What to pay a cleaner, and how to say it
Percentage, hourly or per job — each one changes behaviour. Pick the one that matches the work you want done.
Three ways, and what each one encourages
Hourly is the easiest to explain and the hardest to scale: it pays for time present, so a slow clean costs you more than a fast one and nobody is rewarded for getting good at the job.
Per job is the opposite. It pays for the clean, so getting quicker is worth something — and if you price a job badly, somebody is underpaid for four hours and will remember it.
A percentage of what the job sold for is the one most growing businesses settle on. It survives you putting prices up, it makes a big job worth more to the person doing it, and it is one sentence to explain.
Say the number before they start
Whatever you choose, the thing that keeps cleaners is that they knew the figure before the job rather than after it. Pay disputes almost never start with somebody thinking they were cheated. They start with two people who never said a number out loud and then disagreed about what was obvious.
Put it on the job. If it is attached to the work itself, nobody is reconstructing it from memory on pay day and nobody has to ask.
Decide in advance what earns a raise
The quickest way to lose somebody good is to have no answer when they ask what it would take to earn more. Pick the bar before anybody asks — a number of completed jobs, a rating that holds, turning up reliably — and say it when you hire.
It costs nothing, and it turns a conversation you dread into one you have already had.