What do we stand for?

“I never met a company in any industry that doesn’t talk about culture,” says Rich Curran, vice president of sales and operations at Vande Hey Company (VHC) in Appleton, Wisconsin. “Mostly, if you ask what the culture is, they will give you a trite answer. They can’t really define it.”

Curran likens it to telling a child to clean up his room and growing frustrated with the results. “It’s not cleaned to the way you want it because you never taught the child how to do the job,” he says.

It’s back to the adage, “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.”

Similarly, the VHC leadership team recognized that how the company conducts business, and the experiences it creates internally and externally, must be clearly defined and put in writing. VHC is a third-generation family business with Andy Vande Hey at the helm, and the company is working on its 75th anniversary, founded in 1950. The company generated more than $13 million in 2023 revenue and employs more than 100 employees.

VHC started as lawn installation expanded into landscaping, patios — then landscape lighting, sunrooms, athletics and pools. In spring 2023, VHC opened a pop-up showroom and garden center at the Fox River Mall campus so guests could experience and learn about its range of outdoor living solutions as what they call the largest provider in northeast Wisconsin.

Like any growing, evolving business, VHC recognized its expansion and inherent labor challenges had resulted in some inconsistencies.

A culture revival was in order.

The initiative started on the heels of COVID-19 in a brainstorming session that was kind of awkward at first. “It was, ‘Wait, what are we doing?’” Curran says, adding that the initial session prompted those involved — 10 senior managers — to identify some fundamentals for the company. Basically, what does it take to be successful as a team member and what should clients expect from a VHC experience?

“The first couple of meetings, everyone was trying to be poetic,” Curran says with a laugh. “It was very obvious that people had been looking at templates on how to do this and we were trying to be so perfect in the way we said things.”

Real talk emerged when the team discussed what VHC could do to be itself and not like other companies. “What’s really important to us?” Curran says.

There was no target number of fundamentals like a top 10 or core five, which might fit a marketing mold but wasn’t what VHC was after. The team landed on 34 fundamentals. “And they speak clearly to who we are, what we are about, our expectations to be a part of this organization — and we do not waver from that,” Curran says.

Of course, it all sounds easy when you read it on paper. But the process, the adoption and truly living these fundamentals is the real story.

Who do we want to be?

It’s not that the system was broken. “It was inconsistent,” Curran says.

“Like a lot of companies, we have employees who have been here a long time, and they understand the way we do things,” he explains. “Some are better at teaching. Some are more demanding. As we continued to grow and bring on new employees, that consistency of who we are and what we are about was starting to get…confused.”

With the pandemic exacerbating an always-tough labor situation, VHC, like others in the industry, was running into situations where employees would come on board from other landscape operations and bring “a mix of values” that further stirred the pot. Also, there’s the generational piece as a third-generation business employing the old and new schools — tech-adverse folks and digital natives.

“We said, ‘We can keep getting frustrated, or we can clearly define what behaviors we want, from how we treat each other to what we do on jobsites and how we interact with customers,” Curran says. “If you don’t clearly define that, employees will define it for you.”

Management held some training and coaching meetings to learn more about the process of creating values before rolling into that first fundamentals brain dump. As for the ideas bouncing around the room, “They were all over the board,” Curran says.

The team considered what qualities exist that it wants to sustain — and what must-haves were waning or missing completely that needed to be integrated into the VHC so it could advance for the next 75 years of its life as a family business.

For one, the company has a very low workers’ compensation rating with few accidents on record. “We are very deliberate and intentional about that,” Curran says. So, the No. 1 fundamental is “think safe, work safe.”

Curran says, “Sometimes, we noticed our employees will filter comments when they really do need to speak their minds. We want to create an environment where everyone’s ideas are legitimately welcome at the table.”

That led to the fundamental, “speak straight.” It requires open doors and open minds. “The best ideas can come from anyone, anywhere in the business,” he says.

This prompted the “diversity of thought, background and experiences” fundamental. Following it is the importance of being a lifelong learner and leading with education. “We have an educated team and are leaders in the industry, and we encourage our people to continuously learn,” Curran says, adding that this means attending conferences and participating in company training — including personal and professional development segments the team records on a weekly basis.

“Walk in customers’ shoes,” is another biggie. “Honor your commitments and make sure you give back,” Curran adds, rattling off more VHC tenets.

So, the fundamentals flowed.

And to be sure they didn’t land on a wall placard or web page to sit static, “We put our money where our mouth is,” Curran says. For instance, related to giving back, VHC established a foundation. The first 10% of all profits go to the foundation and are distributed to charitable organizations in the community.

The next 20% of profits go to employees through a profit-sharing program that is disbursed quarterly and at years-end. “We are in this together, we lose and win together, and we are going to live in this family we call a human enterprise business in the landscape industry,” Curran says.

The fundamentals in action

What started as a “clunky” process, Curran says, evolved into an inspired, energized mission and vision — basically a guide of how to do VHC and life. The management cohort that assembled the 34 fundamentals rolled them out at a company-wide meeting.

“It was a great team-building event, too,” Curran says, adding that employees were broken up into small, deliberately cross-departmental groups of six or seven. “We asked them to discuss the fundamental that is most difficult for them, which is easiest, then hash out why,” he says.

Breakout sessions involved presenting common challenges, then addressing how applying the fundamentals can solve problems. “When people look at our fundamentals list, the first thing they said was, ‘I get it from a work perspective, but most of them are about life,’” Curran says.

Exactly. That’s the idea.

VHC launched a program called Diane Dollars, named after Andy’s late mother, which encourages employees to recognize each other for living out a fundamental (or many). They can use Diane Dollars at the annual company party for prizes like power tools and flat-screen TVs.

“Now, on a regular basis, we’ll hear employees calling out a fundamental like, ‘Hey, that’s not speaking straight,’” Curran says. “So, we are self-policing, and every business owner wants a culture where employees are holding each other accountable to upholding standards.”

With Culture Cash Dollars, employees can also earn prizes for living out the values. “We are constantly calling out examples,” says Kelly Smith, marketing director. “We might say, ‘Because of this situation, we saved X dollars on equipment this year.’ The more examples we have been able to share during the last two years, there’s a greater understanding of putting the fundamentals to work and their impact.”

The language is more than words: It’s actionable and in play.

VHC’s implementation has made its fundamentals part of what it stands for. “If employees can regurgitate a fundamental on a daily basis and put it back out there, that tells me they are embracing it and living it,” Curran says.

“Also, there are measurables, such as the foundation and profit-sharing plan. By eliminating waste, preventing damage and walking in customers’ shoes, we are now seeing the fruit of that and 2022 was overwhelmingly the best year in company history by a long shot,” Curran reports.

VHC grew 8% from 2021 to 2022, growing by $2 million and more than $1 million from 2022 to 2023 to approximately $13 million. Curran emphasizes, “It’s organic growth and because we are seeing a significant improvement in quality and consistency across the board, and we are attracting a high level of employee,” he says.

There are more and better applicants, which is ultimately what triggered this whole process. “When the number of employees leaving plummets and the number of team members who come to VHC for a career skyrockets, it tells me we are on to something,” Curran says, acknowledging that four years ago, the revolving door was beginning to become a problem. “That has almost gone away.”

This is a lifestyle

Now at VHC, there is more clarity and focus. People feel empowered. They’re making decisions with confidence, working more efficiently and engaging more intentionally with customers on the job site.

Not to mention, gradually after implementing the fundamentals, employees who decidedly would not rise to the standards self-selected out of the ranks. This attrition was healthy for the company and its revitalized culture.

Curran says, “This is not just a program. This is a lifestyle, and we hold people accountable to it.”

He adds, “We do not waver — this is who we are, and it did take employees some time to realize, ‘This is not a rah-rah-rah speech.’”

To be expected, there were a handful of toxic people on the team spreading negative chatter about fundamentals and the culture shift. “Every time one of them left, the culture took another step forward,” Curran says. Within six to 12 months, everyone on board was really on board.

The results of implementing VHC fundamentals are personally fulfilling for team members, he adds. For instance, with the formation of a foundation, they realize their hard work generates dollars to do good for organizations that matter to them. “When your employees see you stand by your values and see we are giving money we all worked for to establish a foundation, they want to be part of that,” Curran says. “It changes the person, and when people love where they work, they go home differently.”

More and more, the conversation Curran overhears is focused on a career vs. “this is my job.”

“And this is a great industry to make a career out of and support your family,” he says. “I see the rolling impact for our employees — offshoots of this process, including the support we now offer like financial counseling if employees want or need it.”

Perhaps the most exciting aspect is, the initiative is young. “We are still in the baby stage,” Curran says. “We’ve been doing this for two years — that’s nothing. Where will we be 10 years from now?”

And above all, a point of pride and winning outcome for VHC leadership is fostering a workplace community of nearly 100 team members who can support their families, grow and develop their talent, and go home happy.

Curran says, “We are creating a lifetime of change here.”

The author is a freelance writer based in Cleveland.