Cleanliness is next to godliness

Is a lack of organization costing you money?

While the title of the article may have first been said by Charles Wesley, credited as the founder of the Methodist Church, perhaps the phrase should be adapted to our stores by saying, “cleanliness is next to profitability”.

We learned a valuable, and expensive lesson, as we were going through our warehouse. Our receiving process included writing the date received on a case. Imagine our surprise, and disappointment with ourselves, as we found a case that had been receive eight months earlier still sitting on a warehouse shelf. There had been many times we reordered this product while this case sat on a shelf.

We then mapped our warehouse and set a schedule of checking every aisle and shelf. This was an easy lesson to determine what this lack of organization had cost us. Perhaps you have had the experience of an invoice arriving and you find no evidence of the merchandise arriving. Yet, you find what you think is the merchandise on the sales floor.

Some needs for organization can be seen by simply looking at checkouts, receiving areas and office desks. Most are not so evident. Lack of organization is a tremendous time, and sometimes money, consumer.

We offer a solution that we found to be most helpful in our business. Past the suggestion of cleaning a desk, warehouse, salesfloor or checkout, we created a guide that helped everyone in our business to perform any task. We began by having everyone make a note of any occasion when they experienced something that consumed their efforts and time. During our bi-weekly staff meeting each person shared the challenges they had experienced.

With someone acting as our recording secretary, there was a discussion as to what could be done to prevent this from happening again. Because of the group discussion, the solutions came from many perspectives and with a variety of plans of attack. The notes taken were transcribed into one of two types of documents.

One document was referred to as a policy and the other was a procedure. The procedure was an outline of how to perform a specific task. The outline could be for unloading a truck and what to do with the accompanying paperwork. The procedure could be how to handle the paperwork in a transaction at the register. As an example, dollars going into a register were placed in a specific manner in the drawer along with a specification of the minimum amount of bills and coin to be kept in the drawer.

The policies created were the rules created for ourselves, such as cell phone usage and what was worn to work. As examples of procedures, ladders were not to be kept in the aisles and excessive merchandise was stocked overhead in a specific manner or returned to the warehouse. Cartons were not to be left in any aisle. Maintenance and cleanup of the sales floor, warehouse, and checkout area was also written.
Because the entire staff participated in the creation of a policy or procedure, there was a lot of “buy-in” by everyone with what had been built.

Of course, the cleanliness aspect also transcends to the areas generally reserved for managers and owners. From observation of multiple businesses, we have found that if there are policies and procedures for the staff that are not applicable to managers and owners, the entire effort begins to dissolve.

We called this creation, “the owner’s manual”. Definitely one of your best efforts for having a store and staff that understands the value of time and money.

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This article is copyrighted by Tom Shay and Profits Plus Solutions, who can be reached at: PO Box 128, Dardanelle, AR. 72834. Phone 727-823-7205. It may be printed for an individual to read, but not duplicated or distributed without expressed written consent of the copyright owner.