Standardized Systems and “Constant Recruiting” are the Tricks of the Trade for Successful Landscaping Businesses

Standardized Systems:

If you want to be more productive and more profitable than your competition, you need to put the right plan in place and your employees need to follow the systems and procedures of the business. These systems should clearly communicate how the company gets things done. Proper planning coupled with the right systems is the only way to ensure you can grow a successful business without needing to be involved in every bit of planning and execution. It ensures that we – and our staff – make decisions that serve our goals. Systems are also the only way owners can take the information and expectations out of their heads and effectively pass it on to their employees.  If it’s stuck in the owner’s head, the business will constantly be dependent on the owner to make every decision, to inspect all work, and to be responsible for ensuring proper execution and methods.  This responsibility and work will decrease the owner’s quality of life and limit the growth and success of the business.  The owner can only do so much!

The best way to predict our future is to invent our future.

People:

Most contractors are experts in their trade, but not experts in business. There’s no shame in that, we can’t all be experts in everything.  But surrounding yourself with cheap, average (or below average) performers will only rob you of your sanity and your quality of life.  Your business can have all the systems in the world, but uninterested, unmotivated people will find a way to work around them.  To manage this inefficiency, you’ll spend more money and more time managing people than you would have spent with a more highly paid, more competent employee.

If you want to take your business to a better place, you need to make sure your company has the engine to get itself there.  The engine that drives your business is your people.  Planning a big journey on an old worn-out, barely running engine is a fast road to disappointment.  You’re going to have to work twice as hard to compensate for your engine’s lack of performance.  Instead, before you plan on bigger, better success, first hire the people who will help you take it there.  It’s a tough journey on your own – you need people who can help you get there.

On that note, ‘constant recruiting’ is of utmost importance to the success of your business, which means you should be advertising constantly and you should be recruiting in more places, more often. Seasonal workers are laid off in November, December and January. This is your time to swoop in and pick up the best employees in the business. It may seem early, but it isn’t. Here’s why: at this time of year, you have the biggest pool of potential employees to choose from; whereas in the spring season you only get to choose from a small pool of remaining applicants that have already been picked over by your competition.

When you are constantly on the lookout for your next employee there’s no such thing as ‘reactive hiring.’ Instead you’ll see a steady stream of talent and you’ll constantly be at the forefront of finding more, better people. The extra weeks you hire and pay your new employees for may not be for productivity, but they’re for training on systems and processes, which will more than make up for in profits what you lost in employee pay. This hiring philosophy is similar to recruiting in the army. The goal here is to find potential candidates and test them to see if they’re fit for your business. You want to find the superstar of your business – the Sidney Crosby, the Kobe Bryant, the Derek Jeter – and when you’re constantly on the lookout for new staff and constantly upgrading, your people get better and better. These are the techniques that differentiate successful businesses.

Another good practice is to get rid of the people who can’t or are unwilling to do it all. For instance, if you have a crew of stone masons who refuse to do anything other than stone masonry, then you’re not operating at the highest capacity you can and it’s impeding your productivity. Landscapers should do it all. Vertical integration is the name of the game here. You should teach everyone to do everything in case the ball drops (i.e. someone quits, someone takes a leave of absence, etc.) You don’t want it to be that if your key person leaves, your business is shot.

Are you constantly recruiting? Or do you tend to seek out and hire new employees only at a specific time of year?

What are the key characteristics you look for in potential employees?