Hiring staff for your lawn care and landscaping business.
When should You be thinking about hiring a lawn care employee?
There are a few different trains of thought about how you would manage your lawn care business.
Some people are happy staying the size they are and running their business lawn and landscape business as a sole trader or even a husband and wife team. They are happy doing the lawns they have and will take on new ones when they have a space available. This is more of a lifestyle business.
The next method is a business owner who manages everything and wouldn’t mind a new employee to help with the workload. They have no plans for massive growth however they are not opposed to the idea of hiring lawn care workers as they need them.
Lastly, there is someone who wants to go large. Put lots of vehicles on the road and hire lots of lawn care and landscaping employees to fill them. This was the original road I went down, however after getting five vehicles on the road and bringing on over 450 lawns, I found that I did not enjoy being an employer.
This does not mean that I am opposed to going large. It is a great idea and it can be a great way to grow your business and become a little more hands-off as far as work in the field goes. I will tell you about how I got my first few employees and what I would change if I did it again.
The Pros of Hiring Lawn Care Employees
These are the things that I enjoyed about hiring an employee.
Increased efficiency and productivity
This is probably the number one reason why businesses hire lawn care employees. Simply said, you get more done. However, before you run out and bring on your first new hire I would like to tell you some things that I noticed that not a lot of people talk about.
When doing your sums, take into consideration that two people in one vehicle do not go at twice the speed of one person. I know this sounds strange but it’s true. If you allow in your figures that the two-person team will run at 1.5 times the speed of a sole operator your cashflow predictions will be a lot more accurate.
Ability to take on more clients and projects
Hiring lawn care employees and landscapers is going to allow you to take on jobs that you would have had to have turned down due to a lack of resources. Do keep in mind that if you take on extra work you will need to keep track of all your different jobs using lawn care software like Jobber.
Opportunity for business growth and expansion
You would also be able to branch and expand your business into different areas such as landscaping, full service, and lawn care teams. This will also allow you to take on larger commercial jobs.
Commercial work generally pays more and is easier to manage on the downside larger contracts mean fewer clients. One rule of thumb that you should think about is never take more than 25% of your work from any one client.
Cons of Hiring Staff in Your Lawn Care Business
When you start taking on staff for your lawn care service, it’s not all roses it does have its downsides too.
Increased payroll and overhead costs
You now have more mouths to feed. As soon as you start hiring your payroll and overhead costs increase. Lawn care and landscaping is a labor-intensive business so your profit margins are not great. You can build a great business but it needs to be run like clockwork to maximise your returns.
If you pay any kind of sales tax, GST, or VAT fees, that is going to come straight out of your profits. You will not be able to claim anything back on your labor costs for your lawn care company.
Then remember that you are going to have to add in health insurance, medical, holiday pay, etc. This is going to increase the amount that you need to spend on employees.
Added responsibility as an employer
From the moment you start hiring your first employee, you are going to have to be responsible for keeping them in work. In the early days, you may have to accept jobs that you don’t want just to keep the work going. We were fortunate because although we ran five vehicles we only serviced regular lawns. If you are running a landscaping crew as well it becomes a balancing game between having work lined up and the client waiting too long.
Potential training and management challenges
One of our biggest headaches when hiring new employees was to find the right employees. We found that finding the best employees was not easy. When you advertise a lawn care job, you will be surprised at the number of people who feel that “mowing the lawn at home” is good enough to apply for the job.
I ended up telling people not to dress up for the interviews because they would be showing me their skills with a trimmer. At least this gave me an idea of their skill level.
Considerations for Hiring Staff
When it’s time to scale your business and you decide to take on staff then there are a few things that you would need to consider.
Identifying the specific needs of your business
Firstly, you need to get the right person in the right position. You need to work out exactly what you need from your new lawn care employees.
Are you looking for people to work full-time, part-time, or even casual?
A good thing to go for here would be a mix. It will give your business more flexibility. We employed all our workers on 30-hour work weeks with overtime available when needed. This allowed us to stretch to cover someone’s workload if they were off sick and it made catching up after public holidays easier. You just give everyone an extra hour or two when you’re running behind.
Do remember we had clients with regular bookings. If you were doing larger landscaping jobs and one-off work, that would not be so much of an issue.
Creating clear job descriptions and expectations
First, make sure that your job posting has clear and appealing job descriptions that will attract the right kind of candidates.
Don’t just advertise your job opening online put up some notices in some high-traffic places where your potential employees might visit. The local mower shop, the local dump, etc.
If you are looking for casual or temporary employees for your lawn care business, don’t overlook colleges and universities. Sometimes you can contact them directly and they have some sort of job search program going. One of the best places to find a great employee is from within the business itself by getting existing employees to recommend friends, however, you do need a larger workforce to do this successfully.
You will get better employees if you offer competitive wages and benefits. If you offer below-average wages then you will attract below-average employees.
Finding the right candidates with the necessary skills and experience
Are you going to look for experience or do your own training and start from scratch? There are a couple of schools of thought on this. Some people look for experienced employees and they feel it will get them on the road faster. Some employers want to hire people without experience and train them within the business. This eliminates the chance that the new employee was trained badly or developed bad habits at their last job.
When you first start hiring employees it may be tempting to hire family. They need a job, you have a job and it makes sense. Think long and hard before doing this. Our first hire was my brother-in-law and that ended badly.
A warning
Before you employ a family member. I would like you to do a thought exercise. Imagine that you employed the family member that you are thinking about and things went badly and you ended up having to fire them. How will they react? How will this affect your family life? How will it be at weddings, funerals, or any family function? If I had done this through exercise first, I would never have employed him.
I thought that hiring a family member, that when issues arose they would help me navigate the path of becoming an employer. This never happened. In fact, out of the twenty or so people we ended up employing, he was the only one I had to engage an employment lawyer for. We ended up losing a lot of money.
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Establishing clear communication and feedback channels
When you start the hiring process, one of the most important things to do from the start is to set up good communication channels. I found that I got better feedback from my clients once I started bringing on employees. I think that comes down to human nature. People are less likely to complain to your face, however the moment you send an employee around they will be much more likely to contact you if they have an issue.
When this happens, don’t see it as a bad thing. It’s a great resource to help you streamline your business and make sure the work is up to scratch.
Providing ongoing training and development opportunities
When you start hiring lawn care employees it is good to have a great onboarding process. Write out the steps for every job and make sure that the systems are being followed to the letter. I know that you cannot expect to achieve the MacDonald effect where everything is identical. However, a good step towards this would be having the customer not be able to tell the difference between the lawn care job from one mow to the next. Even if it is done by two different employees.
There is a great book on creating systems for your business called The E-Myth Revisited: by Michael E. Gerber (Author). You can read this book for free with a 60-day free trial with Everand just follow the link, get your free account, and search for the book.
Implementing effective scheduling and time management strategies
As I said earlier, if you’re hiring staff then you want to be able to track what they are doing and how they manage their time. This is where software like Jobber can help. If you are running good software it can save you hours of admin time each week and save you from having to get someone in the office in your early days
If you would like to find out more about the different types of lawn care management software then this article will help you compare them and find the one that suits your business. Finding the Best Lawn Care Business Software: Ultimate Guide
Alternative Solutions to Hiring Staff
Outsourcing specific tasks or projects
One thing that we have done in the past is to partner up or pass work onto another lawn care or landscaping company. We have had jobs come in that we have sent other companies to do the job and the client pays us. We have a couple of jobs like that at the moment.
One is a large furniture warehouse that pays us to manage the lawn, driveways, and gardens. We outsource both the driveway and the garden work. The other companies turn up, do the work, and bill us. We then add a percentage and bill the client. That works well for all of us.
Utilizing contract workers on an as-needed basis
If you are looking to bring someone onboard for a short-term or as-needed basis then the local school or college could be a good place to start. You could even bring on seasonal interns who can gain experience in the lawn care industry and supply you with extra labor at the same time.
You could offer work on short-term contracts, however, it would be hard to get any real commitment from someone in this kind of work.
I once sold a lawn care business to someone who used it as a method of getting homeless people back on their feet. It was a win-win all around. However, do be careful if you try this as it can go downhill quickly. You need to work with someone who is 100% committed to turning their life around.
Investing in technology and equipment to reduce the need for additional staff
I have already talked about lawn care software covering that extra person in the office. You can do the same thing by getting larger machines which cover a greater area in less time.
One thing that I have been watching with interest is the growing availability of robotic mowers. There is already one business called Robin in the US that rents out these mowers. The operators come around, set up the mower and then it continues with minimum input needed. You can read about them discussing the business model in the Lawn & Landscape magazine.
Increase Efficiency:
There are a few areas where time can be saved and ultimately time equals money. These can be simple things like not accepting cash and therefore eliminating the need for your employees to know at the door and wait for payment.
We have also found that we can increase profit by 30% by running one-person crews. As I said before two people only increased income by 50%. You would have to test this in your own business first. This is just a personal observation from our own business.
One of the biggest time killers in a lawn care business is travel. If you were to invest in GPS fleet tracking software it could cut travel time by a huge amount by giving up-to-date information and getting your guys from job to job quicker. Again the Lawn & Landscape magazine has a great article on that.
Conclusion: Hiring staff for your lawn care and landscaping business
To wrap up when considering hiring staff, for your lawn care business it’s crucial to assess factors. This article explores three approaches to managing a lawn care business; maintaining a scale for a lifestyle-oriented approach hiring employees for efficient workload management or aiming for significant growth with multiple vehicles and a larger team.
Benefits of Hiring Lawn Care Employees;
1. Enhanced. Productivity; Bringing in employees can boost productivity. It’s important to realistically consider the speed at which work can be completed.
2. Capacity to Take on Clients; Hiring enables you to accept jobs expand your business and diversify into different services.
3. Opportunities for Business Growth; Scaling up with employees allows you to expand into areas and take on larger commercial contracts.
Drawbacks of Hiring Staff in Your Lawn Care Business;
1. Increased Payroll and Overhead Costs; Adding employees raises costs in labor businesses, like lawn maintenance, which can impact profit margins.
2. Added Responsibility as an Employer; Becoming an employer means assuming the responsibility of keeping employees consistently engaged in their work, which may involve initially accepting jobs.
Dealing with Potential Challenges, in Training and Managing Staff; It can be quite a task to find employees so it’s important to consider whether to hire experienced workers or invest in training a job seeker from the ground up.
B. Encouraging Thoughtfulness towards Business Needs
Before deciding to bring staff on board readers should thoroughly assess their business needs and goals. It’s essential to weigh the benefits of increased efficiency expanded client capacity and growth opportunities against the challenges of costs added responsibilities and potential management hurdles.
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Considerations when Hiring Staff;
Identifying Specific Business Needs; Clearly outline the roles and responsibilities required for hires based on your lawn care business’s demands.
Creating Transparent Job Descriptions; Develop enticing job descriptions. Explore advertising avenues that attract candidates.
Finding the Candidates; Whether seeking lawn care professionals or offering training opportunities aim for a well-rounded and skilled workforce.
Establishing Communication Channels; Set up communication channels to receive client feedback and streamline business operations.
Providing Continuous Training Opportunities; Implement an onboarding process that ensures service quality and adherence to established procedures.
Implementing Efficient Scheduling Practices; Utilize software tools, for scheduling and time management to track employee activities effectively.
In the scheme of things deciding whether or not to hire employees for your lawn care business is a choice that should align with your business objectives, available resources, and management abilities. It’s worth considering options, like outsourcing, contract workers, or incorporating technology to achieve flexibility while meeting your business requirements. Thoughtful planning and careful consideration will play a role, in ensuring the long-term prosperity and sustainability of your lawn care venture.
I hope this helps and good luck with your next step in growing your lawn care and landscaping business.
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