In-Depth with Green Sweep, the locally owned and environmentally-friendly cleaning service

Molly Moran is confident that she offers the best-paid cleaning jobs in town, but getting there required her to restructure the business she founded nearly a decade-and-a-half ago.

“(It) allowed me to pay people a lot more than before,” Moran said of the changes she made to Green Sweep, the environmentally-friendly cleaning service she started in 2009.

On average, her cleaning technicians make about $21 an hour and receive benefits like health insurance and paid time off, she said.

Before Green Sweep, Moran worked in the nonprofit industry but was looking to start a business of her own. She said she wanted something that would not only make her a profit but allow her to do “good things” for people and the planet.

Then Moran experienced an asthma attack after her home was professionally cleaned. She researched typical cleaning agents and learned that some contain carcinogenic chemicals. The idea for Green Sweep was born.

“It became a bit of a mission almost, for me, in starting this business to try to really reduce the toxic load in people’s homes,” Moran told the Journal.

In time, she built the Albuquerque-based business into a “mildly profitable” company. But the hours were long — Green Sweep cleaned homes during the day and schools, doctors’ offices and other commercial spaces after hours.

About seven years ago, on the recommendation of a cleaning business coach, Moran narrowed Green Sweep’s focus to weekday residential cleanings and cut out the evening hours. She also rearranged how her cleaning teams were organized, which ultimately reduced the driving they did, maximized their productive time and gave a more consistent experience for clients.

The increased profitability allowed Green Sweep to offer better pay and more benefits to its employees.

“As our growth has increased significantly, we’ve been more confident in what we can offer to people. … We tend to roll out a new benefit every year,” Moran said.

In June, Green Sweep’s policies landed it on the list of platinum-level Family Friendly Business Award recipients for the third year in a row. The awards, given by the nonprofit Family Friendly New Mexico, recognize companies that create workplaces where employees and their families can thrive.

“Life is really short, and we spend a lot of time working,” Moran said. “So we try and make it a really good experience for people.”

Why a cleaning company? Why not some other business?

“I was working in the nonprofit world, and I was trying to figure out, ‘What kind of business can I start?’ … I had a few sort of guidelines for whatever business I wanted to start: it needed to be people focused, service focused, low startup costs. So I had a few general guidelines, and then I had that experience with my house getting cleaned and not being able to breathe. It was a giant light bulb moment. I was like, ‘OK, let me do some research.’ And then the more research I did, the more I realized that there were very few green cleaning companies at the time, 14 years ago, when I started this.”

How do you define eco-friendly?

“So for us, we’re really very, very strict about this. In fact, we’ve been fired before by clients because we don’t yield on it at all. Our products meet Green Seal certification … the Green Seal standard for cleaning products. …There are definitely some cleaning jobs, in certain homes or businesses, that require more, stronger chemicals. But those are just not the jobs for us because that’s a really basic promise that we make to our clients and to our staff.”

Why is it important to use products that meet that Green Seal standard?

“You’re going in to clean the house and then, if you’re using traditional cleaning chemicals, you’re adding toxins to the house and carcinogens and all kinds of other things. And the air quality’s worse than before you went in, right? So for me, it’s important to do just the opposite — to improve people’s homes, not just from a looks kind of place but also from an air quality place as well.”

Green Sweep received a platinum-level Family Friendly Business Award from Family Friendly New Mexico. What are the policies that made it eligible for this recognition?

“So pay, definitely. Paid time off, for sure. The fact that we offer health insurance for employees. And, I mean now everyone offers paid sick time, so that’s not like a thing anymore but that used to be a thing. And we offer some maternity leave, as well. Although we have 35 employees, we tend to operate as if we had more in that if somebody had a family emergency, we would look at FMLA kinds of stuff. We don’t want people to have to lose their job because somebody in their family died, you know what I mean? We have, of course, policies and all that around attendance and everything. But if somebody needs to take extended time off because a family member’s ill or whatever, we want to be a good employer.”

I can see how that would be good for your employees and their families even. Does it also contribute to Green Sweep’s bottom line?

“Definitely, because we have higher retention of our employees. The turnover in a traditional cleaning company is somewhere, I’ve read as high as like 300%. And ours is more like 40% — 40 or 50%, I think, is where it’s currently sitting. So our retention is much higher. We have employees that are like, ‘Hey, I really want to go back to school.’ And we’re like, ‘OK, let us figure out how we can do this.’ We’re not paying for it, but we’re working with them and their schedule, so that they can pursue their dreams at the same time (that they are working for us).”

How often do you get the whole staff together?

“We shoot for every two months, for everyone to get together. And then ... we have ongoing meetings with different cohorts within the cleaning technicians every single month. We’re working on that — that’s something we’re really trying to figure out, to drill down, because our clean technicians are basically a remote team. But it’s different than managing other remote teams of people who are on their computers all day. (Our technicians are) in their cars driving around. So we have to work really hard to bring people together in different ways.”

Why do you think it’s important to do that?

“Human psychology shows there’s some basic human needs, right? People want to feel appreciated. And they want to belong, and they want to be seen. I really truly believe I have a responsibility, like an ethical responsibility, as a leader of this company to try to do that as best as we can for our employees. And sure, they are cleaning technicians and for some people, it’s a stopover. For some people, it’s a career. For some people, it’s a way for them to go back to school. It’s a variety. While they work for Green Sweep, we want to make sure that they feel appreciated and they feel seen for who they are and what they are doing out there. And so is that good business? Yeah, of course it is. But for me, it really starts with the human place. It starts with the people place. We work a lot in our lifetimes and so why not try to have that as part of the workplace too. We really try to have a culture of appreciation and gratitude.”