It may sound like a lot of time and effort, but putting your company through a certification process for your industry could take you to the next level. See what one company learned from the process.
How would your company stack up if you put it under the microscope? Would your management practices, sales calls, training or human resources compare favorably with recognized industry standards?
That's the question faced by McFarland Hanson Inc., a Minneapolis-based cleaning franchisor with 100 units throughout the Midwest. Earlier this year, the top brass at McFarland decided to put their company through a self-scrutinizing process to qualify for a new industry certification, the Cleaning Industry Management Standard (CIMS).
Along the road toward certification, McFarland Hanson found plenty of room for improvement, especially in the areas of training and customer service.
To qualify for this certification, management needed six month to examine all parts of the company to ensure that it had the proper procedures, policies and documentation. These examinations typically result in numerous changes so the company can meet the standards—such as altering the way it trains new employees, standardizing human resources forms among far-flung offices and updating employee manuals.
After that's done, an independent assessor comes in and scrutinizes the company.
For a franchisor, it's even more difficult because it has to make sure all franchisees are doing everything right.
It's a lot of work. So, why do it?
Phil Simpson, operations manager for MH, explains, "I saw that the CIMS certification process would help us look within our organization and tie up any loose ends that existed. I knew this was going to make us a better company."
In addition, Simpson recognized the value of a third-party assessment. It's one thing for you to think you're running a tight ship, but it's another thing for an independent assessor to say so. Simpson and his team began the process by using a checklist provided by the people who created the standard, the International Sanitation Services Association, the trade association for the cleaning industry. Simpson went through the checklist and noted the items his company was already doing and those that needed changing.
Simpson found his company needed improvement in the areas of training and customer service. In the training department, the problem was twofold.
"We have most of our training materials in English and a few things had already been translated into Spanish," he says. "But through CIMS, we found that we needed to translate more of those documents into Spanish. When you're trying to teach someone about complicated safety issues, you need a good translation into their native language."
In addition, the company found that it didn't have enough training documentation. "We had the necessary training programs in place, but we didn't have the proof that the training had been done," Simpson says. The solution to that problem was as simple as a checklist for each employee, proving where and when he or she participated in a training program.
In addition, the company found room for improvement in the customer service department—especially in customer feedback, says Mark Heglie, MH's account manager.
"Before CIMS, a customer complaint would come in, we'd handle it, but we wouldn't document it," Heglie says. "Now, we document everything, outlining the problem and how we solved it."
The company now has a more robust follow-through on complaints, and also provides proof of the fixes if (and when) customers complain again.
Simpson says the process of qualifying for the standard made MH a better company.
"We wanted to focus not just on the big things, but on the details as well in terms of training and customer service," Simpson says. "Often, when you're bidding on a job or even when you are in the workplace itself, those extra things, the little details that might not get noticed, really make the difference between just doing a job and doing a job as well as possible."
