Giving Compass' Take:

• Aaron Seyedian created Well-Paid Maids, a start-up in Washington D.C. that guarantees workers $16 per hour and high-quality benefits. 

• How does this benefit not only the maids but the entire cleaning service business? 

• Read advice on how to build a social impact business. 

The home cleaning industry has a reputation for squeezing profits out of low-wage labor. But Aaron Seyedian is turning this model on its head, offering higher employee wages and better benefits. He is gambling that people will pay more for a cleaning service that does good by its workers, and that he will pick up clients new to the home cleaning market along the way.

Well-Paid Maids is Seyedian’s freshly-minted home cleaning service company based in Washington, DC. One key differentiator for the firm is its guarantee to pay workers $16.00 per hour—well above the national minimum wage of $7.25 per hour and the DC standard of $12.50 per hour.

Offering much higher pay and better benefits does increase business costs, but Seyedian is committed and already seeing results, as noted in an early September article in The Washington Post:

"In the business’s first week of operations, Well-Paid Maids scheduled at least two cleanings per day and had more than 30 customers schedule services, with some booking multiple appointments, Seyedian said. It was especially encouraging that so many customers were willing to try out a brand-new cleaning service that at that point had no reviews, recommendations, or references."

Read the full article about well-paid maids by Amanda Newman and Mark Popovich at The Aspen Institute