An organization in Florida is developing millennials into more mature and confident leaders, in a manner that might moisten the eyes of those hardened cynics who believe millennials are spoiled or soft.
Hundreds of millennial students compete for the chance to do the dirty work of cleaning up Gainesville-area homes, through an organization called Student Maid. To qualify, they need 3.5 GPAs and must pass interviews and reference checks...all for the opportunity to scrub toilets, mop floors, wash windows and haul trash. They accept criticism and accountability. They happily accept pay that is tied to their performance. Their performance record is displayed in full view of their peers. And they are teaching each other, often for the first times, that it’s okay to fail.
“We show each other that it’s okay to fall and get back up,” says Kristen Hadeed, founder and CEO of Student Maid. She speaks openly and candidly of her own failures, seeing each of them as having instructional value for those who work alongside her.
As a University of Florida student in 2009, Hadeed went into the home-cleaning business via a Craigslist ad, simply as a way of paying for the perfect—and perfectly expensive—pair of jeans that her parents were not about to buy for her. She soon found herself getting so many referrals, including a contract to clean thousands of empty apartments, that she hired 60 students to help her.
However, on the second day, 45 of them quit, delivering to her a brutal reality check regarding the management approach she’d brought to the fledgling organization. She quickly managed to convene the disaffected to address their concerns and brought them back on board. And together they strove for a culture that would offer mutual support, flexibility and autonomy.
Along the way, Hadeed would be turned down for a business loan, run into problems regarding the trademarking of the company name and negotiate other managerial and entrepreneurial headaches, and each time gained insights and resilience.
She says Student Maid seeks to foster an environment conducive to constructive criticism. “We believe in complete transparency,” she says, “because it’s the only way to improve.” This can initially be a jarring experience for some student employees, after having spent years on the receiving end of non-stop, unconditional praise and sheltering from overprotective mothers and fathers.
“Oftentimes, we’re the first people to ever give them negative feedback—and the first people to treat them like adults,” Hadeed says. “At first, some don’t know how to handle it. Some cry, some get angry.” A few may even call their parents to get them to intervene, she says, while adding that the ploy won’t work, because “Student Maid is a parent-free zone.”
The company has grown rapidly since 2009, adding high-school students and graduate students into the fold, and adding new concierge-style services such as dog-walking, pet-sitting and house-sitting. Today it employs some 500 employees at peak season and is estimated to have brought in more than $1 million in revenue last year (it does not disclose figures). It also delivered $100,000 in pro-bono services (for instance, by offering free cleanings of cancer patients’ hospital rooms), along with 4,000 hours of collective community service--reflecting millennials’ desire to know that their organization is benefitting the larger society.
The average employee tenure has grown to 2.5 years—and the chief reason it isn’t longer is because students cannot stay with the organization after graduation. “They scrub dirty toilets, but we still have to force them to leave,” Hadeed says with some pride.
“Corporate recruiters will come recruit Student Maid’s graduating classes,” she says, “because they know our student employees are strong who are skilled in decision-making and time-management and who take pride in their work.” She says 97% of their employees’ grades rise after joining the company, perhaps as a natural by-product of the time management skills and accountability they learn on the job.
Hadeed says that, although she and her sister were raised by parents who prepared them for the bumps and bruises of the real world, many other parents didn’t adequately prepare their progeny for what lay ahead after college graduation
At the same time, she defends the values and priorities of millennial employees and suggests that smart businesses will find ways to speak to those values tangibly.
“We want to love the work we do,” she says, “and we want to love who we do it with.” Her own experiences seem to show this is possible, even when millennials are scouring dirty bathtubs.
Hadeed shoots down the notion that millennials are disloyal job-hoppers, noting that in a recent conversation with a group of 20 college students, every single one professed preferring working their way up a company rather than moving around. “But employers have to find a way to show them how their work matters, every single day,” she adds, or the millennials will search for other pastures.
“And they want flexibility,” she says. “I asked 20 of them, ‘If you had a job that pays $100,000 a year, would you take a 50% pay cut to get flexibility?’ And all of them said yes. They don’t care about money or the corner office. They’re looking for meaning and a chance to contribute.”
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