“Have you ever noticed how an unclean bathroom changes the way you think about a restaurant?” muses Eddie Mejia. “Or how a funky smell in a doctor’s office affects your trust in that doctor?”
Mejia noticed. He saw how a “commodified culture” of business cleaning affected everyone involved – and not for the better.
There was clear and compelling room for improvement, he argues: in the levels of responsiveness, reliability, and caring between commercial cleaning companies, their employees, and the businesses they served.
Mejia and his team of 3 veteran entrepreneurs resolved to do better.
“We are family,” he explains. “Our family-business culture means that transparency, loyalty, and communication are the bedrock of what we do.”
Flash forward nearly a decade later, and Mega’s value-based approach has led to exponential growth across five states in the eastern United States. Moreover, under the leadership of Mejia and his executive team, Mega grew into a company and brand whose industry leadership is widely felt across the regions it serves.
The 3Rs and an unabashed culture of “out-caring”
While Mega’s commitments to community contribution and environmental stewardship set Mega apart from its competitors, Mejia argues that their core values-based practices are what truly stand out.
Mejia explains that 3R’s create the Mega of Mega: enduring relationships, guaranteed reliability, and exceptional results. Mejia and his team identified these priorities as ones that would directly engage with long-outstanding needs in the commercial cleaning industry. No-shows, low pay and wages, difficult work environments, and lack of security and accountability all are challenges facing the conventional commercial cleaning industry, he says.
Taken together, the 3Rs create a culture and context of caring – unique in an industry offering commercial cleaning services for construction, health care, automotive dealerships, and other workplaces. The impact of Mejia’s vision and commitment is felt by Mega’s clients and businesses served its employees and the communities in which Mega operates.
Mejia emphasizes that these values and practices are not unique to commercial cleaning, but can be applied across the industry, in any type of business.
Mega out-cares for their clients.
Mejia explains that Mega looks for opportunities to defy expectations and exceed standard levels of service. “We’re the weirdest janitorial service around,” he laughs, “because we’re the only custodians who show up with surprise gifts.”
The Mega model of “reverse engineering” ensures that even prospective clients are treated with unusual consideration and generosity. In the commercial cleaning world, business owners take note because “they’ve just never been treated that way,” says Mejia. And Mega clients learn over time to expect the unexpected.
Mega invests thousands of dollars upfront into each company that signs on, he says. His team comes in and works overtime, deep cleaning, and scrubbing until the workplace is up to their level of satisfaction.
On Monday morning, employees walk into their workplace and see it sparkle and shine as never before. The bar has been reset.
Importantly, Mega ensures that all members of the cleaning teams are uniformed, badged, background-checked, drug-tested, legally residing in the United States, and paid fair wages on time. No one else in the industry comes close to these standards, Mejia says, and this benchmark creates peace of mind for clients, whose valuable assets in the workspace will be cared for with honesty and integrity.
And when troubles occur, Mejia and his team literally put their money where their mouth is. The Mega guarantee is that they will make it right, right away, and do everything in their power to solve any problems.
Recently, a valued client experienced a theft in the office, and before they discovered that their own employee was responsible, Mejia had written and delivered a check in the value of the missing assets – making very clear that no matter what, Mega would be part of a solution instead of a problem.
“It’s simple: we win because of the relationships we build. We admit our mistakes if and when they happen and we make our clients look good,” Mejia explains.
Mega out-cares for their team.
But in an industry like commercial cleaning where service employees are the front lines, it not only pays to invest in your people — it’s just the right thing to do, according to Mejia.
“Our employees are our heartbeat. They are the secret sauce and our lifeline to information and communication. We rely on employees to notice a door ajar or something that’s broken. Then we can relay it to the client and offer to have it remedied. Our service teams are our eyes and ears so that we can build a relationship on trust and service,” he says.
So Mega and Mejia create a family-business culture by meeting employees where they are, helping them reach personal goals, playing to their strengths, and taking care of their families.
Working for Mega means access to English classes, financial literacy mentoring, meals from partnered restaurants, Christmas bonuses, Thanksgiving turkeys, and book reading groups on self-selected personal growth topics. Employees at the corporates offices are invited to bring their pets to work on Fridays, a move that Mejia says makes a workplace feel more like home, like family.
Mejia argues that a high level of consistency, opportunity, and personalized attention allows Mega to recruit and keep the most loyal teams comprised of workers for whom “work” means a chance to do what they love, in a supportive environment.
And taken together, extraordinary care creates unusual loyalty in an industry known for high rates of turnover.
Mega out-cares for their community.
“We have to always be scanning for opportunities to give and do good,” Mejia says.
While the daily responsibilities of Mega include cleaning floors and windows, power washing, cleaning upholstery, new constriction cleanup, and making auto-dealerships sparkle, Mejia envisions a much wider reach for taking care.
Mega currently partners with more than seven charitable and educational causes in the Tampa area and used the holiday season to expand its giving reach. In a campaign called “Random Acts of Cleanness,” friends and fans could submit a photo of themselves picking up trash in their community.
For each submission, Mega donated $5 to The Salvation Army Tampa. Nearly 200 submissions raised $1,000 for charity at a time of year when, as Mejia explains, “People are constantly asked for fundraising contributions and many have to say no more than yes. Random Acts of Cleanness is our way of chipping in, so instead of you writing the check, we help keep things clean. We take the headache and financial strain away.”
Inventive and engaging, Random Acts of Cleanness reflects the best of Mejia and his vision for Mega: building relationships with integrity and reliability to offer exceptional results in an industry fundamentally refreshed by a values-led perspective.
Now tell us: how could your company or industry start to “out-care” for the people and communities who matter? What’s one small change YOU could make to live your values?
