1. How long has HOTT Associates been in business?
We have been in business for 14 years, as HOTT Associates was founded in 1996. We are very stable financially, and would be happy to discuss this issue further if you need more detailed information.
2. What is our Organizational Structure?
HOTT is a Chapter S Corporation.
3. Is HOTT a Franchise?
HOTT Associates is an independent entity, unaffiliated with any other company and/or parent company. HOTT is not a franchise, nor do we use subcontractors to clean our facilities.
4. Locally owned or National?
HOTT is locally owned, headquartered in downtown Cleveland.
5. What is the structure and size of HOTT?
HOTT Associates is an efficient organization, built around our 130 employees. Our office staff is comprised of three full-time persons and one part-time person; all of the rest of our employees are "field personnel"
HOTT currently cleans more than 2.8 million square feet of office space, of varying types. We clean headquarters, research facilities, government offices, medical offices and public areas.
6. Who works at HOTT Associates?
HOTT's staff is second to none. Our staff is mature: the average age of a HOTT employee is about 45 years old. HOTT's staff is over 65% women. We are ethnically diverse: 1/3 of our staff is of European descent, 1/3 of the staff is of Spanish descent and 1/3 were born and raised in the United States. We are legal: all of our employees have the proper paperwork and ID's to be eligible for work in the US. Our staff is also very experienced. The average tenure of a HOTT employee is 4.2 years, and we retain over 85% of our employees each year. And finally, our staff is well paid; our average hourly wage is more than $1.00 per hour higher than the average cleaning wage in Cleveland.
7. What makes HOTT stand out?
• Mature, carefully-chosen employees who care about our customers and who take their jobs seriously. In addition, as we noted above, our cleaners are paid well. The results are amazing: our rate of absenteeism is very low, below 3% per day. At HOTT, our mature crew is at work, every day.
• We plan with Engineering. We plan to succeed, we execute the plan well and we carefully inspect the work. Then we improve the process via Kaizen.
• HOTT's Operational model:
• For the competition, the modus operandi is that the supervisor is the backup cleaning crew.
• Why? Because at the competition, the absentee rate is over 10% per day (double or triple HOTT's rate!). This translates into one simple fact; their supervisors have to clean almost every day.
• At HOTT, our supervisors are hired to train the crew, to interface with you (our customer), to inspect your facility and to make sure every worker has the tools needed to do their job.
• This is what our supervisors do, every day. This is a tremendous benefit for you, your tenants and also for HOTT.
• Our customer service is way beyond what the competition provides; we are readily available, we return messages and e-mails promptly and we solve your problems effectively. Please ask our customers, for they will all tell you a similar story about working with HOTT.
• Proven results speak for themselves; we have very few complaints and HOTT has never lost an account due to quality issues.
8. What are HOTT's hiring practices?
At HOTT, the hiring process is very simple. Our owner, who is the head of operations, interviews and hires each person. While this may seem cumbersome, we believe the opposite is true. By hiring the right person the first time, we save the time and money of not hiring two more "wrong" persons. We, therefore, save our customers the agony of seeing a parade of new employees come and go from their office until the right person is found, and we save time not filling out paperwork and taking persons on and off the payroll. Hiring is more consistent because we do not have multiple persons looking for different traits when hiring personnel. At HOTT, we promote from within and with referrals. In fact, we give our employees a $50.00 bonus for each "referral" that makes it through their probationary period. To complete the hiring system, each employee is given a company handbook as soon as they become a HOTT employee.
9. What are HOTT's billing procedures?
The normal, routine invoices are generated the first week of each month. Quick Books software is used to produce a professional invoice, and to facilitate financial reporting and open-invoice tracking.
Project invoices are sent out bi-weekly after the payroll has been completed. These invoices include a detailed, computer-generated backup, to make it easy for our customers to understand and pay their bills.
10. Do you have experience cleaning Medical Facilities?
Our experience in medical facility cleaning is extensive. We clean eight facilities (medical offices) that total over 400,000 s.f. In addition, we clean two nursing homes, totaling 260 beds and 230,000 square feet. More importantly, our results at these facilities are excellent. We have cleaned in five of these buildings for more than five years, including one facility in which we have cleaned for over 10 years. In addition, we are experts at working with the medical staffs (and accompanying personalities) at these types of facilities.
11. Cleaning Experience at Schools & Day Cares
We do have experience in these facilities. We currently clean Magnificat High School. At Magnificat, we have engineered a total system for cleaning a school. We would be happy to discuss this with you. |
