9 Tips for Recruiting and Retaining Top Talent
Guest post by Caleb Leonard
The lawn care industry is physically demanding and seasonal, so to combat turnover, you’ve got to recruit and retain top talent. In this article, you will learn 9 tips for scouting, hiring, and retaining the best lawn care pros.
Advertising job openings, offering a competitive salary, and enticing candidates with signing and retention bonuses are ways of attracting quality candidates.
Once you have your team, you’ll need to keep them with rain-out pay, retention bonuses, or profit sharing.
A great company culture and a healthy work/life balance are also incentivizing, as younger generations prioritize quality of life over long hours at work.
In this article:
- Tips for recruiting top landscapers
- Tips for retaining top landscapers
- Tips from a recruiter
Tips for recruiting top landscapers
It’s the dead of winter, and you’re brainstorming ways to expand your lawn care business. Your nephew weighs as much as the equipment, so he’s out. You could post on Craigslist, but is that safe? Try these tips to find the best employees first.
Advertise you are hiring.
Get the word out. Post on social media, add a NOW HIRING magnet to your work truck and tell the people in line at the store you are looking for reliable people.
Use job boards like LinkedIn and Monster, recruit from high schools and junior colleges, and advertise at job fairs and expos.
Then, take it to social media with content capturing your company’s culture.
Content ideas:
- Interviews with staff
- Showcase available jobs
- Highlight the onboarding process
- Boast about company perks
- Advertise how to apply
Blast this content across job sites and social media to attract applicants.
Offer a competitive salary
The best employees come at a cost. But how do you offer a competitive salary?
Competitive salaries depend on your location, candidate supply and demand, and local market trends. On a micro level, you’ll need to factor in each candidate’s skill level, job duty, and level of impact.
Be upfront about your salaries to save time and attract viable candidates. The Society for Human Resources Management states that 82% of U.S. workers are more likely to apply for a job when the pay range is apparent.
Pro tip: Stay current with local salaries by checking career sites.
Give referral bonuses
Your employees are an excellent resource for quality candidates because they know the job’s good, bad, and ugly. These referred candidates are cheaper to hire because they didn’t come from a sponsored post on a job site.
Referred applicants typically blend well into the company culture and have a higher retention rate because they have a support network of existing employees. (Just beware of cliques.)
Consider adding a signing bonus to sweeten the deal.
Tips for retaining top talent
These days, a competitive salary isn’t enough to keep good hires from jumping ship. Employees are looking for unique perks to stay loyal.
Here are a few ideas for increasing retention:
Offer rain-out pay
Offering to pay your employees for rained-out shifts is a great way to keep employees, and this doesn’t necessarily mean paid time off.
Pro tip: Rainy days are an opportunity to sharpen mower blades, change the oil, respool the weeding equipment, and film recruiting content.
Outgrow the growing season
Capitalize on leaf removal, tree trimming, snow blowing, and shoveling to offer workers year-round work. A steady stream of work makes it easier to retain employees.
Retention bonuses
The first 30 to 90 days of a new hire’s employment are a time for training, mistakes, and learning the ropes. It’s also expensive.
It would be a shame if you lost the money you sunk into the new hire before realizing your ROI.
Pro tip: Retention bonuses motivate more than attendance. If your bonus structure makes conditions for tardiness, uniform infractions, etc., you can mold your teammates to meet company policy.
Provide profit sharing
Profit sharing is another tool companies use to increase retention and curb infractions. Rewarding employees who come to work on time and do an excellent job with a percentage of that month’s profits gives them a stake in the company’s success.
Holiday pay
Federal law does not require employers to offer holiday pay. But if your competitors are paying time and a half for the 4th of July and you expect your crew to forego their family BBQs, a few extra bucks will soften the sting.
Have a plan and let your team know what to expect for Easter, Memorial Day, Father’s Day, Labor Day, etc.
Non-cash bonuses
Profit sharing, holiday pay, and retention bonuses can add up quickly. Here are some budget-friendly ways to let your employees know they are valued.
- Paid lunches
- Gift cards
- Recognition of hard work
- Time off
- Team building activities
These bonuses let employees know they are appreciated and might even spur a little competition among team members to improve their performance.
Q&A with a recruiter
I caught up with Melanie Busbee of Busbee Talent Solutions for a quick Q&A about recruiting and retaining top talent. Mrs. Busbee has 21 years of experience as a recruiter.
Q: What do employers need to know about recruiting and retention?
A: “A successful company will recognize its employees as people with families and personal lives. [i.e.] Giving them time off and flexibility to be there for important family events or taking care of sick children.”
“It’s also important to recognize the work their employees do on a day-to-day basis and reward them for keeping the operation running. Small bonuses and paid lunches show appreciation and go a long way to help employee morale. When you take care of your employees, they will take care of your customers.”
Q: Where do you source candidates for lawn care? Any recruiter tools small business owners should know about?
A: “You can place ads on Indeed or Craigslist but the absolute best way is word of mouth with others in the business. A current employee will most likely know someone else, and you can give them a referral bonus if it works out.”
Q: Hiring landscapers sounds like mow/edge/blow, but it also includes specialized trades like stone masons, landscape designers, certified arborists, etc. How would you go about finding both low- and high-skilled employees?
A: “As far as specialized trades, you will want to start a list of your preferred people. Let the specialist stay the specialist in their own field. Use them as needed. It’s better to have a preferred list and not actually employ those positions.”
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Caleb Leonard is a freelance writer and marketing professional. A University of North Texas graduate, his interests include gardening, podcasts, and studying Spanish.
