Tensions and friction between staff can develop in all types of organizations, including janitorial cleaning companies. For many cleaning contractors, it evolves slowly, over time, and because many have never dealt with such a situation before, they are not sure what to do or where to start to address it.
One reason it evolves slowly is because most cleaning contractors start out with just a few, smaller customers and a small number of workers. Often each worker cleans a facility on their own or with only one or two others.
But with business growth and the cleaning of larger facilities, whole teams of cleaning workers may be required. That’s when tensions and frictions can arise between individual cleaning workers, their supervisors, and management.
It often is the result of power struggles; or when one group of people does not feel another team is carrying their weight; sometimes some workers do not like the way others are performing their jobs.
And we should add, in-house cleaning crews are not immune to staff tensions. In fact, because worker turnover is often less among in-house custodial workers, stresses and issues can boil under the surface for years, never fully being resolved.
And, there is more to it than just tension. When workers do not feel comfortable working with other workers, it can impact their job performance, certainly their morale, and their views about their work and the facilities they clean.
It takes energy to be unhappy on the job, and we need that energy direct in a positive direction, like making sure the customer’s facility is kept clean and healthy. That’s why cleaning contractors and managers cannot ignore worker tensions and friction to simmer.
So, how do we turn things around.
The first thing we must realize is something observed by Dale Carnegie, famed self-improvement and corporate trainer, many years ago. He found that “when dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotions.”
Because we are dealing with emotions, it means the best way to address these on-the-job tensions and frictions is to bring them out in the open, don’t let them fester, and talk about them as a group or between the individuals involved.
Here’s how I handled just such a situation when I was hired by the Walt Disney Company in California many years ago. At that time, their cleaning operation was in a difficult situation. Building managers were complaining about unsatisfactory cleaning service; cleaning budgets, projected to last a year were exhausted in about six months, and tensions between many of the more than 100 cleaning and maintenance workers with each other, their supervisors, and building managers was quite palpable.
So, I put a locked, gray wooden box in the lunchroom where most of the workers ate their lunch. I did this every Thursday and asked everyone to place comments in the box regarding any issues or problems they were grappling with on the job or with each other.
The first month, the box was full just about every Thursday. I read each comment. Many of the comments were accusations and issues that were not work related, but others were work-related. With those, I would investigate the situation, bring in the parties involved, and work with them to resolve the issues.
That gray wooden box became a symbol of change. Everyone knew when issues arose, no matter what they were, they would be addressed and would not be ignored.
Initially I suspected that I would be placing the gray wooden box in the lunchroom every Thursday. But something unexpected happened. After three months, it was just no longer needed.
Issues had resolved; tensions that had rankled some workers for years were no more; when new problems arose, we now knew how to communicate with each other and resolve them quickly; and the number of complaints from the different building managers in the Disney organization dropped significantly.
This is why I highly recommend all cleaning contractors and in-house building managers make sure they have a gray wooden box on hand, just in case they run into situations like this in the future.
Ron Segura is president of Segura Associates. His company works with organizations and cleaning contractors to help them streamline their operations as well as promote sustainability and healthier cleaning strategies. This allows them to function more effectively and efficiently and realize cost savings.
