A bit ago, I took a call from a client questioning whether the that we'd reported at her facility were in fact done. I double checked the floor crew's overnight check-ins to see if we'd miss-entered the job, but our floor tech's message was clear - he'd been assigned a VCT burnishing and carpet cleaning, and reported them as done. A quick look at the key safe confirmed that he had been issued those keys and no others, so he couldn't have visited another building by mistake.
I sauntered over to the client and confirmed her suspicions; pretty easy to tell. I asked her to check her alarm report, just to make absolutely sure. My tech (not the one in the picture) had been there and out again in under five minutes. About the right amount of time to have not done either job.
That evening, my operations manager had him sign off the "completed" jobs as usual, so he had the opportunity to correct the record. He signed the jobs off as done.
I suspect he's now in the fast food industry.
This brings up a point about record keeping and communication. Part of our morning office opening procedure is to pull the floor techs' overnight check ins and enter the jobs done; an email is sent automatically to the client informing of the jobs, explaining why an extra tech was in the building that night, and why a bit of furniture might have been moved around and asking if the job was satisfactory. Information the client needs first thing in the morning.
Besides catching the rare floor tech who inclines to misreporting (the only instance in recent memory), the system reminds the client of the various periodic floor jobs we include in our ongoing service, lets the client check to see if we're on top of the schedule, and helps us keep up quality. And, the client having been informed of the job at the time, there's less chance of a perception of a job missed weeks or months later.
Quite a lot of benefit from a simple tweak to the program.
