Team effort for training

Last year, Belknap Landscape recognized it had a training problem with its field workers. During a meeting last winter, several team leaders and managers noted that they received frequent questions from crew members on how to perform jobs they had already been trained on, particularly those working in the company’s construction division.

“(In that department), they were saying they couldn’t leave their guys on a site without getting a million calls on, ‘how do I do this?’ type questions,” said Brian Thompson, irrigation and lighting specialist at Belknap. Thompson serves as the team leader for Belknap’s irrigation department, which manages about 160 accounts in the Gilford, New Hampshire, area.

As a solution, Belknap tasked its team leaders in every department to create a comprehensive field guide by spring 2018 to help answer crew members’ “how do I do this” questions. Thompson said having a field guide for each department should answer some of those basic questions and free up team leaders and managers to help with bigger problems.

“If they have a question in the field, instead of panicking, they can check for the answer in this field guide first,” he said.

Thompson is putting together the company’s field guide for the irrigation department. For his section, he included training on how to set up irrigation systems, reasons for setting them up that way and safety in irrigation.

“Sometimes you’re dealing with electricity and water in irrigation, so it can be dangerous,” he said. “So, I wanted people to know how things work, what style heads and nozzles go where and how to make adjustments or repair a break.”

While Belknap’s irrigation department only has two full-time employees, Thompson said he regularly has five to six other employees from other departments help to perform work during the busier spring season.

“That’s where cross-training is involved,” Thompson said.

So, to answer some of the basic questions crew members have when helping his department, they can turn to the field guide he’s working on and come to him with larger problems.

Thompson said he would recommend other companies consider offering a field guide or written training manual to help address more general questions workers might have on the jobsite. Also, he advised having workers who are trainable in the first place.

“You have to find the right people for your team who want to learn,” he said. “Even if someone has no irrigation experience, they might be a good fit for the job if they have a willingness to learn. The one guy who works with me was hired with no irrigation experience, but he ended up the right person to hire because of a willingness to learn the basics.”

Off-season education.

Aside from in-house training materials, Thompson said Belknap sends team leaders and managers to receive outside training in slower seasons like winter. All managers typically attend two to three outside training events during the off season.

For the irrigation department, Thompson said he attends Irrigation Association events as well as local vendor training events close to home in winter such as those hosted by Stateline Irrigation Supply.