CBL EP 152-Staff Appreciation That Doesn’t Break the Bank

December is the busiest, most demanding month for cleaning teams—long days, high client expectations, and burnout everywhere. In this episode, Shannon and Jamie break down why staff appreciation is a year-round business strategy, not just a holiday gesture.

Learn low-cost ways to help your cleaners feel seen, valued, and motivated without breaking your budget. We cover burnout, the “glitter policy,” simple recognition ideas, holiday bonus pitfalls, and how to build a structured appreciation plan for 2026.

Whether you have W-2s, 1099s, or both, this episode gives you practical, budget-friendly tools to improve retention, reduce drama, and strengthen your company culture.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why appreciation increases retention and quality
• December burnout + emotional load on cleaners
• The famous “glitter policy”
• Easy, low-cost appreciation ideas ($5 cards, notes, shout-outs, voice memos)
• Public vs private recognition
• Simple bonus structure ideas
• Appreciation pitfalls to avoid (favoritism, one-off big bonuses)
• Building a year-round appreciation calendar for 2026
• How structure creates a stronger company culture

Quick Takeaways:

• Appreciation is a strategy, not a season
• Keep it simple, consistent, and fair
• Low-budget ideas still make a big impact
• Clear expectations prevent resentment and confusion

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Chapters

• 0:00 Tempo: 120.0

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 1:44

Welcome back to Cleaning Business Life in today's episode of Staff Appreciation That Doesn't Break the Bank. Jamie and I are diving into why appreciation is a business strategy, not just a December nicety. December is the highest pressure month for cleaners, longer shifts, glitter everywhere, emotionally charged clients, and your team is feeling it. We'll walk you through low-cost, high-impact ways to help your cleaners feel seen, valued, and eager to stay, all while protecting your budget and your company culture. Let's dive in.

SPEAKER_00: 2:20

Woo! We have a show for you today, you guys.

SPEAKER_01: 2:27

It's called Staff Appreciation That Doesn't Break the Bank. You know us, we try to show you the most economical way of benefiting on every level. So, and this is just one more layer to that.

SPEAKER_00: 2:39

Yeah, it's uh it's that time of year. Are you know we're out, we're if you're still out in the field, you know it's a very busy time of the year. And if you have employees or whatever, it's everybody's wallet is opening, your hearts filled, and we have a budget guide, sort of.

SPEAKER_01: 3:05

Right. And and it's really is is why staff appreciation is a business strategy, not a holiday gesture. It is a holiday gesture, but it really is for the long term. If you're looking out on the horizon, it is a business strategy. So make sure that you are taking all of it or one or two pieces of it and you're applying it to your help, whether that's a W-2 or 1099. If you are giving out gifts from 1099, make sure that they understand it is from you and not the business. And December is the highest pressured month for cleaners, longer shifts, emotionally heightened clients, unpredictable emergencies, the expectation of holiday perfection. So we've had how many of us have had that client? I've had I've had several of those. Even your best cleaners can experience emotional exhaustion, not because of the work, but because of the weight of the clients place on them. And if you have not implemented a glitter policy, I highly recommend that you do. And glitter policy is a very short, I don't have it with me here to read off what mine says, but we've had it in the past where some people have a lot of glitter. Just glitter is just everywhere, and then they're expecting you to get all the glitter up. The policy is that you are not gonna be able to get all the glitter up, and that's gonna be okay, and the world will not end, and they don't need to call you at 10 o'clock at night going you didn't get all the glitter up. So it's just not gonna happen. It's just not it's like walking on water. How many of us have seen anyone walk on water lately? Sarah, right? I don't know.

SPEAKER_00: 4:42

I don't know, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 4:44

So explaining it's staff appreciation is a retention tool and not a December nicety. So when you're thinking about gifts for your cleaning tax, um, we're gonna give you some suggestions on why it makes cleaners feel seen and valued. It makes them stay longer, it makes them work harder, it makes them make fewer mistakes because everyone likes to be acknowledged and appreciated. And for those of us who are domestic engineers on top of all the crazy stuff that we do, and speak positively about the company, even when the company work gets heavy. Let's talk a little bit about emotional and physical burnout.

unknown: 5:26

Yes.

SPEAKER_00: 5:28

I'm sorry, I'm silence there for because holiday in our brains. Holiday burnout. I've already seen I'm already seeing the reels coming in. I'm also already seeing people asking, hey, for many is there a warm body? Please help, help. They're sending their they're waving their white flag right now. And so we're already seeing that.

SPEAKER_01: 5:57

It is it can be physical burnout, especially if you have a cleaner who normally does two cleanings and they're doing three cleanings a day. Make sure that you're acknowledging them at the end of the day and that you are rewarding them for their extra behavior, their extra effort. And then the it can be emotional when you have a lot of houses and you have a lot of people who are heightened in their expectations, it can be emotionally exhausting. And then if you add in how all of us are entrepreneurs, then we're domestic engineers, and then you add in the layer of your parents and then seeing the family. I mean, it's not just a three-sliced pie, it's now eight slices of pie. And it can be it can be exhausting and and burn you out. So just be careful with that.

SPEAKER_00: 6:42

Yeah. So whenever let's get into the nitty-gritty of a kind of a basic rundown of I'm trying to find my show notes, you guys. If you can hear me shuffle through my papers, I got to have issues. Yeah, but I I'm gonna tell you that I do have something and and I'm going to when she finds it, it's totally fine.

SPEAKER_01: 7:12

But we have there's a three-tier application formula that you can actually try. Should you not when Jamie gets her show notes together, and these are frequent touch points, and these should be happening throughout the year, not just at the holidays. A handwritten thank you note in their paycheck goes wonders. Sending over a thank you for working really hard and a text message also is a nice acknowledgement. A message in your team group chat, like we appreciate you if you do a Slack or messenger group or whatever. A voice memo after a hard day is also really easy to execute and doesn't cost a lot of money. Right. If you wanted to do something more personable, you could write words of affirmations around the office, you know, for a long time, gratitude and believe, and what does Ron Hapke say? Make today count. Those are all words of affirmation that they that you can that are easy to do. Quality time, like a coffee talk, is also nice. Hey, I'm just checking in to see if you need anything. You could do this in person or over Zoom, like what Jamie are doing right here. We both have coffee mugs this morning. Oh, yes, please.

SPEAKER_00: 8:23

And if you guys can't see, Shannon has her reindeer Christmas antlers on getting too. I love it. Well, I but you know, as you grow, I you know, every year I do something to show my employees that I really appreciate them, that I I I have stuff I do how many of us get cards nowadays with your written out with your name on it, stamped. And you know it's really busy this time of year, so start start if you don't can't do it this year, get it September, October is when you start. Take a little bit of gold nuggets out of this, out of this podcast and kind of put it in the back of your heads for next year. And and if for those that are like, you know, getting up there in size, I we do have kind of a a range that we stay within of clean, you know, it have they worked for me under a year, a year to three years, are you a cleaning tech? And the more responsibilities they have, the higher the the structured bonus payout would be the structured bonus pay.

SPEAKER_01: 9:42

And and you can leave this out in the open, it's not a secret. I find that when you leave that information just like on the wall or in their paycheck, so that way there's no hurt feelings on why Susan got more money than I did. Because it is it, I I believe it to be not just longevity, but merit-based. So if you had a rough year for whatever reason, we're not here to punish you. It's just this is just what it ends up being, and then next year can be better for you.

SPEAKER_00: 10:12

That's that put that policy somewhere in your employee handbook whenever it comes, starts manifesting it together. You small gifts are always good, yeah, so that they can work and earn towards that, and they can know that oh man, if I get if I'm working for one year, I get that company plush hoodie, you know, or swag is always good, yeah. Swag, the company swag, but the the the nice company swag. You you see all of my team leads walking around with their nice zip-up hoodies, everything's decorated in my logo and everything, which is a great form of advertisement, by the way. And very they're very proud to wear that stuff, and it's like, woohoo, I earned it, you know.

SPEAKER_01: 11:07

Definitely so small gifts work as well if you are on a low budget this year. You can buy increments of five dollar gift cards at any of the corporate entities, Starbucks, Applebee's, and they actually I've seen them trade them where they like didn't want all of the Applebee's ones, they wanted the Starbucks ones, so they would trade them or two for one. Oh, I love that. All kinds of things. Your team lead could give them away at their discretion. Hey, thanks so much for a hard day. Here's a Starbucks gift card for you. And it's I've had people go, Well, you should give us 10 bucks. I just do a five-dollar increment so that they can earn them and buy whatever they want with them. It doesn't, it's it's just the gesture, it doesn't have to be a specific monetary amount. I spoke to someone one time who gave out$20 Starbucks, and I'm like, that's gonna get expensive real quick as you grow.

SPEAKER_00: 12:01

Because right, but as you grow, so should your so as you grow, so should your wallet, right? Your wallet should be growing as well. And you've heard Shannon and I say this so many times that they are your number one client, they are what bring is bringing you money.

SPEAKER_01: 13:18

Golden unicorns. They are, and they are they need to be valued and they need to feel valued and not just public recognition is a great way of feeling valued as well. So the and and if you're not good at this, it's just a simple hey, this is Susan, and she did a phenomenal job. She took the reins and helped out and picked up extra four houses, or she did this top to bottom deluxe cleaning and look at the before's and afters.

SPEAKER_00: 13:47

I mean, it give them a five-star review. No, but I was never on that job. That part, you know, Miriam was on this job. Right. I we do we do that, we do shout-outs.

SPEAKER_01: 14:00

Definitely, and then private recognition. Hey, I want you to have this extra bonus. I know that you worked really hard this year, you know. And then that would be something that you would keep on the download, or you would give them a plaque and they can show it to people, or you can take a post, you know, private and public, right? So those are things that you can do as well, and then there's a year and appreciation calendar that we can kind of touch on, and it's a monthly touch point. I know a lot of cleaning businesses, especially with the 1099 model, are giving out bonuses as part of their criteria, which is a gray area for the 1099. So I only recommend that you give bonuses to your W-2s and not your 1099s, because that's treating them like an employee. Birthday acknowledgement. Who doesn't want to have someone sing happy birthday to them?

SPEAKER_00: 14:52

Or even I'd like I love the handwritten cards. It's just like, wow, you check the time out. Like the I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01: 14:58

Work anniversaries. You know, someone who's really good at work anniversaries is Grace with Handmaiden who runs House Cleaners of America group.

SPEAKER_00: 15:08

Right. Uh and I'm gonna again let you guys know how this goes. We just incorporated a connect team, it has everybody's birthday, what their favorite foods are. I mean, it's everything for HR. I want to put that on there, and I as we go, we'll do a whole thing about this later on.

SPEAKER_01: 15:28

Definitely, and then there's quarterly team bonus draw. This would be obviously for W-2s. So you could have them, you could trade with another business, and you could actually put like Susan, Miriam, and Chris all were superstars this month. So you put their name in a hat, let's have someone draw it, and what whoever had their name pulled, they got a prize. Those are actually fun because it's like you know, being at a casino, you won the jackpot, you won the jackpot, right? Um December Gratitude Week. This can be done either before or after Christmas, where you have kind of a Christmas party and I'm so grateful for you type of thing. Or you could do like, you know, how they have the what is it, the lead-in with the advent calendar, the 25 days that lead up to Christmas? Oh, uh that would be great. Do like a gift for them on you know, the 10 days of Christmas. What is it, 10 days? Why am I having a brain fart on this? Usually it's 25 days. Is it when is the advent calendar? Yeah, it starts at December. Okay, I'm confusing it with something else, so forgive me. So there are the 25 days, you know, the advent calendar with the chocolate. Who hasn't had a chocolate advent calendar? I have and they like German chocolates best because they would come pressed in different characters.

SPEAKER_00: 16:44

Yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_01: 16:45

So these are all that this turns an appreciation into a system, not an afterthought, and then you can actually plug them in on your calendar, and so you don't have to think about it, and it will tell you, and or you can do the third party like Jamie has mentioned. We're gonna find out how this works. Yes, we're we're trying, so I'll let it know. Low cost appreciation ideas are the five-dollar gift card, cleaner of the holiday season, personalized cleaning caddy labels. You could actually do special labels. There is a landscaping company called Zebrascapes. And when you go through the ranks through your training, when you become a full-fledged legal professional landscaper, you get a company truck and you earn your stripes on the truck. So all of the full zebra stripe trucks are full on train individuals. The ones who only have two or three zebra stripes, and it'll say earning my zebra stripes on there. I think that's a great way to acknowledge that they're moving up the ranks and that this is, you know, wow, I got a master landscaper. I got this guy who's gonna be a master landscaper. New microfiber colors just for them. You could do that and have their name embroidered on them. Who doesn't want their special microfiber with Miriam on them? Oh gosh, you would love it. Right. And then um bottoms in the company vehicle is another easy peasy way if you do company vehicles, or you could give them little, I we don't have any 99 cent stores, but you could go to a dollar store and buy a little basket of appreciation. It could sit inside their vehicle. So when they open it up, they get, oh my god, there's this thing. I love this. You got snacky poos and water or early clock out day after heavy weeks. This can go either way. When I was a manager at TGI Fridays, we used to rally off a day of cleaning, and not day of cleaning, a day of Shannon being a waitress or a bartender. So if you won the raffle for that year, because everyone would put their name in because everyone wanted to see me work really hard, they would put they would draw their name out. So they got a full day of pay. This was in addition to their birthday and their work anniversary. And I came in on my day off and I worked their shift for them, and they got to keep all the tips. Always super fun. May not be your cup of tea, but that's a great idea. That's a great idea.

SPEAKER_00: 19:01

I'm gonna tell you I like to get massages, massages are great, manny's and petties. Those are good ideas because they here's for your hardworking hands. Here, go have an hour-long massage, go get your head massage, they have the new head massages. There's so many great ideals, you guys, and you can keep it under maybe try and form it into keeping a budget on this, too.

SPEAKER_01: 19:38

Um you could allocate throughout the year to lead into December, like you know, Christmas fund, right? Yes, like what mom and dad used to do when we were kids. They would have they would save up and have a Christmas fund that was allocated in a escrow account. I don't have it.

SPEAKER_00: 19:53

I I have so many accounts, and it's just learning how to learning how to budget and learning how to handle all the amount of money that comes in through this this business is insane.

SPEAKER_01: 20:14

Right. You could do like a surprise Dutch Brothers run after a hard clean, you could show up with Dutch Brothers if you know their favorite kind, or you could just get iced tea. There's a cult following for Dutch Brothers. I still don't understand it. Every time I'm there, it's overwhelming. I'm like, oh, there's all these people. And then you want to avoid favoritism or expectation traps. Excuse me. So here's some pitfalls to avoid rewards based on who's the loudest and closest to you. Please, please, please don't do that. That causes all kinds of animosity, and that would be like take me taking Jamie because she's my favorite, and I talk to her all the time, and we're BFFs, and giving her the biggest reward over everybody else is what I'm getting at here. No, and I everybody knows that how loud I am. Right. This is a big one. I've done this in the past, and I I shouldn't have done it this way is promising holiday bonuses that can't be repeated. A lot of times we had when I had W-2s, we had clients that would give us really large Christmas bonuses. And one of them I've mentioned in the past was how I had to go out to lunch with this individual who gave me like 5,000 bucks. But one year it was exceptional, it was a lot larger than that. And I shared that with them. He would give me a bonus for the cleaning text, and then he would give me a bonus, and it was a large amount of money. But one year he actually gave me an even larger bonus, and I took my two leads and I gave them an extra bonus on top of that because I was sharing the generosity, but it created a lot of anxiety and animosity towards me because I didn't share it with everybody. So make sure that you're not giving them one individual 1500 bucks and the other ones get 500 bucks, right? Make sure that it or there then the expectation because you're setting a precedence is that am I getting 1500 bucks this year?

SPEAKER_00: 22:04

Yeah. And I see this with, I'm sorry, I see this with my own husband's company. And this owner really set the bar high whenever he first started because they were doing great that year, you know, and he got two weeks paid off. He got a$2,000 bonus and a prime rib for Christmas. Like we were, I was like, wow, what a great company. And as time has gone on, the years, it has really, really dropped. So that first year, and I mean my husband will even say he set the hot the the bar too high because I expected that. That's putting putting this back into the Rolodeck. So remember that. Right, the precedence.

SPEAKER_01: 22:58

You're setting a precedent.

SPEAKER_00: 22:59

That's kind of like they have to earn it. Like if you've got one year, especially during the holidays, one year, if you're with me for under a year, you know, 50 bucks is the top that you know, 50, 65 dollars, two years, three years, team leads, managers, even your virtual assistants, your VAs, I see that, you know.

SPEAKER_01: 23:27

And then it inadvertently puts competition amongst your team. So if if Miriam, and we're using Miriam and she's not here, we're just giving as a good example. Miriam gets a$1,500 bonus, and the other two people, Susan and Kayla, get$500 bonuses. Those two are gonna think, well, how do I get the$1,500 bonus? And then it makes them compete and compete and compete. And then when you become too competitive, you're not looking at quality in the long-term game, you're looking at how I'm gonna get that extra thousand dollars. How am I gonna beat this person? Right. So promising holiday bonuses that just cannot be repeated is not something that I would ever recommend. And please learn from my mistakes and don't do it yourself, or or I learn from my husband's boss.

SPEAKER_00: 24:12

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 24:14

And then public praise that excludes quieter workers. Make sure that if you're gonna give public praise, make sure you give it to everyone. Everyone gets an opportunity to be in the spotlight, as awkward as it is. Uh, we were talking about waffle stomping, my face turned red, but I still did it. Right. You're gonna have quiet ones on your team that are not gonna be comfortable being in the spotlight. It doesn't have to be loud and proud, but it can be like, hey, this is Chris, and he did this awesome thing, and I want you guys to give him a hey, right? Um so you need to make sure for 2026 that you build your appreciation plan, an annual appreciation budget, a monthly calendar. This won't take very long to set up on Google at all. Employee preference list, recognition tracking system, and automatic reminders. Retention goes up and drama goes down. So with the employee preference list, you're gonna have to come up with some sort of criteria, not a preference list because Jamie and I are BFFs. A preference and why you're gonna look for for you know rewards down the future, right?

SPEAKER_00: 25:22

And this is really good to bounce this off these ideals off of and help have Chat GPT help you structure and organize it, print it and have it in the company or put it in a file, put it it, drop it in job. Well, for me now, I was gonna say job form, but for me for company acknowledgement of stuff, you know, and that'll be a one section of how they can work and earn towards have a merit system where they, you know, you get a point, and they can also lose points. Too many call-ins, too many call-offs, callbacks, having a callback.

SPEAKER_01: 26:07

We had a quality control list and it was done monthly and quarterly, and they would actually, I would see them in the corner of the office looking at who had how many stars versus whom it didn't have stars, and you would hear them discuss on how you know, if they for each five-star review, they could earn up an extra a hundred, or I think the the kitty when if they if someone missed it month after month after month, I would just roll it over. It was like the lottery. So when they finally would compete for it and and make it to the end marker, the person sometimes would get$500. I had one time it was a thousand dollars, but you would hear them discussing how they could get that extra five stars, and it wasn't, and I would go over what those parameters were like we don't give things away for free, we don't do these other things for free.

SPEAKER_00: 26:54

We don't I do believe as W-2 employees, they they like structure and they like to feel like they have to strive for something, and that's that that becomes company culture, that becomes a company that you want to work for, and that is what I mean as the business owner, that's what I'm striving for. It is my employees, uh it's where I'm you guys all have heard it. This is the part that I'm really working on this year, and going into 2026, I really am hoping to have it zeroed in, and that's my company culture and for my employees because I want people to want to work for my company, and I feel like employees. If I was a W-2 employee, I would like to have some sort of structure, and I would like to know that I can strive to get to something, so I'm still working on that. I'm still working on it, it hasn't been implemented yet. I just, you know, this going based off of vibes and is not working really well.

SPEAKER_01: 28:09

So you want to have structure for sure, and that way it creates firm boundaries and you're not having issues with people later because one year your husband got, you know, a$2,000 bonus, and then the next year he did it, and there was no up there probably wasn't an explanation on why that bonus didn't appear the second year or the third year or the fourth year. It just was like we had a really great year, that was a one-time deal. When in reality, because he was new, he was expecting the two thousand dollar bonus plus the two weeks off, which you know, that's like that's a good bonus, right? So make sure that you're explaining why they're getting what they're getting and this is not normal. Like when I gave the extra bonus out to the individual, I didn't say I did say, hey, this is we got a really large bonus this year, so I'm sharing the wealth, but then it created anxiety and animosity between the team of three because they were trying to still trying to figure out because they didn't hear what I had to say. They were trying to figure out how to get the extra grand, right? So make sure that you're clear on expectations and what the protocol is. If you're new to SOPs, you can actually chat GPT is really great for that. You just have to be able to know how to prompt it the right way. There is an SOP course PDF that's probably going to come out in 2026. You're more than welcome. If you want a nice starter kit, you can do that. And obviously, we want you guys to have a great holiday season. These are just suggestions. We try to give low budget, just because we understand that you may not have allocated funds, you may be new to this, but this is part of the protocol, what you do at the holiday season.

SPEAKER_00: 29:47

And and you'll get there, you will get there. I I promise you guys, you keep at it, and you will be able to have those employees that you're able to give bonuses to. It'll happen. And then just whenever the time comes, we just want you to be nice and structured for that time. Prepare. Definitely.

SPEAKER_01: 30:11

Well, thanks for tuning in. We love each and every one of you. By all means, if you love us enough to give us a five-star review, it tells the algorithm that hey, cleaning business life is worthy, and we can be shown to other people and get more listeners. And I think that's such an awesome thing. Again, we are looking for sponsorship. If you are interested in sponsorship for the show, please hit me up at cleaningbusinesslife at gmail.com and we continue a promo sheet.

SPEAKER_00: 30:37

And yeah, like, subscribe, share. Yep. And we love you guys. Thanks for joining us, and we will talk to you on the next episode. Take care. Bye. Bye.