Performance Plus

For nearly a century, Performance Plus has been providing commercial and industrial janitorial, carpet and window cleaning, and construction cleanup services throughout the state of Indiana as well as southern Michigan. Headquartered in Merrillville, Indiana, Performance Plus maintains four locations and self-performs all of its services, which allows the company to work closely with its clients and to assure customer satisfaction. By utilizing the industry’s most up-to-date training techniques and equipment, Performance Plus is able to perform personal tracking and follow-up methods to achieve all of its customers’ goals.

A rich history

Established in 1917 by Aaron Weinraub, Performance Plus is now run by his great granddaughter, Paula Broutman, who serves as the company’s president. Broutman’s father, Michael Saks, helped to build the company when he took ownership more than 40 years ago. Initially established as an exclusive window-cleaning business, Michael chose to expand the company into janitorial services and brought his brother Alan on board in the early 1970s to run the operations of the cleaning division. Over the years, Michael and Alan acquired several businesses that would amount to the four locations of Performance Plus.

Broutman joined Performance Plus in 2010. Using her 20 years’ experience as a catering director, Broutman decided to join the family business to assist the company with sales and marketing and transitioned into the role of president in 2011. “It has been great since making the career change,” says Broutman. “I love working for my dad and I am really proud to keep the business within the family.”

With approximately 400 employees, Performance Plus provides janitorial services to a wide range of businesses, including office buildings, banks, factories, airports, health/medical facilities and institutions, such as colleges and universities. The company places an emphasis on customer service with all of its accounts. Through innovation and flexibility, each janitorial service program is prepared with every client to ensure the facility’s unique requirements are addressed with maximum cost effectiveness. Customer satisfaction is assured through the company’s ongoing, intensive quality control and continuous improvement programs.

A notable client of Performance Plus is the University of Notre Dame. The company is responsible for cleaning Notre Dame Stadium after football games. “There has been a lot of construction going on at the stadium this year,” says Broutman. “We’ve been working with the construction company doing cleanup for the past month to get the stadium ready for the start of the football season.”

At the peak of the economic downturn, Performance Plus was able to maintain a solid backlog of work due to its rich history and solid reputation. The company also found that it was able to increase its workforce while remaining selective to the amount of candidates it found looking for work. “While some clients were cutting back on cleaning services, we were able to expand our reach by hiring more employees,” says Broutman. “We hired a lot of people that were making career changes, but we train them well and they are prepared when they go into the field.”

Approximately 10 percent of Performance Plus’ workforce is in skilled labor, such as operating forklifts, working at high altitudes and running floor machines. With safety as a top priority for the company, all supervisors are Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) certified.

Above and beyond

Through working in this industry, Broutman says that the amount of positive feedback that she receives from customers is what gives her the biggest sense of pride about her company. “I love the emails and messages I often receive about how great of a job we did for a particular client,” she says. “I often hear about how a certain employee went above and beyond the call of duty to satisfy a customer.”

In an industry that tends to see a high turnover ratio of workers, Performance Plus has been able to provide its employees with a work environment that provides job security and safety. This has led to a low turnover rate of employees for Performance Plus. “Approximately 80 percent of our staff has been with us for 10 years or more,” says Broutman. “We hire and train people with the hope that they will stay with us for a long time.”

In the past few years, Performance Plus has found itself performing subcontract work for numerous national contractors. “That seems to be a niche that we are doing well with, so we are going to continue to explore those opportunities,” says Broutman. “We have established some great relationships with a lot of national companies, which has been really good for us this past year.”

While gaining new clients and maintaining relationships with existing customers, Performance Plus continues to raise the bar in janitorial services and construction cleanup in Indiana.