out of company’s mission statement
Have you ever thought about mentioning quality in something like your company’s mission? This might seem trivial to you, but Anthony Maione, vice president of Core Management Services, explains why this is important:
“The concept of continuous quality improvement should be addressed in an organization’s mission statement,” he said.
“The leaders of the cleaning program must wholeheartedly buy into the importance and relevance of the quality control program, using every opportunity to reinforce the message of quality improvement.”
You can instill the importance of quality in your employees by having them memorize and recite the mission statement or by posting it in a place where your staff will regularly see it.
CleanTelligent Software offers many services for managing quality control, such as inspections and work orders, that can be accessed from any computer or mobile device. Learn more today on our solutions page!