This episode of Smart Business Moves was a very entertaining edition of On The Spot featuring Denisse Baker.
These episodes are slightly different from the average Smart Business Moves. In these episodes, the audience asks questions live on Facebook and each person has one minute to answer. This week Denisse Baker joins the gang to answer your questions fast! Some of the questions include, how to manage attendance, how to incentivize employees, how to manage broken equipment, and much more! Watch this episode by clicking the link below. As always, Smart Business Moves is live on Facebook every weekday at 5 PM EST.
Highlights Summary
Who is Denisse Baker? Denisse lives in Lake Oswego, outside Portland, Oregon, and owns several cleaning businesses with her husband Craig. The first is a Portland maid service whose name is unclear in the transcript (“mass made”), so please confirm it. They later started Hello Carpets and Floors, which does carpet cleaning and floor care, and bought Amazing Maids in Beaverton. The file name spells her name “Denisse,” while the transcript says “Denise,” so please confirm the spelling.
Expanding to Boise. Denisse said they already have an address in Boise, Idaho, one of the fastest-growing cities in the U.S. in recent years, and plan to move there. She plans to keep the Portland businesses for now but would sell for the right offer. She also plans to gradually step back from the carpet business so Craig has more free time. Their main goal is freedom to travel. They bought an Airstream about eight weeks earlier, which is being renovated in Michigan, so they can travel by spring 2021. Tom offered to introduce her to Mike Harrington in Boise, who used to work with ProTeam and was active in ARCSI.
Viewer questions
How do you manage attendance?
- Tom. His employees get four unexcused absences in a rolling six-month period, with counseling after each one. They report absences in the MaidCentral employee portal and upload documentation for excused absences, such as a sick child. Reaching four unexcused absences means termination. He said they’ve been more lenient during COVID.
- Denisse. Portland requires paid sick leave, so employees take sick hours by filling out a form. Once their sick hours run out, unexcused absences are counted. Employees are written up after the first, told how many they have left, and suspended at the fourth. Denisse said that because employees already get sick pay and a week of vacation, she’s strict about unexcused absences.
- Liz. Her employees get unlimited time off if they submit a request. Because of that, she’s stricter about unexcused absences, and the third one in a year means termination. A doctor’s note excuses an absence. An absence only counts as unexcused if a job has to be moved. During COVID, anyone who stays home sick must be out at least three days after symptoms end, which discourages people from taking single days off.
What incentives do you offer employees? (Viewer Paul)
- Denisse. Her employees get one week of vacation after a year and two and a half weeks after three years, which she said few local competitors offer. She also awards “Maid Money” for quality and for online reviews that mention a cleaner by name, usually $10–$15 gift cards to Starbucks or Dutch Bros, or a credit toward their PGE power bill. Other perks include birthday breakfasts and a fancy restaurant Christmas dinner where employees can bring a guest. She said employees talk about the dinner all of January.
- Liz. Liz said she focuses more on motivating and engaging employees than on incentives. She runs weekly contests and games, gives Maid Money for reviews, and rewards some achievements with a monthly surprise party or breakfast.
- Tom. Tom said he relies on recognition games, like spinning a wheel to win a candy bar. His financial incentives are a referral bonus of $50–$100 or more for recommending a hire, with a second payment after 30–90 days if the hire stays. He also pays bonuses for customer referrals from door hangers and for online reviews.
What do you do with broken vacuums? The question came from a member with a “graveyard” of 35 broken vacuums.
- Liz. Each team carries a canister vacuum and an upright, and both handle carpet and hard floors. If one breaks, the team red-tags it and uses the other for the rest of the day. A repair person collects it, which is supposed to take a day but often takes a week. She salvages parts from old vacuums, orders new parts monthly, and gets rid of vacuums that can’t be fixed.
- Tom. The cleaner tags the vacuum and checks boxes describing the problem. Each branch has someone trained in basic fixes, such as clearing clogged hoses. Charleston has in-house staff who can fully rebuild vacuums. Other branches ship vacuums to Charleston or use a local ProTeam service center.
- Denisse. Her teams use the same two-vacuum setup, with an Oreck upright and a ProTeam. Cleaners red-tag broken vacuums, and she keeps eight or nine repaired spares ready to swap in. Craig does the repairs, which take one to two weeks. She chose those two brands because they’re easy to work on. For motor problems, she buys a new vacuum.
Do you do anything special for clients?
- Tom. Tom said what makes his service special is building trust and cleaning professionally. Every home has a site-specific scope of work, and many get rotational deep cleaning, where MaidCentral tracks the rooms so a different one is deep cleaned each visit.
- Denisse. Denisse sends cards or flowers for events like a new baby or surgery. She said fixing problems quickly is what makes her service special. When a client reported a scratched floor the week before, her floor care company handled it right away, whether or not her team caused it.
- Liz. Liz said her company cleans up after pets like any other family member and charges no fees for skipping or moving a cleaning. Clients can skip a price increase for a year by prepaying a year of service, which also earns them a free cleaning for a friend. She also mentioned a free deep cleaning and a game her teams play with children in the household.
What do you do for clients at the holidays? (Viewer Linda)
- Denisse. Denisse offers a free oven cleaning the week before Christmas and sends a card with a staff photo. She used to give cookies but stopped because it was too much work.
- Liz. Liz’s teams currently bake cookies in clients’ homes. In past years she gave gifts like ornaments, soap, or towels. For other holidays, teams leave small touches, like candy on Valentine’s Day, a small pumpkin at Thanksgiving, or a shamrock sticker on the toilet paper on St. Patrick’s Day.
- Tom. Tom sends a card signed by the team and office staff. He said his teams also adjust their cleaning procedures for trees, decorations, and gifts.
Which holidays do you close? (Viewer Linda)
- Liz. Liz closes on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day. On other holidays, everyone works until about 1 p.m. and no one can request the day off. She said she changed this because some employees used to request every holiday off, leaving others to work all of them.
- Tom. Tom has six paid holidays, which are New Year’s, Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.
- Denisse. Denisse closes on five paid holidays, which are New Year’s Day, the Fourth of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Employees are paid for them after 90 days. She said her company used to stay open on those days for anyone who wanted to work.
How do you handle holiday tips, gifts, and bonuses?
- Tom. Clients usually have the same team each time. Tips go to that team and are split in proportion to who worked the job, unless the client says otherwise. Tom said the system isn’t perfect and sometimes leads to conversations with staff.
- Denisse. Her teams also rarely rotate, so the team divides any tip. She doesn’t give holiday bonuses but pays out unused sick and vacation time by Christmas, since none rolls over to the next year.
- Liz. Liz’s teams rotate often, so whoever cleans the home splits the tip. Edible gifts go to that team. All other gifts come back to the office, where employees play a numbered game for them on the first day back in the new year. Employees can only take part if they’ve written thank-you notes.
