How We Do It: April 1999, Structuring Mowing Crews at Mike Ward Landscaping

SIZE THEM DOWN. For many maintenance companies, three- and four-person mowing crews are the norm, but we believe those crews are too large and will yield inefficiencies that take away from productivity and profits. Our mowing crews are comprised of one or two people, depending on the job.

Part of the reason we operate with such small crews is because we are able to. Our mowing jobs are almost exclusively residential or small (20,000 to 40,000 square feet) to mid-size commercial jobs (40,000 to 80,000 square feet). Each crew is then responsible for the mowing, trimming, edging and blowing on its properties. If we take on a job larger than 80,000 feet, we'll use multiple crews to mow that property in smaller, team-oriented situations where each crew has its own designated area to mow.

PAY FOR PERFORMANCE. The real key to our mowing crews' performance, however, is our system for paying them.

When we hire someone for a mowing crew, be it a one-person or two-person crew, they are quoted a base pay rate that is fair according to the competitive market. However, each mowing technician is paid on a commission system that offers them the opportunity to earn a certain percentage of what the job earns the company in terms of gross revenues. A two-person crew will split a certain percent with an experienced team leader earning a higher percentage than the other team member. A one person crew – which comprises a big part of our mowing efforts – earns slightly less overall in commission than what a two-person crew earns overall in its commission. This is required to balance the fact that a one-person crew produces less revenue than a two-person crew but has the same fixed equipment expense.

It's important under such a system to make sure you don't pay only the positive commissions without recovering the negative commissions, or else the technicians don't have any motivation to work hard to earn a commission every week. In addition, the commissions shouldn't be deducted from the technicians' base pay rates, and no matter how you customize your own compensation system, be sure you are in compliance with your wage-and-hour requirements.

It's also important to have a safety net pay structure that doesn't penalize employees for conditions out of their control, such as excessive rain.

The reason for adopting this system is that, as a company, the pay we receive is fixed compensation based on mowing throughout a 26- to 32-week season, yet we still have variable expenses based on our labor. Reigning the crews' production times in during less busy times and getting them to achieve the budgeted work time per job was a real challenge for us. This system gives crews the opportunity to earn more money while improving the companies performance.

Under this commission system our productivity has skyrocketed because mowing technicians now have the opportunity to increase their pay into the $9 to $12 range in terms of a per-hour wage.

One downside to the system for the employees is that while their weekly earnings are fairly consistent, their pay per hour isn't consistent throughout the year. They will make less per hour in the spring because of the rain, make considerably more per hour in the summer when they're mowing consistently and make somewhere in between in the fall when the grass isn't growing quite as much.

Quality control hasn't been an issue for us under this system because of how thoroughly we know our job costs for each job. In addition to our regularly schecduled quality reviews of our properties, we know that if a crew or a technician is regularly completing a job more quickly than the job is budgeted for, that job probably isn't being done properly.

The author is owner of Mike Ward Landscaping, Loveland, Ohio.

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