Finding a process for your processes

Hazeltine Nurseries has doubled its business since 2001. But its employee roster, 140 employees, has not changed. Stephen Hazeltine, president of the Venice, Fla.-based firm, recalls an “a-ha” moment back then when he calculated how many employees he would need to hire in a few years’ time if the company continued to grow at a 30 percent clip: 280.

“We didn’t feel we had a complete grip on the 140 employees we had at the time,” Hazeltine says.

Rather than hire more people, Hazeltine began to formalize processes that had naturally evolved over his 25 years in business. He started putting details on paper.

Ultimately, he created a process for his processes – a book detailing how problems are identified and evaluated, how changes are proposed and ideas collected, how the value of those changes is calculated (ROI), the best way to complete the process, measure it and enforce it.

It’s no easy task. But process is Hazeltine’s specialty these days. “I very much enjoy this part of the business because you are constantly trying to figure out better ways of doing things,” he says. “Anything you schedule or get rid of the variables in, you’re going to do it better.”

Hazeltine says his ultimate goal is to make people’s lives easier. That’s also the job of supervisors and crew leaders. “So every time I create a process, the idea is to make clients feel more satisfied, to manage people and to make more money,” he says.

The first place Hazeltine started five years ago was in the garden maintenance division. Initially, the division existed to uphold the integrity of landscapes the company installed. “We never looked at it as much of a profit center, but when it hit $2 million five years ago, and we were losing 20 percent, that’s massive,” Hazeltine says. “So we had to pay more attention to it.”

After putting in place a custom scheduling process that takes “habit out of the hands of employees,” the division went from a 20 percent loss to 10 percent profit in a year. Now, garden maintenance is one of the business’ stronger divisions.

Before, employees might unintentionally over-service an account because tasks weren’t carefully tracked. They might apply herbicide weekly when the property only needed it every few weeks. They might do extra trimming, just in case. By creating a 15-point checklist that is filled out one time for each property and entered into a computer system, every task on the property is scheduled. Before crews head out for their routes, they print their daily jobs and every task is listed. No guesswork – no overcompensating. Most of all, no lost time or revenues.

“The process is very simple,” Hazeltine says. “We didn’t go out and make anyone work harder. We simply did away with wasted habit.”

An assembly line process cut the fat out of Hazeltine’s equipment maintenance routine, saving hundreds of dollars and ensuring that every tune-up from changing blades to the final cleaning of a mower is complete.

“The reason why you have an assembly line is because that manages time for people,” Hazeltine explains. “The more we can convert our processes into assembly lines and set times to processes, that becomes a management tool so you don’t have to have a manager there. The process becomes the manager.”

Gathering employees who help maintain equipment (collecting feedback for the process is huge for buy-in, Hazeltine points out), the company mapped out the maintenance process from beginning to end. One employee is responsible for one step of the process, and they work in an assembly line fashion.

The key to designing systems is to be sure you can measure their success. Hazeltine says the assembly line system created a 50 percent savings for that operation. Meanwhile, now that daily profit-and-loss statements are evaluated in the construction division, labor efficiencies are up 25 percent. The same rate of efficiency was achieved with better job planning.

By involving employees in process-making and creating check systems, Hazeltine fosters a culture where employees want to practice the process they helped to build.

“No one really wants to change,” Hazeltine says. “But if you make processes habit-forming to them, and when you can show them the measurables and that it saves time or money, those are great tools to get buy-in from employees.”

The author is a freelance writer based in Bay Village, Ohio.
 

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