Trimming time

Linda Grieve: "We may be pretty lean and mean for another year." Photo: Perennial gardens Linda Grieve knew early in 2009 that plans for expansion would be benched this year. Maintaining steady business would be tough enough. “We had a nasty spring here, and the phone didn’t ring,” relates Grieve, president of Perennial Gardens in Des Moines, Iowa. “We were concerned as we were bringing employees in to start the season.”

She was worried there wouldn’t be enough work to fill employees’ usual five-day 45- to 55-hour workweeks. Overtime was typical, and generally the company sold out its available work hours two weeks to a month ahead of time. “By June, we are usually sold until at least September, then in August when kids are back to school, the phone starts ringing and we’re sold through Christmas,” Grieve says.

Perennial Gardens usually completes a couple of jobs in the $150,000 range each season. Not this year. Big jobs were $20,000, and most customers wanted projects in the $2,000 to $5,000 range. That put a lot of pressure on designers to constantly sell.

Reacting to the sluggish market, in July Grieve restructured employee schedules to a four-day, 40-hour workweek. Open communication with the 30 employees was important to helping them understand why the change was necessary. Grieve held a meeting and explained the national economic outlook, narrowing the focus to Iowa and then their own neighborhood. She showed everyone how much work was typically sold by July, comparing that to work sold in 2009. “We showed how many workdays that translated to and emphasized that we didn’t want to cut salaries,” Grieve says. “We want to treat our people as well as we can rather than doing surprises.”

Surprises are the last thing her employees wanted. They shared news that other companies had let go half of their crews. They were grateful that Grieve was doing all she could to keep people on board.

Meanwhile, the four-day workweek jumpstarted efficiency, and Grieve noticed employees became more mindful of time taken to load up trucks and drive to jobs. “The shorter workweek made everyone rethink what they were doing, how they could do it in less time,” Grieve says.

Also, Grieve gathered feedback from employees about the schedule. “Employees feel comfortable coming to us and saying, ‘This isn’t right,’ or, ‘This really works great,’” she relates.

Unfortunately, the four-day workweek didn’t trim labor costs enough, and Grieve recognized that rather than working until the end of December, their year would probably finish at Thanksgiving. In August, she let go a garden crew – one she added two years ago. She took them out to lunch, and expressed her difficulty with the situation. She had never let go an employee who didn’t deserve to be fired. In October, she laid off a designer for the season; in early November, she said goodbye to a design assistant.

“Hopefully next spring we can bring them back,” Grieve says, though she says a board update from the American Nursery and Landscape Association suggested the recession would last through 2010 and begin to turn around in 2011. “We may be pretty lean and mean for another year,” she says.

Strong communication will continue to be a focus at Perennial Gardens as Grieve maintains the high morale of employees and makes sure everyone understands the reality of the situation. “You treat your employees like family, you have them at your home, you talk to them, you celebrate their birthdays,” Grieve says. “Hopefully, we can keep our good people and expand their schedules.”