Recruiting and retention tips

During our Turnaround Tour 2017, we found that all three of the companies we visited have had some challenges in the people area. We have found that recruiting and retention of the right people has now become an even greater challenge throughout the entire landscape world!

Things have changed dramatically and just in case your organization hasn’t felt this new era of an employees’ market, it’s probably because you are not paying too much attention or are too busy and just keeping your head down and plowing along or are extremely fortunate.

Over the past couple of years, the economy has returned and many good employees are being lured away from companies just like yours. People are being offered 20 to 30 percent higher wages by companies outside the green industry as well as green industry competitors.

So before you launch a recruiting campaign, make sure you have the retention part of the people equation down and I mean really get very good at this part of the employee equation.

Folks, it doesn’t make sense to go out and recruit new people only to lose them for the same reasons you are losing people now. Just STOP and get this part fixed!

So, what is it at your company: Does retention or recruiting need attention? Or do both need attention?

Here are some simple tips that we have reviewed with our Turnaround Tour companies.

Retention or recruiting, which comes first? Determine if you have a retention or recruiting issue or both. If, for example, some of your good employees are leaving while the low performers are sticking around, you may have a retention issue. If good employees are leaving and you can’t find good ones to replace them, then you really do have a big retention challenge and need to get your people program in place stat. This might even require a “culture makeover” and professional help. Find this out and get it resolved before you launch a recruiting campaign.

Find out the root cause for employee departures and root them out!

Pay rates and bonus programs. Are you competitive with your compensation package including base wages and bonus programs? When was the last time you adjusted your pay rates? Check on these and compare them against the competition and learn what the going market rate is for your type of employees. You can’t compete with completely different types of industries but you should be very competitive within your market for landscape people.

Build and shape the right culture. Every company has its own unique culture. How would you describe yours? Does it need some work? Remember, this can either be one of your most attractive recruiting and retention tools or, if it’s not in good shape, your worst. Conduct an employee survey by an outside third party and learn why people stay and why they would consider leaving. Many people leave for pay and even more leave because of a poor culture or a bad boss. Listen carefully and take action before more of them jump ship!

Take stock and good care of what you have. Know who’s currently on board and what performance and potential levels they possess. Identify development needs and retention strategies. Sit down one on one with each of your key employees at regularly, quarterly at the least and monthly at the best, and take the time to listen and learn where they want to be in your organization in one, two and three years from now. Map out a game plan for them to achieve their goals.

Build a career ladder. This shows people that there are opportunities ahead and what they need to learn, behave like and the levels to perform at in order to get raises and promotions. Have very clear expectations for performance and for pay.

Offer a reward. Engage your best to help find more of the best. Offer a very healthy reward for bringing in the right people. Make it worth their while, like in the $500 to $1,000 range and break this payment out over a one-year payout to have them help you find them and to keep them on board.

Hiring and onboarding. It’s important to make this a positive experience for new employees. Focus on ensuring their safety and providing them with the proper tools to become positive, productive team members. Assign new employees a “buddy” to help them through the first 90 days. They can check in weekly with the new guy and see how things are going and take their temperature. We are even recommending that companies build their own on-boarding videos to help the newbies get on- board quicker.

These were some of the tips we offered our Turnaround Tour 2017 folks and we are now offering them to you! Let us know what tips you might have and we can try them out and let you know how they work.

If your company might be interested in being selected for the 2018 Turnaround Tour, please CLICK HERE for information on how to get over $25,000 worth of consulting and coaching from Head Harvesters Bill and Ed.