In preparation for our student summer cleans, we begin recruiting and training our frontline staff in May. We hire an additional 150 staff who will be dedicated to cleaning our student resident halls during the summer term. In most cases, we hire new employees through word of mouth – we receive applications that come highly recommended by our managers and supervisors. We also post summer cleaning job opportunities on local chat and job boards.
Our staff receive training that covers all necessary safety protocols, and the proper use of cleaning equipment and cleaning products. We also provide on-site supervision to ensure the highest standards of cleanliness.
Providing specialist training
In addition to providing our temporary and permanent staff with the same training, we also offer bespoke training for specialised cleaning, such as carpet cleaning, jet washing, graffiti removal, or biohazard cleanup.
To train our team, we use a video-based system called UHub, but they also have on-site training from their supervisors that is more focused on cleaning specific rooms versus general cleaning, which is what they’ll find on UHub. Our temporary staff will only be cleaning rooms and will not be using any special cleaning equipment, so we can offer them more personalised training on-site.
To ensure each room is consistently cleaned to Smarter Services standards, managers and supervisors must evaluate the team. Every new starter will be evaluated after cleaning their first room – their supervisor will identify any areas of improvement and explain how they can rectify these issues before cleaning the next room.
We always try to get all of our staff trained to the same level so that if any unforeseen problems arise at any of our sites there’ll always be someone on hand to help – currently about 90% of our staff are trained to handle specialised cleaning.
Promoting loyalty in temporary cleaning staff
Over the years we have had temporary cleaning staff return each summer for our student summer cleans or stay on to become permanent members of our team and eventually become supervisors. We believe this is because of the way we treat our staff. It is very important to us. Looking after our staff doesn’t just mean paying them more or giving them more perks.It’s about treating them as equals and respecting them and asking them for their point of view.
