Category: Technology

The Future of Janitorial Services

August 8, 2019 / / 2 Comments

According to a survey conducted by the IFMA, “poor janitorial service” and a “lack of cleanliness” are among the top three complaints facing facility operations today. These complaints destroy a property’s reputation when shared online and reflect poorly on guest service scores. To combat this issue, managed has resorted to pulling staff from other departments to fulfill the janitorial services needs of the property. This process is only a short-term fix, as the redistribution of staff creates a lack of productivity in other departments.

Our team of experts is dedicated to finding the most technologically advanced solution that solves cleaning issues and improves the guest experience. That is why The Service Companies partners with a best-in-class technology provider to offer smart facility solutions to commercial facilities.

What is our smart facility solution?

Through our partnership with a smart technology provider, we offer a facility solution that uses AI to automate the janitorial process. We install sensors in strategic areas of the restroom and other public areas. These sensors enable management to monitor the needs and cleanliness level of the space. All without pulling employees from other departments or hiring additional labor.

How does it work?

By installing smart sensors in or around garbage cans, soap dispensers, faucets and more, management is notified when restrooms and public areas need attention. From a dispenser in need of more paper towels to an overflowing toilet that needs immediate attention, smart sensors send real-time notifications to any smart device for a quick resolution.

In addition, we track usage patterns and traffic flow to project the restroom’s busiest times during the day. This allows management to staff for the need and create an accurate cleaning schedule. Because supplies get replenished when needed, it also saves costs by reducing waste.

What are the benefits?

Implementing our smart facility solutions on property will allow you to experience the following long-term savings:

Time – Instead of checking on each restroom multiple times per day, you get the what, when and where for each janitorial issue that may arise. This allows employees to spend their time attending to other problem areas on property.

Resources – Smart sensors monitor each trash container, toilet paper, soap and paper towel dispenser, and faucet to ensure employees replenish water and hygiene products only when needed.

Money – The more resources you save, the more money you save! Smart sensors eliminate the need to pay associates overtime for spending unnecessary hours patrolling the restrooms areas. They also eliminate the need to hire additional labor to attend to the restrooms.

Status – Negative guest service scores and bad online reviews can be a thing of the past. Notifications from the smart sensors will allow your team to tend to any janitorial issues right after they occur. This leaves your facility in prime condition throughout the day.

To learn more about our smart facility solution and janitorial services, contact us today!

Case Study: Luxury Hotel Casino in Shreveport, LA

May 9, 2019 / / 0 Comments

With price, guest reviews and star ratings having more influence in the consumer’s decision making process than brand attributes (according to PwC’s 22nd Annual Global CEO Survey), guest service scores are more important than ever. They can make the difference between a sold out hotel, casino or resort, and one struggling to sell rooms. Read below how The Service Companies utilized its turn-key housekeeping services to shift guest service scores and improve the productivity of the housekeeping team at a luxury casino hotel in Shreveport, Louisiana.

 

Situation Overview

The Property is a hotel casino with over 600 guest rooms and suites located in Shreveport, Louisiana. The Property has an average room size of 413 square feet per room and is managed by a large American gaming corporation. With low guest satisfaction scores in the housekeeping category, the Property reached out to our team, which was successfully operating the environmental service departments of the public areas and casino, to take on and fully manage the housekeeping department.

Challenges

With a limited pool of hospitality professionals in Shreveport, the Property struggled to find quality labor to fill its housekeeping team. As a result, the Property was ranked last in housekeeping of the 40 properties in the parent corporation’s ranking scores.

The average time to clean each guest room was 35.6 minutes and the Property’s customer ranking score for housekeeping room cleanliness was 64.3% ‘A’. Due to the high levels of housekeeping complaints, guests chose to patronize other casinos, resulting in a loss of gaming revenue and an unsupportable situation.

Opening Process

Through the Property’s onsite management team, our leadership team worked with the Property’s General Manager to transition the in-house housekeeping department into a department fully managed by The Service Companies. We brought in a corporate lead to oversee the department transition and hired four housekeeping trainers, each handling a different aspect of the department. 59 Property employees transitioned to our team, leaving 28 open positions to fill within a 30-day period.

We inventoried and assumed equipment and uniforms. Standards and processes for the department were established and productivity was aligned with industry standards. Training was implemented to ensure productivity and quality standards would be maintained.

Results and Current State

Within one quarter of the transition, the leadership and staffing stabilized and the Property’s Room Cleanliness scores increased to 67.8% from 64.3%.

At the close of the 1st Quarter of 2019, the Property received a Room Cleanliness score of 77.2% “A”, which is 12.9 higher than the score prior to transition and 7.2 points higher than the brand benchmark. The current productivity average for a guest room attendant to turn a room is 25.2 minutes (a 29.2% reduction in cleaning time).

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Why Preventive Maintenance Strategies Create Value

March 7, 2019 / / 0 Comments

At The Service Companies, our engineering team strives to be at the forefront of the facility maintenance and operational strategies. We invest heavily in software, processes and people to ensure we deliver custom service delivery models to each of our customers. Our team utilizes up-to-date software to plan, document and protect client assets and train associates. We also produce monthly reports on staff performance, equipment and utilities. We build our preventive maintenance plans in a proactive manner with unplanned downtime avoidance at the heart of the program.

Our Approach

The Service Companies’ non-destructive testing methods mimic equipment operating conditions and schedule maintenance based on the collected data. This procedure results in increased:

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Implementation of a preventive maintenance strategy eliminates much of the unplanned maintenance expenditures that are experienced in a “run-to-fail” model. Based on historical data, the initial savings generated by effective preventive/predictive maintenance programs fall into the following areas:

  1. Elimination of unscheduled downtime caused by equipment or system failures
  2. Improved manpower utilization
  3. Increased uptime
  4. Increased useful life of the equipment by 33%

Preventive maintenance is key to the custom service delivery models we develop for each of our customers. For more information about our customized Preventative Maintenance programs, visit our website.

Common Issues We See In Casinos

December 17, 2018 / / 0 Comments

With over 1.1 million sq. ft. of gaming area under contract and over 15 years of experience providing services to the industry, we understand the unique challenges that commercial and Native American casinos and casino hotels face in their day to day cleaning operations:

  • The struggle to find legal labor due to low unemployment rates, rising wages, and the ongoing “War on Talent”
  • High workers’ compensation and general liability rates/expenditures/exposure
  • Valuable resources are spent managing relationships in union environments
  • Inefficiencies and lack of productivity in non-core departments
  • Maintaining a consistently high quality of service 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
  • High energy usage

These challenges create a large cost burden for casinos, and one option to alleviate these issues is to partner with a well-capitalized service provider (see our previous article on what to take into consideration when selecting a vendor). Our team of seasoned industry experts established a diverse list of services that cater to the common needs of every casino resort.

The Service Companies is the premier provider to the casino industry. We offer managed services, staffing services, specialty services, and engineering services to casino properties across the nation. Backed by a large investment fund, we have the capital to support a casino’s stringent requirements and massive needs and have the years of experience driving productivity and providing solutions that reduce costs and energy.

As part of our commitment to service, our team takes full accountability of recruiting needs, compliance checks, and training to ensure success. To learn more, click on the links to our services above, or contact one of our industry experts at https://www.theservicecompanies.com/contact/.

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Investing in technology: improved productivity, engagement and service

December 21, 2016 / / 0 Comments
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The Service Companies’ proprietary TAMS system

Technology has completely transformed each and every one of our daily lives. It has made us more productive, given us greater access to information, and simplified procedures that used to take days, weeks or months to complete. At The Service Companies, we believe that technology is integral to increasing the productivity of our associates, creating best-in-class employee engagement and training programs, and providing the highest quality service to our customers and their guests. As the premier provider of cleaning, staffing and managed services to hotels, casinos and vacation ownership resorts nationwide, The Service Companies has made a significant investment in proprietary technology to increase the efficiency of our Managed and Staffing Services.

Talent Acquisition

Recruitment, training and employee engagement typically involve the most investment of money, time and energy from Housekeeping operational leaders. We recognized that our 30 years of success had provided us invaluable operational and recruiting knowledge that we translated into our own system – Talent Acquisition Metric System (TAMS). In 2016, we launched TAMS, which allows our Talent Acquisition team to create daily task lists focused on ground level recruiting, to analyze historical data on staffing levels for each of our customer’s properties (enabling us to anticipate ebbs and flows), and to review real time dashboards reflecting staffing levels at our properties and regions throughout the country.

Productivity Analysis

The Service Companies has successfully quantified the productivity of their team members. With our proprietary Flash Program portal, our operations leaders and executive team can view and track the productivity of a Housekeeping Department as well as analyze the daily productivity of each Guest Room Attendant. For any Guest Room Attendant that falls below a certain range, we pin point the issue and work on a resolution to increase those scores. Our productivity tool is transferable across the multiple brands we operate within, and comes complete with a mobile site accessible via tablet. Our Executive Housekeepers get real-time, actionable intelligence to help them manage their teams and properties.

Employee On-boarding and Retention Tracking

In 2016, The Service Companies partnered with an external consulting company to collect data and analyze why associates join or don’t join our team or stay for a certain amount of time. The intelligence we gather through this exhaustive analysis of our on-boarding and retention strategies will help us get a clear picture of what we can improve on so that we continue to be the premier employer of hourly associates in the managed service space.

Training

Coming in 2017, The Service Companies will be launching a customized and proprietary training and engagement mobile app, Star Service Training. While we have been utilizing digital training checklists, inspection forms and tools for years, Star Service Training enables us to keep all of the files in one place that our associates can access on their phones to complete. Training will be able to be completed on the app, with our most anticipated augmented reality feature that enables the phone to complete the inspection itself using the camera. Associates will be recognized and rewarded with points, which they will then be able to use to purchase gift cards and items from The Service Companies’ online store. This training app and our other proprietary technology will also be integral to the operations of a new simple, reliable and compliant housekeeping staffing service for hotels and resorts that The Service Companies will be launching in January 2017.

As a large, well-capitalized strategic hospitality partner, we continue to invest in, and help develop, the latest technology to streamline our processes and increase efficiency across all departments of our organization, which also enables our customers to command premium pricing and potentially produces savings.

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