To feel completely betrayed by staff member

[BurpeesAllTheWay]

I run a cleaning company, I started 6 years ago on my own and over the last 1.5 years have added in 6 more employees. The first lady I hired, Ann has been with me since October 23. I employed her daughter to work with us 2 and the pair of them work in a team and the daughter doesn’t drive. Everything was fine until this year, they’ve had 6/7 clients leave and they are calling in sick atleast one of them weekly.
Today, the daughter called in sick because she was too tired to work. I managed to cover her work and team up someone else with Ann for the day, I did ask Ann if she could work late and she said she had something on, which was fine. Then driving home from work today, I drove past one of their old clients houses, who left us a couple of months ago, to see Ann and her daughter loading up their car with all of their cleaning equipment (which is actually all of my cleaning equipment) I’ve had 2 more clients leave in the last 2 weeks, which I now suspect have been taken on privately by them too. Am I being unreasonable to feel really hurt by this dishonesty from someone who I trusted as a friend?! I’ve always subbed her wages early, helped her out when her husband left, we go out for drinks together and catch ups regularly! How would you go about confronting them?! I also now have to sack them, I’m so upset to lose them as members of staff.

I've read the whole thread. I can't imagine the pain you are going through, due to the multiple problems these people have caused. None of this is your fault.

But I'm also going to be incredibly harsh by explaining it just like it is. I have been in the cleaning industry for the best part of 25 years - domestic and commercial. The problem with the domestic work is that when you have staff, you -as the service provider - have to be really, really good to justify the prices you need to charge in order to stay both legal and profitable, whilst making both staff and customers aware at all times of why they both need you. It is very easy to start a domestic cleaning service on your own, and when you have staff you have to remain mindful at all times that there's not a lot stopping them from going alone.

Staff in the domestic cleaning industry have been ruining the businesses they work for since the day that cleaning "businesses" started to become a thing. You can have all the contracts and policies that you like, but enforcing them is incredibly difficult and costs a fortunes. There are masses of internet forums and facebook groups where people are complaining about this happening day after day after day.

It's not right, but this is very much an occupational hazard of the industry you are in. I'll also saying you've been given some dreadful advice on here, such as to go out and undercut them for as much as it takes - genuine, loyal customers do not hire their cleaners on price and no one can afford to get involved in those who do. Your staff have shown their true colours, as have your customers. Your first priority is to safeguard the clients you have left (what with their keys etc), the second priority is sort everything else out.

You have my utmost sympathy for what's happened, but I can't lie and tell you it won't happen again - trying to grow a domestic cleaning business with staff is like talking one step forward and twenty steps back. There are loads of people out there running hugely successful businesses on their own. The number of people who are able to do that with staff is almost negligible, and has taken them years & years to get to where they are able to cope with all the problems it brings. Do some research, join some groups - you will be astounded as to how few people are able to make it work with staff.

The trouble with that advice is you need to have staff on fixed hour contracts for that which means you risk having to pay them when there is no work for them to do. If they are on zero hours ( which I guess your staff are) then legally you cannot stop them working for other employers, or on their own account.Also they can turn shifts down (as they are doing) for any or no reason.

As others have said, I don't think domestic cleaning is really a scaleable business. You obviously need to charge more than a sole cleaner would charge to make a profit, but the client doesn't see any benefit for this premium

And if anything, there are far less advantages of hiring a company over a private cleaner. Yes, a great many people clean "on the side" and for cash etc, who do not stick it out for very long, and yes, when it goes wrong it can really go wrong, but if it goes well it can work beautifully.

There are a great many successful domestic cleaning businesses out there, with staff, but so many more have failed. I applaud anyone who's got the nerves of steel and determination to make it work. It's so, so hard.

This is your business and you are going to have to fight for it.

1. Put your emotions aside for now. This isn't personal they are not doing it to you because of you, they are doing it because of them.
2. Get evidence, photographs, payslips etc.. put it in a spreadsheet to cross reference the dates. If they have been claiming sick, while working thats fraud.
3. If you can afford it seek legal advice. My parents had a small business and even 1 session with and employment lawyer can give you the confidence to do the right thing.
4. Call them in to "check the keys" like the poster said below, and sack them.
5. Drink a bottle of wine and have a good cry

How do you get the feedback from the clients about the way the cleaners do their work- is it from the cleaner themselves or do they email you. I like the idea that you visit the property and make yourself visiable so they know that the cleaner can focus on cleaning rather than billing etc. .

In my experience, the only way it can ever work with staff being moved around the same clients is to have a pretty basic service level which is easily implemented / is easier to implement. The minute you start accommodating the customer's individual requests / needs (no matter how normal and reasonable the requests are), the harder it becomes to move other staff onto the same job.

Add to this, a lot of people are out when the cleaning is done, and (naturally, in my opinion) would like to meet the people who are coming in and going all through their home while they aren't there.

Then add to that all the bickering at Christmas when customers leave gifts for the cleaners and it goes to someone who's not been doing for that client for long.

Standards of all kinds are very difficult to apply to domestic cleaning; commercial spaces are much, much easier to develop a service level and standards which can be replicated by another cleaner...there's also much less dependency from the client on having the same person doing the same area, as it's a whole lot less personal than having someone to clean your home.

There are loads of people out there running hugely successful businesses on their own. The number of people who are able to do that with staff is almost negligible,

@Anotherscrubber thank you for your interesting perspective. When you say run hugely successful businesses on their own, you mean they do the cleaning themselves? If so, isn't there a limit to what they can earn because there are a finite number of hours they can work and presumably a limit to how much they can charge per hour.

thank you for your interesting perspective. When you say run hugely successful businesses on their own, you mean they do the cleaning themselves? If so, isn't there a limit to what they can earn because there are a finite number of hours they can work and presumably a limit to how much they can charge per hour

Yes, and that's the "problem". They can only work as much as they can physically fit into their schedule, and they won't profit from others doing the work for them.

As for the limit on how much they charge (whether they are charging per hour, per day, half day, or per job, it doesn't matter), that all comes down to how good they are and how well they know their market. When I started my own service in the early 00s, I was quickly able to establish how much the "brand leader" from the franchise sector was charging their customers, and it was not an insignificant amount of money, let me tell you. I knew it was going to be high, as I knew how much they were paying staff, which was well over minimum wage.

What I wasn't expecting was for many of the clients I found (from leafleting their homes) to be telling me that it was almost irrelevant as to whether they paid more to a "business" as opposed to a person, because all they cared about was what they paid and what they got in return. A good, reliable, solo cleaner who cleans professionally as opposed to a side-line they're not really committed to can earn a respectable amount of money, because they'll always be able to offer a better service than one with staff. That's not to say businesses with staff are no good, of course it isn't, and a great many clients are happy to pay for that service, I'm just saying that anyone who's prepared to go at it alone can be well rewarded financially. Trouble is, it's a dead-end opportunity, so you have to take from it what you can. It's great if you only need a job, but it's not a career.

What I have never understood are the cleaners who work for a company -and more typically an agency- where they are expected to be self-employed. Cleaners in this situation are so, so very close to working for themselves and with few benefits of being an employee, that I don't understand why they would do it, unless of course they are so bad at cleaning or managing their clients that they don't dare to go at it alone. The agencies are the ones I understand the least, as what they tell the client to pay the cleaner can be a pittance.

On another note, there's no way I'd do the half of what I do for my clients if it was I worked for a company. I do it because I like working for them and because I can charge a respectable price. I'd hate to be going in and out of houses all week long, not knowing who lived there and if I'd ever be going back to it. There's no incentive to work hard at the cleaning if there's no knowing you'll go back to reap the reward of doing it well last time. And if you are a great cleaner, there's always the risk that you'll be the one that gets sent in to clean the homes where people have complained about low standards, only to find you are moved to another job just as soon as you've got it in some sort of order. This happened to me once when I was working in a hospital as a domestic - I never went to the same area more than two or three times, I kept getting put in areas where work was needed. I didn't realise at first what they were doing with me...but I soon caught on.

Hi , there are ways to do this. Agencies run similar contracts in a number of different ways . If staff do not have at least some minimum guaranteed hours then losses can be recouped from clients ( if they have signed a contract). As with any business you need to have terms agreed in writing or you are unfortunately at the mercy of these people stealing your hard earned clients