When it comes to the state of the industry, landscape professionals are still dealing with the same old problems — finding labor, the rising costs of paying said labor and passing those costs off effectively to customers.
To gain insight on how leaders in the industry are handling these hurdles, this year’s Lawn & Landscape Top 100 Executive Summit included an State of the Industry Panel. Panelists featured were Jeff Domenick, CEO of KeyServ Companies; Kevin McHale, principal with McHale Landscape Design; John Moehn, president of ExperiGreen Lawn Care; and Hugh Cooper, COO of Russell Landscape Group.
“Overall, the industry is very strong,” Domenick says. “The things we’ve experienced coming out of COVID have calmed down… I think we’ve all pulled the pricing lever a little hard and now that lever is getting harder to pull.”
Cooper echoes his sentiments and adds that during the COVID-19 pandemic, and for a good while after, customers were more receptive of price increases. Now that’s starting to change.
“There’s pressure with labor — and so there’s pricing pressures with the increase cost of labor,” Cooper says. “That’s a continuing struggle.”
ON THE LOOKOUT FOR TALENT. While labor has been an ongoing issue for quite a while, companies across the industry are looking for new, creative solutions.
For Cooper, that means taking an increased interest in the next generation of workers. He admits that a large part of his job is going out to universities and trying to find those future leaders of the industry.
“There’s not enough information to the younger generation that this is a good career and a good way to support a family,” Cooper says.
Though Domenick mentions college campuses aren’t the only place to find top-tier talent.
“Bringing more people into the industry is really important — there’s a propensity you got to go to college but there’s a lot of people who don’t. I’m not sure that as an industry we do a good job of creating a vehicle for these folks who enter our industry and getting them when they’re 18 and bringing them in versus a plumber union, electrical union or other field,” Domenick says. “Our goal is to hire at only the lowest levels of the organization, so we hire them young and bring them in and bring them up and promote them so we can help them achieve their personal, professional and financial goals.
“We’ve started a management training program and are spending more time on recruiting,” he adds.
For larger companies with multiple branches, perhaps even across multiple states, Domenick and Moehn stress that recruitment really needs to be done as locally as possible and it should be a team effort.
“Labor is obviously at the front of mind almost every day,” Moehn says. “We hired a recruiting manager who talks with branch managers and sees what kind of support he can give them to bring in folks.”
McHale Landscape Design is taking a different approach to finding quality employees.
“The shrinking pool of landscape professionals is another challenge for us,” he says. “The way we’ve pivoted through that challenge is through acquisitions. Companies have come to us and say they wanted help — so we’d pull them in and do an asset purchase and set it up as an earn out. That’s how we’re getting experienced landscape professionals.
“All the founders and owners are still with us and all their people are still with us,” McHale adds. “Acquisitions have been very effective for us so far.”
Though despite a string of successful acquisitions, McHale says the ever-increasing labor rates are still difficult to navigate.
“Wage inflation, not just field staff, is a challenge,” he says. “It’s something we’re really paying attention to. This year we were very conservative with raises. We addressed it head on to the people so they could understand why we chose to do it… we created a gross margin bonus program. If our gross margin is up, we’ll share it with the employees and give it back to them… and they were very receptive to it.”
SHAPING YOUNG MINDS. But back to hiring young, eager people excited about the industry. No matter where you find these employees, it’s important to not only keep them happy and mentor them — but learn from them as well.
Cooper says to get them ready to take on the industry, a thoughtful training program is important.
“We created Russell Landscape University,” Cooper says. “That has been a huge success with our employees and letting them know they can build a career here with minimal experience. It’s also helped to attract new talent.”
And once they’re ready to hit the field, Moehn says make sure their hard work is compensated and appreciated.
“We pay our associates for getting a good Google review as well,” Moehn says. “We’ve had 5,000 reviews this year.”
Domenick and McHale share that adding some “new blood into the business” has also helped tremendously in terms of growth.
“We hire smart, young people,” Domenick says. “They are looking to make their jobs easier, and they want to go fast. They’re a little closer to that technology so having those people in the business is really refreshing.”
McHale Landscape Design has even created a new position in order to advance the company’s technology use and bring in new ideas.
