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If every employee is thought of as a company ambassador – the face of the business and a sample of what the firm has to offer every customer – then what owner would dispatch team members into the field without holding a rigorous and ongoing boot camp? The products and services you sell are available from competitors. “The only thing we have to sell is ourselves,” says Pat O’Bryan, general manager of Jamison Pest and Lawn in Memphis, Tenn. When his company was a two-man outfit, he treated every lawn and knew every customer. Today, he relies on his employees to carry out that example of quality and customer service. Training ensures that a company’s philosophies, quality standards and, at the base level, its services, are carried out according to the standards set by the owner and/or management. Training is insurance, in a way. By teaching employees the right way to get it done, you avoid potential losses (customers, reputation, bids). “Professional and personal development should be a priority for every company,” says Elias Godinez, vice president and co-founder of Pacific Landscape Management in Hillsboro, Ore.
Jamison Pest and Lawn
But the invaluable result of training is, ultimately, customer referrals. “What is a satisfied customer base worth?” O’Bryan asks. “People are so conscious of how they spend money these days, they are really looking for value and service.” These principals must be taught. And, at Jamison Pest and Lawn, the actual practice of treating lawns or controlling pests also must be taught. That’s because O’Bryan’s recruiting efforts focus on hiring for attitude and not necessarily aptitude. “We find the best people we can, and we break down our training into bite-sized bits,” he says. Specifically, O’Byran leads classroom sessions that correlate with the guidebooks for state certification for lawn (category 3) and pest control (category 7) in Tennessee. A new lawn care technician will learn about labels, safety, spill control, the works. “As they progress through the certification and understand mixing, pouring, personal protective wear, they are also out in the field,” O’Bryan says. This class time is important for O’Bryan because he gets to know each new technician. “I can make sure every employee is off to a successful start,” he says. “You learn a lot about people when you are actually working with them.” New employees meet with O’Bryan every day in the classroom for a couple of hours, “so they probably feel like they know me well enough to say, ‘Can we talk?’ if they need help,” he says. Building a strong comfort level is a precursor to delivering quality service. And as the company has grown from two people to nearly a dozen, O’Bryan recognizes that every employee is a spokesperson for Jamison Pest and Lawn – and that he is no longer the “face” of the business. “If employees aren’t excited and glad to be part of our team and have that service heart, they are not going to fit our culture.” Some of the “service heart” O’Bryan refers to is innate: a technician who picks up a client’s newspaper from the curb and takes it to the door. Other aspects of service are taught during monthly meetings, and O’Bryan digs deep. He trains employees to only write on service tickets in red pen because that color stands out on the light-green paper. He teaches them ways to write notes on those service tickets that are easy to understand and concise. He emphasizes why technicians must knock on doors at every stop, because O’Bryan finds that a good portion of customers are actually home during the service and appreciate the personal contact. Nothing is left to chance. “We talk about body language and how to answer the phone,” O’Bryan says, noting that while getting his master’s degree he wrote a business plan for a lawn care/pest control company and surveyed his class to find out what bugged them most about these services. “They hated when lawn care companies said they were going to be there and then didn’t show up,” he says. This feedback and other learning from this business plan helps drive training, along with real life experiences in the field. Role playing is an important part of the company’s regular meetings. “We ask the guys, ‘Who has had a great customer service experience – and who has had a terrible one, and why?’” O’Bryan says. Sometimes, he relies on training videos to augment the information in a safety or customer service training program. He has tapped into industry associations for training materials and online curriculums. Meanwhile, when O’Bryan identifies a star – someone with management potential – he assigns the team member to a special project. “That exposes them to that management way of thinking,” he says. O’Bryan also invests in sending potential leaders to management seminars at local universities. The payoff for training at all levels is growing an organization of strong, service-focused, quality-minded leaders. “Training keeps employees engaged and makes their jobs more enjoyable,” O’Bryan says. “They’ll be better at their jobs, they’ll feel better about that and they’ll represent your company better.”
Test the training. O’Bryan gives crewmembers quizzes after bi-monthly training sessions to be sure everyone understood key talking points. Encourage leaders. By giving go-getters special projects, O’Bryan gives these employees a chance to think like a manager, and he can see how they perform and help them succeed in a decision-making role.
Pacific Landscape Management A company is only as good as its employees. That philosophy drives a robust training program for crewmembers at Pacific Landscape Management that shows everyone they are valued. The return on investment for the Hillsboro, Ore.-based firm is high employee retention. “Our company is going to be ten years old this year, and some of our guys have been with us for that long,” says Elias Godinez, co-founder and vice president. A commitment to training means keeping education at the forefront of the business. The company does this with layers of learning: an annual training day where all employees gather pre-season; onsite training for new employees, and weekly half-hour meetings during which employees take turns presenting on various topics for a couple of minutes. Plus, all training is presented in English and Spanish. New-hire orientations for Spanish and English speaking employees are held on separate days. But for weekly meetings, Godinez relies on his bilingual employees to serve as translators as he conducts the class in Spanish. “We want employees to work in an environment that is comfortable,” he says. Quality, attention to detail and teamwork are emphasized in training from day one. An employee’s first day is broken into two parts: company history and policies, where incentives and payscales are also covered, and a basic equipment overview, including getting to know the truck and trailer. From there, foremen take over on-the-job training. “They locate those new employees and spend quite a bit of time the first week to make sure they are learning the equipment,” Godinez says. Godinez says employees spend about a month getting to know equipment – “we make sure they are learning each piece slowly” – and all workers get a “checkup” on equipment skills at the company’s annual training day, where all employees from the company’s three locations gather at headquarters for a full day of learning. “We start with a presentation about the prior year’s success and failures,” Godinez says, adding that the discussion includes goals and objectives for the coming year. “We share financial numbers with them. Then we show the orientation program again, which serves as a refresher so they don’t forget about our beliefs and values and so they know exactly what new employees have heard about their first day.” The basic equipment training is repeated, along with PowerPoint presentations on different subjects, including loading, unloading, onsite organization, mowing, etc. Godinez also teaches courses on understanding business decisions and how to survive and thrive as a Hispanic in an American culture. (He has taken these topics on the road and presented them at PLANET’s Green Industry Conference.) This enthusiasm for training is passed on to employees by giving them an opportunity to give short safety presentations during weekly meetings. The employee presenting chooses the next week’s “speaker,” who can choose any safety topic. Crewmembers who prepare and present well are rewarded with a lunch bag or coffee mug – and positive feedback from fellow team members. “At the beginning, they may feel uncomfortable speaking in front of other people, but after a while it gets easier,” Godinez says, noting how this activity builds professionalism and team spirit. This attitude, and upstanding quality, is evident on job sites, Godinez says. “You can see them focusing on details or whatever we just trained – you can see the effects.” QuickTips: Encourage apprenticing. Crew foreman work one-on-one in the field with new employees as they learn each piece of equipment in the fleet. After a month of supervised work, employees are prepared to work more independently. Train professionalism. Learning extends beyond basic equipment know-how at Pacific Landscape Management. Godinez wants his workers to feel empowered to succeed, so he also provides business-focused training that builds leaders.
Mariani Enterprises ISO is the ultimate in accountability – a system used by manufacturing firms and all types of corporations all over the world to develop operating standards that are audited. ISO is the International Standard for Organization, and Mariani Enterprises is the only landscape firm that is ISO-certified, says Stacy Betz, human resources director at the Lake Bluff, Ill.-based company. “The simplest form of ISO is to write down the processes for everything you do – you say what you do and do what you say,” Betz says, noting how the company created flowcharts that document every procedure. This process triggered the company’s training matrix: a detailed spreadsheet that outlines every weekly training meeting spring through fall, and includes every employee’s name. Crew leaders are responsible for tracking who attends every meeting, and anyone in the company can view the chart and find out which employees missed a session. The result of this progress chart-style system is more interest in training topics, more ownership in the overall training curriculum and better results in the field. When the company first began using the matrix system, the rate of completion (percentage of employees who attended all sessions) was in the high 70s to low 80s. These numbers were presented during quarterly management review meetings – and the management team recognized they needed to emphasize crew leaders’ roles in upping the training success rate. “Their attitude shifted to, ‘We need to get 100 percent,’” Betz says. “Managers started holding crew leaders responsible for training: This is part of your review. You need to make sure you carry out this training.” Now, the completion rate is close to 100 percent. Essentially, the urge to improve training trickled down from upper management and has now permeated the entire employee population. That’s not easy in a firm this size. “When you have more than 400 employees, it’s difficult to make sure everyone gets the same training,” Betz says. “Now, we have the documentation and paper trail to make sure training is taking place and we can be sure to do makeup sessions with employees who missed any sessions.” The training matrix for an upcoming season is completed in fall by production managers, who develop the topics. They plug in sessions that focus on procedural and safety topics. The matrix isn’t set in stone – training sessions can be swapped out or edited mid-season to accommodate real needs, such as if crew leaders notice performance is lagging in a certain area, or if environmental conditions warrant a special topic, etc. There is flexibility – but there is a process and, importantly, accountability. In fact, ISO auditors can check up on Mariani Enterprises at any time and find out if employees marked as attending training truly did – and that they honestly learned something. “(Auditors) can come to us, look at the training matrix and see who attended training,” Betz says. “Then they can take it one step further and go out to the crew and ask the crewmember, ‘It says you attended: What can you tell me about it? Do you recall the training?’” In other words, the matrix involves much more than marking an X by every employee’s name and each training session. Simply showing up to training is not enough. “We have a more educated team because they are going through the training and we have brought companywide recognition to our training.” Crewmembers appreciate training opportunities. Crew leaders embrace topics and suggest relevant ideas for the training matrix. “The more visible your training system is, the more effective it is because employees know you are making sure it gets carried out,” Betz says. “Employees know we are making an investment in them.” QuickTips: Hold them accountable. To obtain ISO certification, Mariani Enterprises had to define every process – and to maintain certification, these processes are tracked and audited. Training has become everyone’s responsibility. Make it a team effort. By giving everyone at the company access to the training matrix and who attended sessions, employees encourage each other to attend to boost the company’s overall participation score. |
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