Today’s workforce is very different from the workforce from the pre-pandemic time of 2019, points out Steve Cesare, who holds a doctorate in industrial/organizational psychology and is with The Harvest Group, a nationwide landscape business consulting group in Vista, California.
He and other industry experts offer advice on how to mitigate the resulting challenges.
“In 2019, everybody had a job. They were moving, making progress and making money,” Cesare points out.
A variety of factors emanating from the COVID-19 pandemic has made it “very difficult for service industry employers now to recruit, retain and motivate their employees” as they try to balance hiring difficulties with high pay requests that may complicate gross margin goals, he adds.
Cesare offers three avenues to address that challenge, leading to employee retention. One is to pay more as an incentive. The pay factor is important in that work in the green industry is physically challenging, something that isn’t attractive to everyone, Cesare points out.
“You have to sweat most days to make an impact to get promoted and be recognized,” he adds. Some people would rather work in a more cognitive capacity.
Second is to establish a peer bonus plan through a work group or team.
“If every member of that team comes to work every day in a month, that whole work group gets a bonus,” says Cesare. “Conversely, if any one member is late even one time during that month, the whole team forfeits its bonus. In a way, that team is managing itself.” An attendance bonus can help get them to come back and establish the diligence to show up to work every day.
Employers can establish an employee retention plan with the career ladder explained during the interview process that illustrates what it would take to advance to a supervisory level, notes Cesare. That paints the picture that the company is invested in the long term for employee retention and is supported with ongoing training for safety and skill sets.
A third approach is to establish a company culture, a driving factor for employees seeking a team-oriented and social culture with peers.
“It’s having a company that values the same values and priorities that I value,” says Cesare. For some employees, “work is not about their life, their life is about their life.”
Meet employees’ needs
You can’t always get people to show up, says Jeffrey Scott of Jeffrey Scott Consulting in New Orleans, Louisiana, who works with lawn and landscaping businesses through consulting, coaching and peer groups.
“The key is what you do with people who do show up,” he says.
That means “plugging the holes in the bucket before we try to fill up the bucket,” Scott adds. “The best thing you can do when people are leaving your company is to do an internal survey to get honest feedback. Find out what people love and don’t like about your business.”
The most successful approach in getting people to show up is understanding what employees really want, says Neal Glatt, managing partner at GrowTheBench, Hopkinton, Massachusetts, which provides online education for the landscaping and snow removal industry.
While pay is important, he cautions employers to not ignore employees’ other needs, with growth and development opportunities being paramount.
“The number one perk people want is job flexibility,” says Glatt.
The factors that are having the greatest success in the current workforce are the creation of a workplace that focuses on employee career development, upskilling employees to promote them and job flexibility, Glatt says.
“Traditionally, the green industry has been a field where flexibility wasn’t really provided,” he adds. “We don’t have the same opportunities for remote work, but we do have opportunities for flexibility around start time and potentially around commutes. Whether or not we allow someone in the field to keep their vehicle for personal use are all leverage opportunities. We have to be able to deliver on that value.”
Purpose is one key factor in getting people to show up, Glatt notes. That purpose is found in having a job that creates spaces in the natural environment and protects plant health, increasing quality of life. This is well-established through research, he adds.
Protecting the environment through water conservation is another value underscoring the purpose of a green industry job, Glatt points out, adding “the majority of irrigation technicians and frontline workers are not being told why what we as companies do is so important. That’s a mistake of managers.”
Presenting a company to an employee as a step in their career rather than just a job to show up to starts during the interview process, notes Scott.
It’s incumbent to show applicants that if they join the company, “there is a trajectory of success, new skills, new pay and new responsibility for further growth,” says Cesare. “We can connect the dots going from a new employee to an established employee to a supervisor over the course of two to three years.
“That paints a picture where the employee can say, ‘If I invest this effort in an equilateral way, I can benefit short term and long term in making my skills more marketable.”
Glatt says he worked with an irrigation company that offered promotions within the first two weeks regardless of experience level.
“That promotion is going to be contingent on your ability to show up, be teachable and wear a clean uniform,” he says. “If you do those things and demonstrate the right values we’ve established, then within two weeks, we’re going to promote you right away. That promotion goes from provisional technician to junior technician.
“Two weeks after that, we can promote you again as long as you can show us certain skills. For this company, that meant the employee being able to change an irrigation head on their own.”
That sets up an experience of quick wins, says Glatt.
“If you’re going to say this is somewhere where you can build a career, then an employee is wondering ‘What does that look like? What is the education I get? What opportunities do I have?’” says Glatt. “At the same time, ‘What are the expectations that I’m expected to live up to? What does quality performance even look like?’ All of these expectations are usually not discussed. As a result, employees think that there is no growth opportunity because it’s never explained to them.”
Stand apart
There are several ways a company can set itself apart from others so that it is more attractive than comparable employers.
“That can be physically what it looks like in your business,” says Scott. “It can be the amount of time you spend not only interviewing but also how you onboard somebody. Spend a lot of time onboarding a couple of days upfront. Spend time training them over the first few weeks and months.”
Distinguishing one’s company apart from others comes down to establishing the company as a brand, says Cesare.
“Are we customer service-oriented? Detailed? Expensive? Thorough? Prompt? Neat? What’s our company brand relative to the competition?” he notes.
Those factors not only differentiate one company from another to customers, but it also trickles down to the employee or applicant level, Cesare adds.
“The external brand is replaced by the internal culture that hopefully attracts employees,” he adds. It is increasingly important for executives and managers to have strong business ethics.
“If we don’t have good role models at work, if our bosses are sketchy, if our managers and our executive team and our supervisors do not have moral integrity and truth – that will disenfranchise workers very quickly,” he says. “The executive team must be very sincere in their role with the employees and treat them as humans rather than mere assets. The frontline supervisors have to take an active interest by being strong ethical role models by being decisive, competent and actually caring about their employees.”
“Most companies’ job postings just list the job descriptions and responsibilities,” Glatt points out. “Here’s what you have to do, here’s the experience you have to have, you have to have a driver’s license. That’s not very appealing. What’s appealing is talking about the opportunity and the fact that the employee works for an important company and would be part of the mission and vision.”
Another factor with proven impact on bringing in new potential employees is discussion and promotion of active corporate social responsibility, or anything that the company does to help the environment, strive for diversity and inclusion, and help the community, says Glatt.
“Basically, our ability to serve anybody besides just ourselves in terms of making a profit,” says Glatt. “If you tout those things on the job description, then you can expect a 30% increase in job applicants.”
With a significant lack of younger professionals in the landscape irrigation industry as older ones near retirement, that creates the need to mentor and support younger professionals. That presents opportunities for helping younger employees view irrigation and lighting as a true career with potential for longevity, notes Scott. Connect with local high schools, universities and agricultural schools to encourage potential new hires. Include young people in the recruitment effort and use the platforms through which younger people get their information.
“Younger employees are going to want to go online to learn about a benefit, an opportunity or training,” he adds. “Show your new employee you’re cutting edge in your technology.”
Citing a Gallup assessment, Glatt notes among the managerial objectives proven to retain employees is making sure they feel cared about, have the resources and information to correctly do their job, ensure they feel their co-workers are committed to quality and their managers care about them as a person, and that their social needs are being met at work, says Glatt.
“Most importantly is that they’re being grown and developed,” adds Glatt. “Ninety-three percent of the time when millennials change job titles, they left their company to do so, which means when someone’s looking to move up in their career, they’re not seeing that opportunity at their company except for 7% of the time.”
“Every company I know would gladly pay more for better people,” says Glatt. “But they’re just not having that discussion to make sure their employees know, and so their employees are leaving their company.”
