Jacks And Jills Of All Trades is worthy of additional investments in em-ployees. “The resources available today are almost unlimited for the training of cleaning and maintenance workers,” notes industry trainer Bill Griffin, president of the International Cus-todial Advisors Network (ICAN) and owner of Cleaning Consultant Services Inc. “Exam-ples include classes, publications, seminars and online webinars offered by equipment manufacturers, distributors, consultants, as-sociations and private educational institutes.” And, as Griffin confirms, the challenge today is not the educational resources avail-able; it is a hesitation to invest in worthy em-ployees. “A larger problem is that workers and man-agement often don’t see the importance and value of ongoing education,” notes Griffin. “In the long run, this proves to be extremely costly for business owners and limits ad-vancement opportunities for workers.” According to Griffin, organizations and de-partments must invest in both entry level and ongoing training for all workers. “When it comes to identifying those who should be considered for advanced or more intensive training, look for the same behav-ioral characteristics we look for in what is re-ferred to as a ‘good’ employee,” Griffin says, noting that managers consider such factors as dependability, integrity, high levels of per-formance, interest, a positive attitude and a willingness to do whatever it takes to get the job done. ists, when that is defined as doing many things in an average or below-average way, versus doing many things with consum-mate skill.” The solution, Rathey continues, is that you must first train specialists, then cross-train them in several specialties. The work process, however, should always be that of a specialist to avoid wasteful and distracting multitasking. “A study published in the American Psy-chological Society’s Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor-mance found that people who multitask are actually less productive than those who fo-cus on one project at a time. More specifical-ly, the research discovered that people actu-ally lose time when they must switch from one task to another,” educates Rathey. “Trying to do two or three things at once or in quick succession can take longer overall than doing them one at a time and may leave you with reduced brainpower to perform each task,” writes David Meyer, Ph.D., one of the three researchers who led the study. Hiring And Realizing The Risks Starting off on the right foot with new em-ployees is critical. Hiring cleaning workers should be an intensive process and not viewed as a hin-drance to fill an open position. “Of course,” explains Allen P. Rathey, pres-ident of The Healthy Facilities Institute (HFI), “the best way to train workers is to hire the right ones to start with.” Rathey’s research supports that there are also risks involved when looking to hire or train Jacks and Jills of all trades. “Yes, there are risks in creating general-NI-2 NI-2 064 0 644 44
CMM – Archives May 2013: 14
