Benchmarks

Great Expectations
This university’s custodial department kicked off a crusade to meet customers in the middle on cleaning expectations

When the economy took a nosedive, tiny Stetson University in Deland, Fla., tightened its belt. University officials made budget cuts across the board, including to its custodial services.

Layoffs are nothing new, but that didn’t make the situation any easier for Christopher Lucien, supervisor for night shift operations at Stetson. He had to cut four full-time positions in February and reassign yet another custodian to weekends-only coverage.

The changes had a drastic effect. Prior to cutbacks, there were 16 night-shift custodians responsible for 493,000 sq. feet; now there are just 11 custodians for 441,000 square feet. That’s a cleaning rate increase of 7,000 sq. feet per FTE (full-time equivalent).

It’s been nine months since Lucien made the cuts. Although things haven’t always been easy, he says the employee layoffs gave him the opportunity to reset customer expectations — a much-needed task.

Long before cutbacks, there was a large gap between what the custodial group could do and what its customers expected.

Before cutbacks, Lucien’s department was staffed to provide an appearance of Level 4 (moderate dinginess), based on the Custodial Staffing Guidelines For Educational Facilities, produced by the Association of Higher Education Facilities Officers (APPA). At the same time, customer expectations were between Level 3 (casual inattention) and Level 2 (ordinary tidiness).

As the university grew, custodial staff was not added to compensate for growth, even though expectations for cleanliness remained the same. That burden to maintain appearance levels became too heavy after February’s staff reductions. Although Lucien’s staff was still able to clean restrooms and common areas daily, they had to reduce classroom cleaning to three times a week and office cleaning to just once a week. The university’s appearance dropped to Level 5 (unkempt neglect).

Lucien knew something had to change to reduce the disparity between actual service and customer expectations. Without additional staff, Lucien simply could not improve appearance levels. That meant customers’ expectations had to change.

“Some university staff viewed custodial staff as their personal building attendants,” Lucien says. “We got requests from staff who noticed their trash was not getting dumped daily or their office hadn’t been cleaned in a week.”

Lucien’s first step was to send an e-mail to all university staff alerting them to the changes in the cleaning schedule. Unfortunately, many people overlooked this message and Lucien started receiving complaints.

Rather than send more e-mail or make impersonal phone calls, Lucien took the time to meet individually with faculty to address their concerns.

“I believe direct contact is the best way to address customer concerns,” Lucien says. “I find anger is minimized when they see a face rather than getting a message on their answering machine.”

Lucien also used his one-on-one time to get faculty buy-in for the new cleaning schedule. He encouraged them to help by emptying their own trash cans when needed and by recycling. Most of the staff understood the reasons for reduced services and, once they were included as part of the solution, welcomed the changes.

Customer service is Lucien’s strong suit. Over the years he has learned that people generally don’t understand the challenges of the custodial department; they just know that their cleaning concerns are important and should be addressed quickly. That’s why putting a face on his department is so important to Lucien. Even though he works the night shift, Lucien takes time to visit customers during the day.

“The result is a more personal approach to complaints,” Lucien says. “Although it’s more time consuming, future contact generally is more lighthearted and less demanding.”

Lucien also is considering introducing a comment card to keep the lines of communication between him and his customers open.

Overall, Lucien is satisfied with the results of the university cutbacks. The staff reductions gave him the opportunity to realign expectations so they now reflect actual services.

Of course, there are still some challenges.

“As a custodian, it’s hard to walk by a trash can with even minimal trash in it and not want to dump it,” Lucien says.

Becky Mollenkamp is a free-lance writer based in Des Moines, Iowa.

Young adults serving time in a youth corrections facility near you might be gaining the custodial skills they need to be your next employee. The troubled teenagers’ trainers use a sensitive approach that managers and supervisors can apply to workers of all ages and skill levels.

Since 1994, Glennis Bond, a program assistant for the Colorado Department of Human Services Division of Facilities Management has been providing youths from the Colorado Department of Youth Corrections with custodial skills and “a feeling of worth.” By training the troubled teenagers, ages 14 to 18, she says she is giving them a chance for a career in cleaning once they are released from the facility. And in the meantime, the correctional facility is saving money by allowing the teens to help clean the building.

Catering to the crowd
Working with these “at-risk” teens, Bond has learned to be sensitive to a variety of personalities and needs.

In 1985, she started a training program working with mental health patients and criminals at the Colorado State Hospital in Pueblo, Colo. Bond’s supervisor at the time encouraged her to pursue the idea of training patients to be custodians and pushed her in the right direction.

Bond found that training convicted criminals and mental-health patients is quite a challenge.

“We need to be able to sense when a student is becoming agitated and defuse the situation,” says Bond.

For example, when Bond worked with mental-health patients, she would have students take a time-out, step outside or go back to their room if they became frustrated or agitated.

Often when youths in the corrections facility get upset, she tries to find out what is wrong with the student, and asks the teen to sit down away from the other working students until the troubled teen regains control. If the student cannot overcome the problem, the whole group has to stop working to take the student back to the dormitory. None of the students can be left unsupervised.

In real-world training, supervisors also should keep an eye on trainees to detect frustration or confusion they need to address. Trainers should schedule breaks during training sessions to let workers absorb the information.

Bond says each student spends three to four hours each day training for three months. She says shorter blocks of time work better with special-needs trainees.

Managers and supervisors also must consider students’ learning abilities and level of thinking.

“Trainers need to make sure that if they have a slow learner either in the classroom or out cleaning the facility that they do not make an example of them to other students,” Bond says. “Youths in correctional facilities will prey on others’ weaknesses.”

She says trainers should make time to help students who cannot read well take tests or allow them to take verbal tests.

Getting the job done
Students in Bond’s training program learn important skills including how to handle blood spills and hazardous materials, properly dilute chemicals and use tools properly.

Bond teaches trainees to follow a seven-step cleaning process that encourages accuracy and efficiency. The steps are a checklist of cleaning jobs to be done, starting with high dusting and finishing with inspection.

“The seven-step cleaning process is efficient, it creates a routine that can be followed, eliminating missed jobs, and it is very effective in overall cleanliness,” Bond says .

The youths that go through the program have about a 35 percent placement rate as custodians after they are released from the correctional facility.

“We see some of them back, but we’re at least giving them a chance to make it in society,” Bond says.

There are four youth centers that offer the training program — Zebulon Pike Youth Center in Colorado Springs; Lookout Mountain Youth Center in Golden, Colo.; Grand Mesa Youth Center in Grand Junction, Colo.; and Platte Valley Youth Center in Greeley, Colo. Each center has between three and four students in two sessions per day.

Bond recommends facilities interested in implementing a similar training program contact their local youth corrections department.

D.M. Maas is a free-lance writer based in Milwaukee, Wis.