Labour is the major expense in any cleaning service – therefore it is not surprising to find that this is the largest area of management effort. Human Resources compliance in a small business can quickly become a full time job. Critical issues such as payroll, time sheets, superannuation, leave, and insurance are all foundations. Without a structure and a system for these issues, any operation cannot progress past the first employee.
Because cleaning is a labour focused industry, most solutions to the HR compliance puzzle involve more labour! A site supervisor hands out and collects a variety of paperwork, while staff fill it out, fax it back, and hope it doesn’t get lost on its way to being entered into a spreadsheet, database or payroll program somewhere in the far-off mythical ‘head office’.
Ensuring this activity and compliance takes place on your smaller sites, where individuals work on their own is even more of a problem. Completing timesheets and leave forms, ensuring staff arrive and leave safely, and other routine HR management becomes increasingly difficult on these smaller sites.
Before jumping into a solution, it is important to start with a clear understanding of the requirements of all the players. Using an agile business analysis method (eg http://bit.ly/RtNnU), we start by looking at the users of the process and their needs. For example, staff members usually require:
- access to roster,
- request leave,
- notify supervisor of illness,
- clock-in and clock-out,
- see their timesheet, get paid, get payslip.
In addition, we might add that they need to access employee handbooks, company policies, safety and training information. You would then delve into these issues from the company’s point of view – and each department or significant stakeholder (As the payroll officer, I need … XYZ. As the area manager, I need …ABC, etc).
Using an agile business systems approach, you map the whole requirements to build your understanding. Then we would start with implementation of the most important requirements first. The focus of agile business system development is to deliver business change and a working system quickly, say in four weeks. So the priority issues have to be narrowed and achievable within whatever the agreed time-frame is.
After these are delivered, work starts on the next priorities with a similar four week deadline. Using this approach, you can build your business systems and deliver change in a manageable way that demonstrates results to staff.
How you do this will be determined by your specific requirements. There are a number of innovative on-line tools available that make this work a lot easier. Google Sites allows you to build intranets of information for staff, which are a great place to put handbooks and policies. These can also be built in a Wiki such as Zoho (www.zoho.com/wiki/), or in a more customised format such as WordPress. All of these can be secured so only staff can access the materials. Some free Customer Relationship Management tools such as ZohoCRM can be modified to manage staff (instead of customers). These tools allow for web forms to be completed on your web-site (or wiki) and transferred into the database. Forms for leave completed in the ZohoCRM can also trigger actions, tasks etc. Combined with a time and attendance solution such as Praxeo RTS allows you to accurately record the time of staff clock-on and off. Additionally, Praxeo RTS will alert you if staff do not clock-on or off at the appointed times – helping you manage your duty of care to these staff.
All of these solutions can be implemented by competent computer users, without any expert technical skills.
The most important part is at the beginning, laying a solid foundation and understanding of your business requirements and process.
(By Jon Tinberg. This article originally appeared in the Aug-Sept 2010 issue of InClean Magazine.)
