[EDITOR’S NOTE: The following information is presented as an exclusive online supplement to the Labor Solutions, TEACHING THE TROOPS: Team Training department from the July 2001 issue of Lawn & Landscape magazine.]
Regardless of a company's size, employees must be properly trained to increase efficiency and retain customers.
MAKING IT WORK. Designing a training program is one thing, but implementing and benefiting from it is a different animal.
"For a training program to work you have to get all the managers to buy into it and it has to be a group effort," remarked Gail Havron, vice president human resources, The Morrell Group, Atlanta, Ga. "All of our managers have helped set up the program, encouraged their employees to attend classes and have volunteered to teach classes. Without the managers, it wouldn’t work."
Making training available on the job and during normal work hours is also a way to get the programs up and running. Other incentives to employees for participating in training are reimbursement for study materials, seminar attendance fees, travel to and from seminars and raises when a certain level of certification is reached.
While these are benefits to the employee, these perks represent costs to employers. However, many contractors said these are minimal costs that they gladly incur if spending the money means finding and keeping quality workers.
"We’re comfortable with [the costs]," declared Bob Rennebohm, Heard Gardens, Ltd., Johnstown, Iowa. "We feel it’s a part of doing business."
Havron agreed. "The cost of the training manager’s salary and the benefits that goes along with that is significant, but it’s definitely worth it," she said.
FINDING THE RIGHT MATERIALS. Resources are an integral part of a training program. Some companies that can’t find a resource for a certain training topic have the resources to produce their own, such as The Morrell Group.
"We produce 90 percent of the training material we use," Havron explained. "We developed all the classes ourselves and made sure that everything is in writing so no matter who is giving the class, everyone gets the same message."
Because the company has had problems finding quality training videos, Havron commented that could be the company’s next project. "It’s something that we want to do, but it’s a major undertaking," she acknowledged. "We’ve tried in the past to find videos on landscape-specific items and a lot of them have good content, but if the people in the video aren’t wearing safety equipment, we won’t show that type of video."
C.J. Bramer, vice president of operations, Mountain West Environments, Steamboat Springs, Colo., remarked that between the Associated Landscape Contractors of America (ALCA) and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), he feels most industry training issues have been addressed and that there is ample training material for employees. However, he’d like to see more training resources geared toward managers.
"I see the workforce change every four to five years and I’d like to see some material to help me relate to the new-age workforce, to the new workers coming out of college," he declared.
Rennebohm agreed. "There’s a lot on mechanical training but I don’t think there’s very good material for management and personnel, or on dealing with people and clients," he declared.
RETAINING YOUR WORKFORCE. Another area of concern for contractors is the amount of time and money spent on training employees and making sure the company benefits from that investment.
"Training and retention go hand in hand," Rennebohm stressed. "You don’t want to train these people so they can go work for your competitor." To prevent this from happening, Rennebohm said he tries to create an environment that encourages his employees to stay. One way of doing this is by creating opportunities for advancement.
Bramer agreed, saying that his company also utilizes a screening process to weed out less desirable employees and to identify those people he thinks have a higher learning curve. "Using reference checks increases the quality of people who come in to work for us," he commented.
At The Morrell Group, managers focus on the content of the training to reduce turnover. "We’ve found that we need to do whatever it takes to find new employees, develop them and keep them," Havron related. "Since we’ve started this training program six years ago, our turnover has been greatly reduced. Trained employees have confidence in themselves and feel better about their work."
The author is Internet Project Manager for Lawn & Landscape Online.