How Cleancaro increased employee satisfaction and doubled its workforce.

Challenge

‍Cleancaro is a family-owned business. When Fabio Calandra took over the building cleaning company in 2020, he had 30 employees. Now, there are about 130. Cleancaro specializes in cleaning supermarkets. Initially, Fabio Calandra and his team used Google Calendar to schedule shifts and paper time sheets to record working hours. “Handling sudden changes was a total disaster because one person would be working off Monday’s information and another from Wednesday’s,” recalls Fabio Calandra about the inflexibility of Google Calendar.

“If someone forgot to record their hours, we used to spend a lot of time just figuring out who was where and when,” says Fabio Calandra. This led to another issue. Time sheets had to be collected, typed into Excel, allowances calculated, and handed over to payroll. This was extremely time-consuming and prone to errors. “Someone would claim they got paid too little, or we’d later realize we paid too much,” explains Fabio Calandra. It was clear to the CEO that they needed a software solution that could assist in their work. As Cleancaro grew, managing more clients and employees, it became clear: “Google Calendar just doesn’t work at all beyond a certain size.”

Solution

‍About a year ago, Fabio Calandra came across PlanD on Facebook. The software's specialization for the needs of a building cleaning company particularly appealed to him. He chose PlanD because “they were the only ones who focused on a good user experience and a good user interface.” As Cleancaro was growing rapidly, it was especially important for Fabio Calandra and his team to handle all functions centrally in one system. From scheduling and time tracking to payroll processing – with PlanD, Fabio Calandra has everything consolidated in one system. The scheduling feature, in particular, saves him a lot of time: “Every employee now knows exactly when and where they need to work. And if there’s a change, they get an immediate notification on their phone.”

As a cleaning service primarily focusing on supermarket cleaning, Cleancaro faces changing positions and open shifts that need filling each month. Employees are often already scheduled elsewhere. With PlanD’s scheduler, it's now easy to fill these open shifts. Fabio Calandra is automatically shown all available employees, filtered by whether they have previously worked at the site or not. Another feature is on-site material ordering. If an employee needs something at the site, they can now order it themselves through the PlanD app, and everyone can see that something has been ordered. “This helps us massively,” explains Fabio Calandra. “As the CEO, I always have an overview of all sites, all materials, and the consumption.”

Results

‍Together with PlanD, Cleancaro and Fabio Calandra have managed to significantly grow as a building cleaning company. Shifts are planned using the scheduler, and employees receive all their assignments directly on their mobile phones. “Now it’s just as it appears in the app, that’s how we work. It has really brought peace to our operations,” says Fabio Calandra. His employees can order materials on-site, log their shifts, start time tracking, and make vacation requests. “It works flawlessly,” confirms the satisfied CEO. “And it’s so easy to use, from the moment you start a building cleaning business, you can already use PlanD,” continues Calandra.

Also, the typical end-of-month payroll preparation stress has greatly reduced. “The time savings are huge and there are no longer any errors in transferring hours, which means we also get far fewer calls.” Within a year, the CEO of Cleancaro has managed to double the number of employees and is not done yet: “In my opinion, there are no limits to our growth.”

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