SchedulePro - Workloading & Scheduling

Features

Ascertain needs, expectations

It is imperative to ascertain your needs and expectations with regard to outcome of building workloading and scheduling on the outset. As this will in part affect the way you proceed in doing the workload and scheduling. Are you interested in personnel assessment, standardization, elevated quality of services, costs, or a combination of issues? Once the central focus of expectation is identified, that outcome should remain the central focus when considering all of the following instructions in planning, workloading, and scheduling the building.

Internal politics, timing, quality of staff, and many other factors need to be considered to insure success. In brief, is the management involved in causing the reconfiguration of custodial services fully aware of and prepared to take on the battles of change throughout all areas or departments of the organization? Is the timing right for that change considering all peripheral elements?

It is imperative to minimize the resistance factor and gain support from existing staff either directly or indirectly involved by building foundations of support through information systems. Disseminate information pertaining to the specifics of the changes, reasons for the changes, timing, and those departments and personnel that will be effected by the reconfigured custodial services.

A building walk-through will allow you to see current cleaning levels, special challenge areas, access problem areas regarding timing, janitorial closet layout, existing equipment, level of periodic floor care currently being accomplished, etc. The tour of the building should always be done with the management representative of the building, principal, director of buildings and grounds, etc.. Following the building tour, it is advantageous to gather the current cleaning numbers. This is especially valuable in directing the workloading and scheduling toward the expectations that were identified earlier (i.e., the number of current cleaners, current cleaning hours, number of part time, number of full time, current beginning shift times, etc.)

On-site interactive planning with the Building Management or Director of Custodial Services is a must. These individuals truly know the unique needs and challenges of the building; only they can workload the building. You enable this process, with the tools of special industry knowledge and Executive ToolKit software.

You will need to see and use the blueprints of the building for your planning. After walking the building, visualizing areas on the blueprint is much easier.

Areas should be broken out into the largest workable unit of like-used, like-cleaned areas. This could be a total floor in an office complex, a pre-school/kindergarten through second grade wing of an elementary school, or an x-ray, lab, surgery plus and medical records grouping in a potential hospital setting. Continue through the building with the assistance of your client and identify each area grouped by previous instruction until the building is completed.

Determine what tasks will be done in each area of the building and frequency. This becomes very easy as you will see later if the Team Cleaning format of scheduling is selected because all tasks are covered by the three major specialists; Trash / Multi-Purpose, Vacuum and Restroom.

Identify what periodic tasks should be done, both floor care and above floor, outside of the normal realms of daily janitorial cleaning. Both periodic and daily tasks may be inputted at the same time. However periodic tasks may be completed after daily tasks by each specialist position, or may be done by the Utility Specialist, if is one assigned.

Start / End Times / Security

The first two questions you should ask are "What time are the cleaners starting their shift now?" and "What is the earliest time that they can start and the latest they can leave?" At this time don’t be concerned with a certain individuals start or end time. These are limitations may need to be overcome for you to produce an efficient schedule.

To schedule a position/employee properly, breaks need to be considered. Find out where, when, how often, if they are required, at the same time of other workers, etc.

Can teams be utilized or is zone cleaning the rule? Team cleaning can effectively and efficiently reduce the number of labor dollars spent. By balancing the workload and getting workers to work together morale and pride increases while time spent doing the same work can decrease.

Are activities an issue? If so, find out when and where they take place and work the schedule around them. For example, one person in a team of three can start their shift two hours later.

Problem Areas

Find out what kind of problems the cleaning crew is currently having. These issues should be addressed while workloading and scheduling.

What equipment is currently being used? New, more efficient equipment may need to be introduced to achieve their goals.