[fakie99]

hi all - hope everyone is having a great season so far. it's been very busy for us so far....

...but.... i'm in my fourth year, and i think i've finally reached the end of my rope. we've had great clients, lots of fun projects and we've done pretty well financially for a four year old company. but, i have gone through countless employees for one reason or another, and i just can't do it anymore. we can sell jobs all day long, pay our overhead and have a good profile in the community. but without good, qualified employees, my company is NOWHERE.

i've tried job fairs, promoting from within, MANY MANY newspaper ads, friends, etc. and cannot find qualified people.

i'd like to know if there are any secrets to finding good help that i am overlooking. anyone ever "outsource" thier human resources or use a temp agency with any luck?

thanks for any help

jim

[VoodooChile]

Have you tried cloning?

Seriously, the keepers are few and far between, and you have to expect to winnow plenty of chaff to get a little wheat. Once you got the good guys, then the focus must be on proper training and fostering a good company culture that will rub off on the less than stellar.

Too bad all that is easier said than done, and when we are wildly busy, like in May, all that falls by the wayside. Today I had two of my best guys working with some new hires and in spite of constant supervision, the inefficiencies abounded.

For instance, do you walk 50 yards to toss 1 piece of burlap in the garbage can, or do you drag a bucket along and cram that dawg to overflowing before taking your stroll along the sidewalk? Guess you can guess how my guys decided to answer that one today.

We've always paid really well, but I think the disconnect between high pay and profitablity is growing larger as these guys more and more expect the good life without the strife of busting your butt for it.

I still cant' wrap my mind around 5 guys taking 5 hours to plant 55 shrubs, with a supervisor. If you do the math, that's a shrub every half hour. Even my ground down butt can bust out a b&b shrub every 10 minutes, easy, all day.

I think the COMPASS system concept of making the employees benefit from effiencies is the solution, but getting there isn't so easy...

[site]

All I can say is I feel your pain.

[Fine Edge]

I agree it's very hard in today's market to find the keepers. I put an ad in the paper here that broke on Friday and haven't had one call yet. Maybe people really don't know what hardscaping means. The words pavers, walls, patios & stonework should be enough of a clue.
I really need 3 - 4 more guys with the workload that we've got but I might have to sub some out if the right help isn't out there.
At least that way I can stop by to check on quality but it scares the hell out of me when I have to trust someone else on my job.
Voodoo, please call me first if you ever get the cloning thing down pat.
Take for instance my concrete guy that put a 5" pitch on 10' of concrete decking around the pool, going the wrong way!!
We supervised the tear out and the setting of the new forms and by the time I set up our laser, his men had already started setting the forms - ALL WRONG AGAIN!!
I tried in my most passive voice to explain the correct pitch was a minimum of 1/8" per foot but didn't need any more than 1/4" per foot maximum. He looked at me like I was talking Swahili and couldn't comprehend the correct pitch computation. So, we check and double check and thought they had it when we left that day.
We go back a week later to check the remaining forms and guess what? Now there is pitch going the right way BUT TOO MUCH PITCH!!! 4" over 4'. This is someone who owns a business and should at least know the basics.
Throw in the pool guys that didn't repair the cracks in the pool before they put their skim coat on and now the cracks are weeping water through the skim coat. Finally got it fixed and the applied the latest pebble finish - not cheap - and the finish had peeled away in a spot or 2 just 1 day after being completed. And the repaired cracks are showing a dampness through the finish>

How can we expect to find qualified help when the business owners themselves are not setting their standards to the levels that they need to be?

[Stonehenge]

I think that a lot of it comes down to your managerial skills, and whether you can take coal and make diamonds, or just more coal. I've been fortunate to know and work for a few people that were really good at making people perform at their peak and like it - the problem is, so often it involves taking time that it just doesn't feel like you have to give. But I know taking that time can pay off down the road.

And it's not the kind of time investment you make once and expect to reap rewards forever. You have to keep at it.

I know I'm sounding like the voice of experience here, but I'm not. I've seen some great managers at work, and even had a few stints where I was pretty good at it, but it seems that I haven't done much good managing since I donned the fire chief's helmet that comes with the other hats you wear when you run a landscaping business.

So my answer to the original question is - get better at getting the most out of the people you have. I have the feeling Paul is good at that - during a couple phone chats and in person chats he seems to take problems and come up with reasonable, do-able solutions pretty quickly ("buy a whistle" for the guy who can't seem to yell when he's guiding someone backing to a trailer).

[TrickyDick]

So how do you make employees benefit from efficiency? Do some of you have profit sharing programs or give foreman a percentage of accounts they handle succesfully? I'd like to do something like that with our lawn foreman (like if we don't get complaints and the property looks good every time I go see it then you get a percentage of the gross) but haven't worked it out yet.

[Paul]

Throwing money at won't work, you have to make them feel that they are making a contribution to the company and getting something out of it. How many here remember their employee son's or daughters birthday? or their wifes birthday? Ever think of giving them a gift check for a restaurant? How about even talking to them about family life?

Managing people is a skill thats best learned early in ones life.
As you deal with customers, and respect them how about the same for people that work for you? Just a paycheck dosen't cut it in todays world. Knowing your people, how far they want to go in your company, what they can do, and gently shoving them to improve. You have to think on how to improve production, how to keep an open mind when dealing with them and thinking both ways their side and yours.


Remember employees talk to each other, so make the best of it.

[BigD]

I think that one of the major problems is that a good portion of the qualified employees are "donning the fire chief helmet" themselves. Which leads to a frick & frack landscaping company on every corner.

With that being said, coming from the employee side of things, having a brief "class" before a project started would help. Just going over a quick time-line, going over any "difficulties" that are going to come into play, and depending on the difficulty a quick plan and possibly letting the "foreman" see the plan prior to the day of the project starting.

I understand that the idea is for the "foreman" to be able to do this stuff on his own, but remember that, assuming the owner does the selling and design drafting, the owner has had possibly months to mull over the project and whoever is getting the plan has about 45 minutes.

I hope I haven't offended anyone or pissed anyone off, just some quick thoughts from the other side.

[HardDaysKnight]

Jim, four years into it is no time to quit. You already passed the first hurdle. Many new enterprises fold within the first 3 years.
To be a good owner/ manager is similar to being a good salesman. You have to learn to coddle people.
Focus on things they like outside of work and every now and then pick something up you see in a store or whatever that
you think someone would like. It's really the little things
that show them they are more than a pair of hands.
We have managed to make them friends and it makes work
a better place. They know the difference between the boss
and the friend because of the little things we do for them.
Hope this helps...DON'T give up!!

[fakie99]

thanks you everyone for your thoughtful replies. i certainly don't want to quit, that's for sure. it is mighty hard however to treat one's employees well and have them leave after three-four year for .25 more an hour.

Paul said above: "Throwing money at won't work, you have to make them feel that they are making a contribution to the company and getting something out of it. How many here remember their employee son's or daughters birthday? or their wifes birthday? Ever think of giving them a gift check for a restaurant? How about even talking to them about family life?"

i used to truly believe this. i had one guy who had been over to my house many times, his kids played with mine, he ghot all the time off he needed to take his kids to the doc, etc. and he just decided to take a job at a few cents more an hour, with no notice whatsoever. i wonder if it matters truly how you treat your employees sometimes....

not that i don' like "people", but i have always disliked the human resources aspect of most jobs that i've had. or perhaps i just don't have a well -developed instinct to hire quality people. and i don't know if that's something that i can "sub out" to someone else.

on the plus side, we remain busy, with some very good projects. i will just have to be in the field a bit more than i should be for the time being.

the work is out there for the taking for us landscape business owners - this is a great biz to be in. i really think that the ones who master employee development will be the ones in it fo rthe long haul.

[ckcland]

Not to get into a touchy political subject but depending on your location try immigrant(mexican) labor force. My experience is they are not cheaper as everyone says...but most do have a great work ethic. Look into the H2B program. You can actually control the visa. Try contacting your local Hispanic community center, probably listed in the phone book under "La communidad hispana". Good luck.

[cutntrim]

Well, I started out hiring friends but all my friends are too old now to draw from any more. Friends or current employees sometimes work out. Students are easy enough to find, good ones...not so easy. Full-time, year-round help? That's tough. I've got three students right now but they're gone come end of august. So at the moment that leaves me...and my 59 year-old dad.

Not sure where to look, but I know what I like to look for. I try to find guys who play sports 'cause they're used to following instructions and they know what sweat is. Good luck.

[Turtle]

I recently had this conversation with a another company. They have ten maintenance crews alone. I happened to be at a property where we both have a condoiniom complex within the same complex.

Anyhow he said they get a lot of their workers from companies that you know pay the minimum wage such as targets, gas sations etc. They also have an employee bonus for bringng in people that work out. He also said that by hiring people that had no experience in lawn care and training them their way was easier than trying to change someone with experience who thinks they're an all star.

we might think of those workers as possibly lazy but maybe theyve never thought about landscaping as a career.

Just think they went thru some serious customer service training at least. So I thinkthe next time i'm impressed with someones work ethic at one of these stores I might try to hire them

[Stonehenge]

That's not a bad idea, Turtle. Back in the day I worked for a non-landscaping company and was given the job of starting their foreign language ops (mainly Spanish) - I knew a woman who gave great service and Spanish was her first language, but she worked at a candy store (I was quitting smoking and scarfing down candy instead). Even during the interview she asked why we were bothering with her, as she had no relevant experience (other than the language). She turned out to be probably the best hire for that team.

[trees]

Another great idea is to volunteer time to a local community college with a landscape program. Offer the dept. head to come in a few times as a professional guest lecturer. This way you'll get to know some young up-and-comers in the industry on a more personal level and create interest in your company as a potential employer.