How to Motivate Your Employees to Clean-Up After Themselves
While some employees may live like slobs at home, the workplace is shared space and needs to be a productive, professional environment. If the workplace becomes a mess because employees are not cleaning-up after themselves, productivity may suffer, due to lost documents and general disorganization. Fortunately, getting employees to clean up after themselves is probably easier than getting your teenager at home to clean their room.
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Instructions
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Assign the responsibility of cleaning up after oneself to employees. Employees can even be given specific tasks they will be responsible for. Making employees responsible for a clean workplace gives managers the ability to hold employees accountable.
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Model the behavior expected of employees. Always clean-up after yourself and allow others to see you doing so. Clean with a smile, showing employees it really isn't difficult to keep the place organized.
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Explain to employees the importance of a clean work environment. Food that is left out rots and smells badly. A front office that is a mess gives a disorganized appearance to customers and is bad for the company's image. Sometimes employees need to have the obvious spelled out for them. Explain why messes that may not be issues at home quickly become issues at work.
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Develop a rewards program and consequences for failing to clean-up. Employees caught cleaning up after themselves or self-verifying they cleaned, could be entered into a monthly draw for a free lunch. Employees who do not clean-up after themselves may be asked to pick-up after everyone else for one day; this will help them gain an understanding as to why it is better when everyone helps out.
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Create a cleaning schedule or allow employees time to clean. Cleaning takes time and should not compete with other office tasks. While employees should not spend a lot of time cleaning -- when it is not their job -- five minutes at the end of a shift may be reasonable.
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Encourage employees not to make a mess in the first place. Promote an organized and effective work environment, where everything has a designated place. When the weather is nice, suggest employees eat their lunch outside or find other ways to reduce clutter and garbage from occurring in the first place.
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Post reminder signs and cleaning instructions in common areas. Sometimes the work environment is very busy and people simply forget to clean-up after themselves. Posting signs to remind them may help keep the workplace clean.
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References
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