Careers in Linen, Uniform and Facility Services
Employment in the linen, uniform and facility services puts your skills to work in a fast-growing and dynamic industry. Whatever your educational or work experience background, you can find a rewarding place to start and a variety of positions to grow into.
Department Roles and Positions
Most workplaces in the industry are laundries or service centers that supply, launder and maintain linens, uniforms and other reusable textiles for all kinds of businesses. Such laundries handle millions of pounds of these products each year. These facilities operate more like manufacturing plants than laundromats. Products are delivered directly on trucks from laundries to customers’ business locations directly or to a service center where they are held and then delivered. The highest ranking position in a laundry is usually the General Manager (GM) or, in a service center, the Branch Manager. Whether you are hired to train for a management position or your background qualifies you to start immediately as a manager, you will likely be initially assigned to one of the following four departments.
Under the auspices of a General Manager (GM), these functions ensure that a linen, uniform and facility services laundry serves customers with complete, timely, high-quality orders and the operation is financially sound. Corporate headquarters in multi-location companies provide support as well
Levels of Management Chart
Administration
This department handles largely correspondence, invoicing and other business office operations. Leaders are Office Manager and Accounting/Billing Manager positions reporting to the General Manager (GM) or the two positions may be combined. More employees are needed for this function if the laundry is a single-location operation or has only a few locations, as opposed to a larger chain with headquarters personnel who perform these tasks for the company’s laundries and service centers. The same applies to functions such as purchasing, equipment selection, marketing and other practices performed by corporate headquarters/regional office staffs rather than individually by location management.
Engineering / Maintenance
Reporting to the GM is a Chief Engineer who supervises a crew who maintains and repairs the laundry equipment and building and works closely with other laundry managers and supervisors to maintain performance quality and meet standards of safety and cleanliness. An engineering crew performs routine and preventive maintenance and operates and maintains boiler and wastewater systems Housekeeping/janitorial staff maintains overall cleanliness including restrooms and floors and removes trash, lint and dust.
Production
Linen and uniform laundries typically structure production management according to workflow function: soil sorting (of items returned by customers into washloads), washing, drying/finishing (removing wrinkles) and packout (loading for delivery, inventory management). Each function often has a supervisor who reports to a Production Manager who reports to the GM. Equipment (and jobs associated with running it) for soil sorting, washing and drying are fundamentally alike in linen production and uniform production. Linen finishing requires personnel to feed sheets and towels into machines for folding and ironing; uniform finishing requires placing shirts and pants on hangers for steam tunnel finishing and sorting on rails into bundles of uniforms customized for accounts and wearers. Linen is packed out into bundles for shipping; hangers with uniforms are tied out. Inventory control functions take place in a “linen room” or uniform “stockroom,” which requires more sewing and tagging for customization (alterations, emblems, inventory control tags).
Sales/Service
Most service positions are route drivers, either Customer Service Representatives (CSRs, hourly or salaried) or Sales/Service Representatives (SSRs, largely incentive-based pay). They may report to route supervisors or directly to a Service Manager who reports to the GM. Many operations also have office-based salespeople who may report to a Sales Manager who reports to the GM or the sales/service management position may be combined. CSRs/SSRs typically concentrate on renewing existing business and upselling while salespeople add accounts.
TRSA Career Center
TRSA’s Career Center enables you to quickly and easily find relevant industry job listings and sign up for automatic email notification of new jobs that match your criteria. Apply online and create a password-protected account for managing your job search. Make your resume available to employers in the industry, confidentially if you choose.
Laundry Operations and Management
Laundry Operations and Management gives you a solid understanding of the best practices and fundamentals of linens, uniform and facility services processes. You’ll learn the whys and hows of each function in a laundry or service center from soil sorting through delivery. This 200-page primer provides information on equipment, department interdependencies, processes and best practices, emphasizing management issues. There’s no better resource for preparing to advance to a General Manager or corporate administrative position.
