The following is a review of one of the issues I had to grapple with when I was hired by the Walt Disney Company to streamline their custodial services.
Several years ago, I was hired by the Walt Disney Company in California. The property had more than 750,000 square feet of space that had to be cleaned on a daily or regular basis. At that time, 92 in-house custodial workers were employed by the company; 11 utility workers* for handling special projects; plus we had four day porters.
The reason Disney hired me was that, for the most part, they were just not happy with the service being provided by this 100 plus crew. There were regular complaints from department heads. Plus, there was a very significant dollars-and-cents issue. The annual budget for cleaning typically ran out about mid-year. This meant that either the Disney company was not budgeting enough money for cleaning and janitorial supplies or spending had simply gotten out of control.
My first jobs were to tour the entire property meet the cleaning workers. In the process, I investigated such things as how well they interacted with each other as well as the building heads and users? How well they worked together as a team? How much they liked their jobs?
Here is what I found:
- Very low morale and a lot of blame toward each other for the cleaning problems at the company
- Ongoing conflicts between cleaning workers and supervisors
- Clashes between different ethnic groups
- Difficulties between long-term custodial workers, who were more self-starting and well organized, and workers recently hired who were less so
- A general lack of respect for each other and the staff at Disney
Plus, there was a new problem when I arrived: me. Many custodial workers felt uncomfortable that an outsider had been brought in to help turn things around.
All of these issues contributed to the cleaning dissatisfaction the Disney company was experiencing. They all, even low morale, take energy… energy that could best be put to use cleaning. It’s hard to do your best for a company when all this tension and discomfort exists.
Addressing these problems might seem insurmountable, but I found a very useful way to quickly and easily address them: I placed a box in the lunchroom.
Every Thursday, a box would be placed in the custodial lunchroom. All custodial workers were encouraged to jot down their comments, complaints, and work-related issues. I would read each of them and the issues discussed would be addressed.
Initially, the box was full of comments every Thursday, but within about three months, there were so few, we no longer needed the box. The box had done its job. It served as a symbol of change. Not only did it open up the channels of communication between the staff, supervisors, and the department heads, but it also helped build respect between the custodial workers and lift their opinion of me and the reasons I was brought in.
This “box” strategy can be used anywhere including public and private schools. When problems exist on a continual basis among large numbers if not the entire custodial team, the box helps administrators find out what is really behind the problem, analyze the situation, and address them.
