CHICAGO — Laundry services managers find dependability to be a highly valued trait in their employees, according to the results of this month’s AmericanLaundryNews.com Wire survey.
Roughly 43% of managers who responded to the survey say dependability is the trait they value most in an employee. Next most valued is trustworthiness (20%), followed by being a team player (16.7%) and having a positive attitude (13.3%).
Managers are less in agreement about the undesirable traits that are the surest way for an employee to tick them off. No. 1 is unreliability, chosen by 26.7%. Equal shares of 16.7% dislike the actions of employees who don’t follow the rules or who don’t work well with others.
Disloyalty (13.3%), lacking initiative (10%), being unmotivated (6.7%) and failing to meet goals/deadlines (6.7%) are some other sure-to-tick-off traits.
Roughly 43% of respondents say they directly supervise fewer than 10 employees day to day. Another 23.3% supervise 10 to 25 employees, and another 20% supervise 26-50 workers. The remaining 13.3% oversee 51 to 75 employees. No one who took the survey supervises more than 75 employees.
More than half of respondents (53.3%) say their job title falls under laundry management. Others fall under “other” (20%), general administration (13.3%), environmental services (6.7%), housekeeping (3.3%) and purchasing (3.3%).
Seventy percent of respondents received formal management training before they were named a manager.
While the Wire survey presents a snapshot of readers’ viewpoints at a particular moment, it should not be considered scientific.
Subscribers to Wire e-mails—distributed twice weekly—are invited to take a brief industry survey anonymously online each month. All managers and administrators of institutional/OPL, cooperative, commercial and industrial laundries are encouraged to participate, as a greater number of responses will help to better define operator opinions and industry trends.
To sign up for the Wire, click the “Subscriptions” button at the top right-hand corner of this page and follow the instructions.
