BEST OF THE WEB: Seal of Approval

One of the pitfalls of growing a landscape company is the loss of quality control.
 
Business owners, who once had direct contact with and oversight of each job site, must entrust managers and crew leaders to maintain the landscape company’s quality standards and practices. It’s a concept that is sound in theory but, as many landscape contractors discover, very weak in practice.
 
Why does quality so often suffer, Lawn & Landscape Message Board participants debated recently and how can this obstacle be overcome?
 
Ronald Barnhardt, president of Barnhardt Landscape in Rockwell, N.C., faces the same dilemma. The owner of a small but growing landscape firm, he can no longer be in the field as frequently as he once had. Lately, despite his best efforts to counter it, the quality of his crews’ work has slipped.
 
“I’ve attempted to keep the quality of work at a high level,” Barnhardt posts. “But I am losing control. It is impossible for me to go to all of the properties to follow up on crews. How do I get control of quality?”

When employees don’t perform to high standards it is often a reflection of a failure in training, some landscape contractors offer.
 
“Who’s doing your training? You?” posts Matthew Schattner, owner of Mat’z Snow & Lawn in Kansasville, Wis., “Are there inconsistencies from other trainers that you’re using? Or, are your employees simply becoming too lax about quality standards?”
 
Poor training seemed a logical answer for deficiencies in job quality. However, some contractors offered that this may be a communication problem and the quality standards needed to be re-evaluated. Setting extremely high standards sets up workers for failing in that they can never achieve the level established by the owner.
 
“When it comes to quality control problems, most of the time I’ve done a poor job of communicating with employees what the company’s expectations are (for them or for a particular project),” posts Michael LaPorte, president of Commercial Scapes in Bristow, Va. “It is important to get the foreman or manager to see what you see.”
 
Some contractors say quality control is a personnel issue and that sometimes an owner doesn’t have the right leaders, those conscious of quality-control issues, in charge of maintenance or construction crews.
 
“I would take a close look at your employees and really figure out what the problem is,” says Kory Ballard, owner of Perficut Lawn & Landscape in Des Moines, Iowa. “The foreman should be held accountable for the work. Don’t be afraid to let the problem people go. You just can’t tolerate anything less than excellent quality.”

SMART HIRING. Employees do play a major role in delivering high-quality landscape services to clients. However, landscape contractor Michael Lysiak, owner of Lysiak Enterprises in Johnstown, N.Y., posts he has had difficulty finding a maintenance crew leader or a foreman who can keep up productivity and quality standards.
 
Paying a competitive wage is a good starting point for securing a quality job-site leader, contractors post. In fact, quality control, contractors say, boils down to having skilled, quality-conscious foremen and site managers in place to lead work crews and ensure company standards.
 
On average, landscape contractors pay their foremen annual salaries of $31,077, according to Lawn & Landscape’s 2006 State of the Industry report. The greatest variance in foremen salaries, though, is seen between landscape firms earning less than $200,000 in gross sales  ($25,576 in annual salary) and those earning more than $200,000 in gross sales ($33,076 in annual salary), the findings show.
 
However, once employed, an owner’s ability to retain quality workers, both inside and outside the green industry, remains increasingly difficult. For example, 49 percent of employers indicated they implemented special employee-retention strategies in 2006, up from 35 percent in 2004, according to a Society for Human Resource Management study.
 
The best employee-retention strategies, cited by human resource professionals in the SHRM study, were promoting qualified employees, offering competitive merit increases and salary adjustments and providing career-development opportunities.
 
Coincidentally, the top reasons employees left their employers were better compensation, better career opportunities and dissatisfaction with their career development path, according to the SHRM study.
 
Financial compensation plays a vital role in retaining a quality foreman or site supervisor, contractors say.
 
“Figure out a way to pay him a good salary year-round,” posts Jamie Bush, president of Jamie’s Lawn Service in Plano, Texas. “You can cut back on a laborer’s hours and he may leave, but you can replace him. But come spring, you need to know the foreman is going to be there.”
 
A good rule of thumb, some contractors post, is to pay them the amount they could be making if they were doing the jobs themselves. If a good foreman can do all of the tasks on his own, what is the incentive to stay at another contractor’s company? Consistent pay and a rewarding job experience will win out, they post.
 
However, while a sound principle, Schattner argues that providing quality pay does not always ensure loyalty.
 
“Last year I had a really good employee all summer and through the winter,” Schattner posts. “We had a bad drought last year, but I kept him busy doing stuff I really could have handled myself because I wanted to keep him in the money. I did my best to keep him, but when a factory job offering $11 an hour to start came along he took it. The moral to the story is that sometimes you can do everything possible to keep a good employee, but in the end it all boils down to luck.”
 
EMPLOYEE EVALUATION. Employee evaluation is another important step in maintaining quality control standards, posts Chad Stern, owner of Mowing & More, Chevy Chase, Md.
 
“Being a good manager of good people yields good results,” Stern says. “Work on hiring an awesome field foreman who runs a tight ship and does not let anybody get out of line. Your foreman will be able to ensure quality and efficiency if he is good at what he does and if he has a good crew and good equipment to match.”
 
When a completed job does not meet his expectations, Andrew Aksar, president of Outdoor Finishes in Walkersville, Md., makes the crew tear it out and redo it.
 
“I don’t yell and scream at them and stand there waving my arms and hands like a mad man,” Aksar says. “I calmly explain the flaws and why they are flaws and I calmly explain that we must redo. And I help in tearing it out and I help in getting them started. They either learn to have my eye for quality or they tell everyone I’m the biggest (expletive) and they quit.”
 
Barnhardt, who made the original post, believes his quality control issue is more of an attitude problem. “Guys just want to get it done as quickly as possible. It may be that I should look first at the managers doing the training then at the crew leaders.”