How to Find and Hire Great Lawn Care Employees

how to hire lawn care employees

Pre-COVID-19, lawn care companies throughout the U.S. had a hard time finding reliable help. A quick Google search for “lawn care jobs near me” still shows openings for those who want to work at a lawn care company right now. How do you hire lawn care employees who’ll show up for work on time every day? This blog post should give you some pointers, including:

  • Tips and tricks teaching you how to hire lawn care employees
  • Why company culture is vital for keeping employees in today’s market
  • Why you need a lawn care employee handbook that’s professional to protect you and your lawn care company.

9 Tips and Tricks for Finding Loyal Lawn Care Employees

Here are nine tips and tricks to guide you in how to hire lawn care employees:

  • Create a process for hiring that brings the candidates to you. Your hiring practices should include some marketing that highlights why your lawn care company is the best one to work for in the area.
  • Put your hiring process down on paper so you can repeat how to hire good lawn care employees. Once you have a method that works, you want to repeat it each time you need to add to your crews.

How do you know if you found the secret for how to hire good lawn care employees? You’ll be able to tease out certain behaviors, attitudes, and values that make a great lawn care employee.

For example, your candidates have solid references who connect with you instead of ignoring your calls.

  • Make your lawn care company a place where someone would leave their job to work at your business. That’s a tall order, but company culture is everything to today’s hires.

Today’s lawn care employees want to work in a company that treats them with respect—especially since they’ll be spending more time with their crews than with their families.

Other perks include laundry services for dirty uniforms, paid holidays, a workweek of paid vacation for new hires, and other extras.

Read more: Help Your Residential Customers with Pet Friendly Lawn Care.

  • Hire a human resource point person or invest in human capital management provider software (HCM). You need someone who knows how to recruit and how to hire good lawn care employees.

If you can’t afford to hire a full-time human resource person, you may be able to afford an HCM. HCM provides you with a software program that tracks applicants as well as provides integrations with job boards and social media among other features.

  • Make the online job application easy and quick. Today’s job seekers don’t want to spend more than 10 minutes filling out a job application. If you make the application process complicated, job seekers will go to the next lawn care company’s online application.
  • Pay your employees top dollar. You’re able to hold onto good lawn care employees when you pay them above the standard. Pay them below the norm, and you’re guaranteeing you won’t find the cream of the crop.

Also, if you happen to hire a top-notch crewmember for your lawn care team, they probably won’t stay with your company for more than a year if they’re not paid a fair wage.

  • Ask yourself, “Is this job applicant a good fit for my company?” You want job applicants who did some research before they came in for an interview. Does the applicant seem energetic and engaging? Will they seamlessly become part of your company’s established culture?
  • Check in with your employees to see how they’re feeling about your lawn care company. If you can afford it, hire a third-party company to conduct the survey. A third party will help your employees be more honest in answering survey questions.
  • Trust your employees to do their job without needing you to micromanage them. You don’t want to hover over new hires (or any of your employees). If you have processes in place for hiring, onboarding, and supervising, you can let go and allow your new hires get to work.

Read more: Top Reasons Why You Want to Offer Organic Lawn Care

Why Company Culture is Vital for Keeping Employees in Today’s Market

Think about it. Your average lawn care employee will be working 10-12 hours a day during the height of the growing season. Plus, your crews will also be working over the weekend, completing jobs that were rained out earlier in the week.

In other words, you want to make your lawn care company’s culture a pleasant one that employees look forward to going to work rather than dreading it.

If you’re just starting your lawn care business and you’re learning how to hire good lawn care employees, start with establishing your company’s culture.

Is there a lot of backbiting and gossip? High turnover? Then, you may need to improve your company’s atmosphere.

Watch more: Adjust the Height on Your ERGO-PRO™ Spyker Spreader

While your company may be new, you can still incorporate positive cultural practices by offering

  • Free coffee during tailgate meetings
  • Perks that don’t cost you a lot of money
  • Extra time off for employees
  • Paid holiday time.

Make working at your lawn care business fun too. Friendly competitions and free pizza can bring people together. Of course, paying your employees as well as you can afford to will foster goodwill and make your company an attractive place to work.

Why You Need a Lawn Care Employee Handbook

A lawn care employee handbook gives you four points of legal protection according to an article at LawnandLandscape.com:

  • Each lawn care worker or staff gets a written job description that specifies clear-cut expectations, job duties, and any other responsibilities that your employees must complete.
  • A lawn care employee handbook covers many policies and systems that work together for your lawn care business.
  • Your employee handbook should include a solid safety program that applies to each employee. In the age of COVID-19, your safety program needs to include CDC and OSHA guidelines for lawn care businesses.
  • You need a well-written lawn care employee handbook. Your handbook should cover a wide range of issues and policies. Copying and pasting a handbook template that’s haphazardly written won’t cut it.

Your employee handbook is a legal document that will protect you in case you have an employee problem. Invest in a professional to write one for you or have your human resource person write it for you.

Why Spyker Spreaders Are Always the Right Choice for Your Lawn Care Company

While we don’t sell human capital management software, we do have the best commercial spreaders on the market.

At Spyker, our commercial-grade spreaders deliver the best design in the industry. Our new Spyker Ergo-Pro™ Series Broadcast Spreaders are made for the pros, by the pros.

You can find your next Spyker spreader at one of our dealers. Can’t find a Spyker dealer near you? Then contact our customer service by calling (800)-972-6130 or by filling out our contact form.

Sources:

Entrepreneur.com, “7 Ways to Keep Your Best Employees.”

LawnandLandscape.com, “Employee Handbooks.”

Ibid, “How to Find Good Help.”

Paycor.com, “10 Secrets to Finding Employees and Keeping Them.

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