Focus your time on eliminating reasons that demotivate your people and you’ll improve employee retention, field productivity, customer service and ultimately, your company’s profits.

Every new hire is a new opportunity to find and hire a superstar in your business. Every wrong hire is one more person we have to manage, babysit, discipline, and eventually let go. People make and break us in the business – what could be a better investment of your time than a hiring process that helps you find the great ones and leaves the rest for your competitors?

One of the most important lessons I learned in my landscape business is that trying to find and hire excellent leaders was going to take me a lifetime. We must continually invest in developing leaders in our company, especially the 5 leadership skills that are critical to successful foremen.

We are all aware of the major role that health and safety plays in the day to day activities of all those involved in the landscaping industry, or any industry, for that matter. Executing and maintaining a comprehensive health and safety program is not only the law, but also communicates to your employees, that you care about their well-being.

Mistakes are all-to-frequent in every company. It’s really easy to look back and blame someone, get frustrated, or shake your head, but it’s almost as easy to tune your ears to hear mistakes coming. The best mistakes are the ones you can stop before they happen.

Stress is excitement and enjoyment in your work gone wrong. It comes from many different sources in the landscape business but most of all I think it comes from a lack of planning and a shortage of systems.

I have come to realize after speaking personally with many landscapers in our management workshops and operating my own landscape company that most companies and managers in the green industry tend to hang on to deadwood employees for too long. Don’t be afraid of turnover. The success of your business depends on it.

Many of your staff will not have the natural tendency to resolve the problems they identify on their own. It is up to you, the owner, to create the culture that will not allow people to identify problems without solutions.

We all want to retain people and keep them at peak levels of performance. That’s because we understand that people are the driving forces behind our businesses. Without good people, we have nothing. In order to retain good people, however, emphasis needs to be placed on improving the quality of work life we offer them. [...]

While a weak economy does mean a higher volume of talent and therefore a higher chance of finding a star performer; a weak economy also means a higher volume of not-so-great candidates vying for a job with you. The real trick now is finding an effective technique to sort through a higher than normal volume of applicants, clearing away the low performers so you can find the few top performers who will be great assets to your business. Here’s how to narrow down the search and find the top performer for your business.