housekeeper

housekeeping aide

dietitian

housekeeper/laundry

environmental services manager

Healthcare Services Group

This company will hire anything with a pulse.  Turnover is very high which is why it is very easy to get a job here.  They brag about being a billion dollar company and they only promote from within and if you work hard its easy to advance.  They are a billion dollar company but only because they step on their employees in terms of pay so they can pad their pockets and their stock holders' pockets.  Housekeeping staff starts at minimum wage and stays there unless a union negotiates something different or minimum wage increases.  They are treated like dirt but expected to be the hardest working people ever.  If they have housekeepers that are making more than minimum wage they try to save money in buildings by giving those housekeepers less hours or finding a reason to fire them.  I was at my building for three years and my payroll budget was actually decreased even though minimum wage had gone up twice and the staff got two raises per the union contract.  So instead of increasing payroll to cover that, I couldnt cover all the shifts with my staff because I would be over budget (which is a cardinal sin) so I had to start working permanent shifts of housekeeping and laundry as well as continue to do my management responsibilities.  Supply budgets are barely enough to cover what you need even though you are expected to have enough supplies at all times.  Housekeepers are not given enough time to complete their routine according to company guidelines but more time on their shift means more cost for the company so instead they just want the employees written up.  My staff had about ten minutes to clean each room, the disinfectant we used had a contact time of ten minutes to be effective.  Makes sense right?  There is no HR department for the buildings so the manager is in charge of interveiwing, hiring, training any new employee which becomes tough if you have a sudden/unplanned opening.  In that situation you will most likely have to cover the open shifts yourself and try to find time to bring in a new person and because of the terrible wages you don't really get the cream of the crop applying for a job.  If you have enough staff to cover the open shifts great, but my experience was the only ones volunteering were the ones that were already working full time so picking up extra days would have put them into overtime (which is cardinal sin #2).  Since the manager is on salary you are expected to work at least 50 hours per week sometimes more.  I was frequently asked to help out with night projects at other buildings with no gas money or anything and expected to be at my building the next morning.  There are no perks at all with this job.  No Christmas bonus, no recognition for having no citations on a state survey, no congratulations for anything.  Benefits are so expensive and are still terrible they might as well be non existent.  At all the district and regional meeting I attended everyone always bragged about what a good company this was and what an opportunity it is to work for them, but nobody could ever give me a reason why.  Majortiy of the reviews about this company you will read all say the same thing so apparently there is some truth in what I'm saying.  Long story short I would only recomment getting a job with this company if you are planning on filling a gap so you can get a paycheck while you look for a better job and you just want to be able to put staff/budget management experience on your resume.  If you are looking at this job as long term then RUN in the other direction.

Shift begins at 5am. You must arrive prepared to take upon every missed task that your lazy janitor did not complete on their shift from the night before(which is basically everything). Check to ensure all supplies will suffice for the rest of the week. Check your janitor closets to ensure they are being properly kept. Then begin mopping the hallways, take out the trash, clean the restrooms, begin cleaning resident rooms. Check on your housekeeper to make sure they're working and not taking they're usual 'extra' break. Clean the dining area after breakfast(two man job). While residents are eating breakfast this gives you the opportunity to clean the parking lot(which was always a must because everyone thought the parking lot was the only trashcan). Continue to pick up any trash on the outer grounds. Check on the laundry staff make sure they know that they MUST deliver all personal clothes before the end of their shift. If everything goes as scheduled you might get a 10min break at this time. Otherwise, it's off to the Dining Room. Once you have completed the Dining Room you must clean the public restrooms again, then continue to the break room. Once the break room was clean you then MUST clean the shower rooms. You will then be able to get started on cleaning your resident rooms. First you take out their trash next to their beds then their restrooms. Next you high dust the room, then disinfect all surface areas of the room, dust mop the floor of the room, damp mop the floor of the room. Once the room was sanitized you then move onto the restroom. Check that all is stocked(toilet tissue, hand tissue, hand soap). High dusting is always a must. Sanitize all surface areas with a the proper products. Dust mop and Damp mop. Repeat this about 6 times before going on lunch. Return to the Dining Room to clean up lunch(two man job). Clean the up after showers given. Continue to clean resident rooms. You are not always able to take a second 10 min break due to the work flow(which I can guarantee will be 4.5 out of 5 days worked). Check on your staff productivity to ensure all tasks have been completed in a timely manner. Address all issues presented during the day with the Administrator. Discuss breakdown of day. Somewhere in there you MUST do some record retention, I was able to do so during my lunch hour. If everything I mean absolutely everything has gone right, you will be able to leave at a suitable time. Mind you I was told that even though I was hourly I would not be compensated for any overtime worked. Which was not the most encouraging thing to tell your managers or staff members.

I learned that it's not always a walk in the park and recognition from upper management is a lost cause. Managing staff was challenging at time because nobody wanted to take responsibility for anything. Every building I worked in had a variety of staff members and personalities, I enjoyed the interactions with each and every staff member in the hospitals. The hardest part of my job was time management; My staff and I were always getting pulled out of one task to start and complete another. Which would sometimes reflect upon our days work. The most enjoyable part of my work personally was every compliment I received on how well I was doing my job.

Hcsg are like the vultures who come to clean the bones of a carcass on the side of a road. They wait until a company is in trouble then lobby them to take over the dietary and EVS departments, promising huge savings. They can save money only because their service is deplorable.It begins by the corporate office sending in the "operational excellence team" to evaluate the business and find "efficiencies" aka how much more can we pile on the directors and line staff so we can cut hours to the point that if there is one call out operations are severely affected because there is simply too much work and not enough labor hours. They really think that the same business model they use for housekeeping will work in dining. These people aren't firing off many neurons believe me. They just can't seem to understand that it takes a higher skill set and level of understanding to run a kitchen properly while adhering to the many regulations, while anyone can clean a toilet. These two departments are NOT interchangeable
    We used to be called Directors, when this ghetto company came in we were dressed down to "manager". Every building is so severely understaffed that they are barely functioning. You will have to fill in shifts every single day, you are basically equated to a glorified hourly employee. You are expected to be there if needed even if that requires you to work 12 hour days for a month straight with no days off. You have ZERO support from the corporate office. Your DM is stretched so thin they can only do so much. Even they are working everyday even filling in as a dish washer in the really really bad accounts. If there is a union in your shop you must abide by their contract by allowing them to fill in vacant shifts (as stated in the CONTRACT) and your district manager writes YOU up because you have OT! They want you as the manager to fill in vacancies, this is considered stealing union work. When you ask the DM about how to do this without violating their contract he actually said "call let it ring once and hang up so we can show an attempt made if they grieve". This is against the law!!
    They are the most disgusting degenerates on Earth. The only way you can remain here is to have ZERO moral compass about what you do. They rip off the hourly wages by shaving hrs, then having the employee sign a document that they are in agreement with the change. 99% of the time they are either forged by the manager or the employee suffers from a language barrier and does not know what they are signing. MANY managers do this as a way to meet their labor numbers. Coincidentally the company is being investigated by the SEC for the SECOND time for the way they round their numbers, so I guess it is the culture of the company to just cook the books
    If you consider yourself a culinairian and love cooking and preparing food RUN as fast as you can because this company has ZERO food culture. I mean NONE, It's a JOKE and a complete embarrassment to any chef to have to be associated with this 3 ring circus. Their pay sucks. They want only "managers" with a BA or CDM yet think 58k is an appropriate salary for an enormous building with no staff and a long history of problems. DO NOT work for these scumbags.

Once HCSG gets in the door the results down the road are filthy kitchens, poor food quality and services, unhappy employees whose pay has been capped after many years of services or their pay renegotiated at a much lower rate.Staffing is then reduced and hours are cut.  This leads to filth, poor quality of care.  This obviously creates a big morale problem for the staff(and for   the new manager) that runs these departments. Staff has  dedicated a large portion of their lives(years) to the facility and  are "being sold" as new employees of HCSG subject to these  atrocious conditions and in turn residents and the managed facility suffers while Hcsg put the extra profits in their bank account.  These are the "results" as they call it in their logo. They prefer to leave filth in the kitchen than to pay OT to a minimum wage employee to take care of these operational issues.  Employees are brought in 2 hours a day to fill in while the manager has to fill in with no quality of life for a miserable salary to avoid paying OT. Kitchens floors,  if lucky, get done once a month or longer, filth,  grease and dirt is all over their kitchens,  with roaches in many of their storerooms as a result.  Because of the short staff, food is put away in boxes which is a potential for  infestation by roaches as boxes serve as a place for roaches  to hide.  Residents are not seen within 24 hrs of admission because their CDMs are overspread in meetings or overseeing other locations where their managers cannot maintain the work standards as per the regulations.  They hire people with no experience background related to the job position to meet payroll guidelines Then their own facilities fall into chaos, filth and poor food quality.  When inspectors show up because of complain surveys or anticipated survey, they start cleaning the mess that has been there all along by calling employees who are off duty to impress the owners of the buildings and avoid tags and fines. These employees are send home earlier later in the week to avoid paying them OT. If you want NO solutions, no performance and poor results, then hire them.  Not to mention that their benefits are one lousy week of vacation after one year.  You do not accrue the benefit and is not prorated.  If you get fired for cause or not, your time is not paid to you.  Employees time is manipulated with. Employees complain that they were not paid correctly and then their pay takes days and days to be corrected if not over a week.  These are their "results", a way to squeeze  all the blood and profits from the facilities they manage, their employees and from the seniors and residents who are their victims.  Health insurance is $350.00 dollars biweekly for employees making 8-13.00 an hour and therefore unaffordable. Congratulations if you work for them or  for a Facility if they sign a contract with this company.  Beware of what you will get into.  As the old saying goes "you get what you pay for".

Once you've clocked in, you immediately have things to do. As soon as you finish with those, two new tasks arise, and you have a very short amount of time to get those two tasks done before three more are due to go out. You have to be incredibly fast, or else you never get it all done, and even the fastest co-workers that I have don't get it all done. It's a constant come and go, no matter which shift you work. There's more things for you to do, than time to get it done, and the management refuses to pay any overtime, so if you don't get it done in the time limit, you end up clocking out to finish the rest, no matter how long it takes. Or you leave it for the next shift, which isn't fair to them either. Issues are constantly brought to the manager's attention, but nothing is done about it. Rotting floors, broken ovens, not enough dishes for all of the residents, and a few of my co-workers, and myself, are constantly spending our own money just to get things that are absolutely needed for the kitchen, because we're tired of management telling us we can't have it since we're on a set budget. It doesn't matter if we're short on dishes, during servout we have to go back and wash dirty dishes just to have enough to serve all the residents, but management still refuses to buy more. If you use too many hours for one shift, they take away shifts to compensate so you don't get overtime. Sometimes they even "mistakenly" pay you less than minimum wage for a few MONTHS, and then conveniently forget to change you to minimum wage. If you forget to take a lunch, they automatically deduct half hour from your shift, regardless of whether or not you actually took the break. The managers write up people without getting the correct information; A co-worker of mine was written up because our cook said she was being rude, but the manager never bothered to ask all the witnesses, who say it was the cook and not the aid that was rude. But the aid was written up, and when the manager wrote her up she wasn't even allowed a chance to defend herself. She came out in tears, because the manager was so rude. The schedule is constantly shifted around, so you never really know when you have to work, and sometimes on your days off you still have to go in and check the schedule, because it changes so often. Most of us don't even take our breaks, we were guaranteed two fifteen minute long breaks, and one half hour break that we have to clock out for, and the only one we really do get most of the time is the one we clock out for, though most of us come back to the kitchen to work during that break, despite being clocked out.

A typical day consisted of a facility walkthrough, stand-up, paperwork, facilitating and managing employees, possibly traveling to adjacent facilities. 

I learned a variety of things, ranging from doing payroll to stripping and waxing. In the end, I learned to know what I am worth.

Management was not always there for me. In fact, in the beginning, I was already on my own running a facility on my 2nd day for half of the day; the 3rd day I was all on my own. How are you going to not a train a MANAGER? Another empirical example: management would not order everything that we had in our order, sometimes ordering unneeded supplies, and then when the administrator and facility would be in an uproar, management still couldn't handle the situation properly! This makes the face of the facility look horrible-that ruins the relationship. Also, they continuously cut down weekly hours and the monthly budget. I've heard worse things that add to my knowledge of the company's maximization of profits, but I do not know if they are fact so I will not go into that.
The co-workers were great people for the most part. I felt great for the people who were great, because they went above and beyond, but were still not even minimally considered to receive any sort of raise. These people made $7.75. There was no incentive for the workers to do better than bare minimal work. The uncompetitive wage brought in low quality workers, if any. Then the turnover was fantastic after that... So great people ended up being fed up due to their feeling under appreciated-which they most definitely were.
The hardest part was managing people to do much more than I personally felt that they should do, relative to their pay. They worked their butts off. Also, knowing that I was under appreciated wasn't very nice either.
Having a malleable schedule was the best part of the job. If my things were done, then I could have freedom.

I was interviewed for an Account Manager for Housekeeping and told there were going to be benefits.  I took the job.  Three months later I had to fight for the benefits information.  When I finally got the information by calling the HR department I was told the health benefits were in the range of $1500/month for me and my wife.  This was for a $5000 deductible plan.  It was cheaper to get private health insurance at the time.  They do not offer a 401k, so there are no benefits with this job.  
For your training you have to wear a shirt, tie, and dress shoes while cleaning rooms, collecting trash, collecting heavily soiled linen, and stripping and waxing floors.  If you do not get lucky and get a training manager that actually understands what he is doing you will never learn the management part of the job.  
When given my first account I was thrown into an understaffed building 40 miles from my home.  Between the $5 bridge toll and the 80 mile round trip everyday my paycheck hurt pretty bad.  The hiring pool was awful.  I hired about 15 people in 6 months.  One of them stuck, and I would have fired her if I had someone to replace her.  My DM asked me to do overnight projects without using any overtime.  I did not have enough people to complete the daily work and the overnight project, so I did the project myself.  Working hard was not the problem.  The problem was that I was expected to run the daily operations while doing the overnight projects at the same time.  Living so far away I would have to sleep at work because traveling would not make any sense.  
All the housekeeping start out making $8/hr and are all part time.  No chance at getting benefits or PTO or raises.  All of the workers were overworked with very little pay.  One employee was at the account for 2 years without a review or a raise.  When I asked about raises to my DM he said that raises were not in the budget.  
In conclusion, run the other way unless you really need the paycheck.  The only thing this job is good for is to build a resume so you have some management experience for future jobs.  It will also make you very thankful for any other job you get.

Responsibilities involved managing a staff of 10-25 employees, daily payroll and budget management as well as recruitment and training of all front line staff. Prepared P&L statement to monitor monthly and quarterly gains and losses. Improved processes and policies in support of organizational goals. Formulated and implemented departmental and organizational policies and procedures to maximize output. Coordinated all hiring processes to include recruiting, background verification, SLED and FBI checks as well as employment verification and new hire processing. Position also called for Account Manager to act as liaison between facility staff and HCSG as well as assisting in marketing of HCSG services to potential clients. Other responsibilities included operating designated facility in full compliance with model account standards, developing assistant manager’s, staff and programs to allow time for assistance in other facilities. Secondary responsibilities involved presenting training segments at district meetings, helping with new facilities and new contracts as well as the development of new Account managers’ skills and work habits.

Developed a comprehensive 90 day training program whereby new management trainees could transition into management roles and take over daily operations. I personally assisted in the acquisition of competitor markets moving from a 30% market dominance to a 70% market dominance while managing the transition from standard competitor operations to HSG protocol while limiting interruptions to daily operations. I personally reduced overall expenditures within each HSG facility by 10-15% by restructuring individual work flow and individual job descriptions thus requiring fewer employees and reducing waste. Established an environment whereby current employees could train to move into management roles and achieve promotion from within.

I should've known better.  I should've taken the reviews that were already in place, and listened to those who came before me.  

Training - you literally spend your entire training period behind a housekeeping cart.  You are a band-aid for the training manager's staffing issues.  You learn very little when it comes to company policies and procedures until you get out of training and have to figure it out on your own.  

Day-to-day - You could end up in a building that is fairly manageable, or you could end up in a nightmare.  I started in a nightmare.  It was a dirty building, where the previous manager was worthless.  I inherited major staffing issues.  But be warned.  You are NOT allowed to work any hourly employees overtime for any reason.  If you have a hole in the schedule, you'd better plan on filling it yourself.  If there are days that you can get out early, take advantage of it, because there will be plenty of days where you are there long past dinner time and you've walked in the door at 6AM.  We don't pay our hourly employees a livable wage.  Most buildings start between $7.25 and $7.50, so you get a ton of people that can't pass a background check, or people that can only work a few hours here and there so they don't mess up their food stamps, welfare, etc.  It is a constant revolving door.  Issues are never handled by upper management.  They don't respond to emails, texts, calls, etc. in a very timely manner.  Orders "disappear."  Most administrators I've encountered throughout my time with HCSG absolutely hated the company.  

Overall - The benefits are awful.  You don't get PTO until you've been with the company for a year.  The insurance is expensive, yet not very inclusive.  You have to work two overnight projects a month.  Good luck doing that when you have staffing issues.  You end up working a day and a half straight without sleep.  Unless you have ZERO options, stay far far away from this company.  Oh, and they pay their managers lousy wages too!

A typical day at work were everyone gets there around 7:00 in the morning some were 6:00 and having a cup of coffee or two; then we go to our perspective tasks. 

Working in a nursing facility is very hands on activity and you will learn a lots of stuff. You will learn from their names all through their personal stuff. I have mostly learned more patience with elders. 

Too sad that our manager/supervisor left the job for personal reasons, I liked the way she trained me and the crew; but it was just a short time spent with her because I was the newbie on that job and she is leaving.


There's 10 of us in our crew, and everyone is very helpful when I needed something. From the time I get to work until I leave we were making the job fun rather than complain on what the resident's didn't want or do want. 

The hardest part of the job is when I sort some of the resident's clothes in the laundry and there's a bowel or blood that was wrapped with their clothes and it will just fall on you! It's nasty. For the housekeeping part the hardest is to get along with these boastful nurses and nursing assistant who always rely on us housekeepers and does not want to do their jobs. They even want us to do the biohazard stuff even when they are the most people whose well trained with those kind of stuff! They all know that they can do it themselves but they choose to rely on housekeepers. In short they are lazy

The most enjoyable part is I get to do how I want to start my job and have my own routine throughout the job tasks. 


Lastly, I can never enjoy my day off even though I worked the whole week straight because they want me to come in on my off days! Not fun to be working straight week and not even paying me that right hours.  They're cheating me on my hours!!!!

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Housekeeper 31 salaries reported	$10.87 per hour
Housekeeping aide 9 salaries reported	$8.75 per hour
Dietitian 16 salaries reported	$33.22 per hour
Housekeeper/laundry 20 salaries reported	$10.18 per hour
Environmental services manager 2 salaries reported	$19.00 per hour

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