letters and views Editor’s Note: A recent discussion on the CM/Cleaning & Maintenance Management Online™ Bulletin Board centered around when employees should be notified of a contract expir-ing and their subsequent dismissal from employment. By notifying your subordinates that they will no longer be employed with the company after a certain amount of time, you run the risk of your workers becoming mischievous and underperforming. Peter Weiss 6/2/2010 Posted by: Tony Long 6/2/2010 One of our accounts just informed us that they will discontinue our service in 30 days; when is the best time to inform my employ-ees? I don’t have other work for them, so I’ll have to let them go. I don’t want quality to suffer — so as not to burn any bridges — and I don’t want them to quit prematurely by telling them now. I do, however, want them to have enough time to plan accordingly. What do you do in such a situation? We never tell our employees about a can-celling account until they complete their last cleaning. It will be human nature not to perform up to standards and you run the risk of having upset employees in your building. You still need to finish out your 30 days without major issues or face the possibility of not being paid because of poor service. them at this time. Knowing most cleaners, they will find out who is picking up the contract and apply with them — if their cleaning was not the problem. In a worst case scenario, you have to get two weeks of cleaning covered. You seem to care enough about the con-tract and the employees, so you know the situation the best. At the end of the day, you can’t go wrong by doing what is right. Ken Jordan 6/3/2010 Be honest with your employees. If the account is being lost due to no fault of theirs, praise them for their hard work and dedication to the company. Let them know that, due to the current economy and the loss of this account, they will be let go at the end of the contract unless another similar contract comes to the table. You might be amazed at how they market the company for you. Toni Lowery 6/7/2010 I believe Timothy hit the nail on the prover-bial head: The “Golden Rule” is always a safe bet and you will be able to feel good about the way you handled the situation. To the person who never tells people until the contract is over, shame on you. How do expect any loyalty from your employees if you give none to them in return? Just something to think about. Responses: Lynn Krafft 6/2/2010 If the account is being lost because of the employees’ neglect, they will be no loss to you. Nevertheless, it is only fair to tell them what is going to happen and ask them to keep up the quality in anticipation of the account returning to you, as many do. Why not start looking for a replacement job for them and ask them to assist? They should not want to quit before they have to, and if they do, you don’t want them around anyway. We always seem to have openings, so good employees can be moved to other locations when they become available. At any rate, try to keep them so they don’t end up on unemployment. Peter Weiss 6/7/2010 Timothy Nash 6/3/2010 Not knowing the situation of why you are losing the account — I’m not asking — and what the employees’ role played in this loss, the “Golden Rule” is to treat others as you would want to be treated. Give them two weeks’ notice of the job ending; explain you have nothing else for Okay, I’ll live with the shame. First, the reason most accounts cancel is because they aren’t happy with the clean-ing or the cleaning personnel. Second, I pay the cleaning people their money long before I get paid from my cus-tomers. I used to tell the cleaners immediately when a customer cancelled, but had a few occa-sions where I didn’t receive the full amount of 8 CM/Cleaning & Maintenance Management ® • July 2010
CMM – Archives July 2010: 8
