Thank Your Cleaner Day: Are Your Employees Just Staying or Are They Thriving?

Thank Your Cleaner Day is right around the corner, a milestone celebrated annually to thank cleaners everywhere. Now is a great time to evaluate the effectiveness of your employee recognition and engagement strategies and their impact on retention.

Are employees staying to collect a paycheck? Or are they staying because they are inspired, feel valued and know they have a future at your company?

Research tells us that high-recognition companies have 31% lower voluntary turnover and that companies can build effective recognition programs through social reward systems, frequent thank you activities and a general environment of appreciation.

But is recognition programming enough to impact long term engagement and retention? Other research suggests that ongoing, real-time feedback helps frontline workers feel valued and supported, fostering stronger manager-employee relationships that drive engagement. Perhaps a combination of approaches is the best solution.

The Manager’s Influence

Managers influence up to 70% of the employee experience. We’ve all heard the saying, “Employees don’t leave companies; they leave their managers.” If you consistently struggle with employee turnover, consider whether you tend to be reactive by focusing on what the team did wrong after the fact, or if you tend to be proactive by coaching and course correcting in the moment when challenges arrive. In other words, are you managing or are you coaching?

Manager as Coach

More and more organizations are adopting the concept of a coaching culture. According to Gallup, great managers are actually coaches who “focus on individual and team engagement, seeing their role as the provider of what employees need to succeed.” When managers effectively coach their teams, they set clear expectations, recognize great performance, solicit feedback and create a growth-focused culture that facilitates engagement, motivation, collaboration and meaningful development. Ultimately, when organizations adopt a coaching culture, they are strengthening their frontline manager-employee relationships in a meaningful and collaborative way.

Thriving Workplaces

Embracing a work environment where employees are inspired, feel valued and know they have a future won’t happen overnight. It’s a journey. However, there are a few things managers can start doing now to jumpstart the transition to a coaching culture where employees don’t just stay — they thrive. 

• Make Learning a Priority: From real-time coaching to making time for regular check-ins and on-the-job training, show your team that ongoing learning and individual growth and development is important to the organization. Consider individual development planning for all employees, not just the management team and corporate staff. By identifying skills gaps and providing learning opportunities on a regular, consistent basis, you’re helping employees understand where they are today and empowering them to take their development into their own hands to create a future worth staying for.
• Promote Performance Enablement: Performance enablement shifts the focus from simply managing performance to enabling employees to perform at their best by giving them the tools, resources and guidance they need to succeed now and in the future. Performance enablement moves away from rigid annual reviews and embraces ongoing coaching and real-time feedback and fosters individual growth and development. By enabling employees to grow in real-time, managers can address challenges as they arise, provide immediate support and encourage growth opportunities that align with both the employee’s career goals and the company’s objectives.
• Foster Open Communication: Collaboration and innovation increase when employees feel comfortable sharing their ideas and opinions. Managers can start actively promoting open communication by sharing key operations decisions, celebrating individual and team accomplishments, and reinforcing goals during pre-shift meetings. Building feedback loops through frequent check-ins encourages employees to voice concerns, share ideas and provide their feedback. Two-way communication builds trust and allows employees to be part of the solution — both individually and collectively.

In today’s work environment, adopting a coaching culture is a crucial evolution in how managers support and develop their teams through empowerment, continuous growth and real-time feedback. For companies seeking to foster innovation, develop and retain top talent and improve their competitive edge, adopting a coaching culture is not just an option — it’s the future of effective leadership.

As we approach Thank Your Cleaner Day, don’t let this become another one-and-done recognition exercise. Rather, use it as a catalyst for creating a work environment where employees don’t just stay — they thrive!

Lisa First-Willis is the founder and CEO of Truvelop, an innovative performance enablement platform that promotes real-time feedback and develops managers into better leaders. Visit Truvelop.com to learn more. Truvelop is a BSCAI Affinity Partner.

Juliana Withers is the director of customer success at Truvelop.