Owner
CurrentThis must be Steve Buchalter’s year to clean up. He was tapped last September as one of the Worcester Business Journal’s 40 under Forty honorees. Now, his company is at the top of a robust list of our Top Growth Companies.There’s nothing high tech about what Enterprise does, but it is a high-touch industry. The management structure, put in place by Buchalter and carried out by employees, has a well-defined chain of command which empowers and rewards those willing to work harder than average. Staff is salaried, not hourly, and cleaners can graduate to building supervisors and then, to area managers. The extra attention to employee development and management seems to be paying off.The company has grown, in the space of the past 18 months, from 35 employees cleaning 23 buildings, to 85 employees cleaning more than 90 buildings. But starting up wasn’t easy at first, Buchalter recalls. As 2003 began, he’d just left a cleaning company which he’d helped grow from $750,000 to $6.8 million in five years. Now, he was at zero all over again. The first big account came in six months after Enterprise launched; soon after, the company had secured contracts for four of downtown Worcester’s biggest office buildings.Cleaning is an intensely competitive business because it is so easy to get into, but Enterprise competes on service rather than price. Buchalter’s development of his support staff frees him to spend more time on business development.The biggest challenge he faces, he says, is to find the right mix of managers. Those he initially hired who didn’t share his vision of the company parted ways, he says. Now, he tells new hires that Enterprise is a career-oriented company and that they have the opportunity to move into management. "I’ve learned that people will respect you more and work hard when they know they’re appreciated and that their work is appreciated," he says.– By Christina P. O’Neill
