August 4, 2024
Giving seasonal employees reasons to return
Strategies for year-round engagement and growth
BY RYAN MARKEWICH
Keeping quality employees engaged, loyal and wanting to stay with your company can be challenging and has been the source of much discussion in our company for decades. In my last column, I introduced how adopting Open Book Management (OBM) and The Great Game of Business (GGOB) has propelled the success of Creative Roots Landscaping (CRL). This time, I’ll dive into how this inclusive and transparent methodology helped create an enticing company culture worth coming back to season after season.
I’ve made some interesting observations over the past 30 years while trying to “crack the code” on the seasonal aspect of landscaping as it relates to keeping employees year after year, and asked my staff for their insights, too. Here are just a few tactics that have worked very well for our staff.
High Involvement Planning (HIP)
Much like a team sport where every player's participation matters, the key to HIP is the "involvement" part. It empowers employees to make a difference by educating and involving them intentionally in business planning. When done right, your employees will want to learn and care about the business and its outcomes. The system of meetings to present data, assess competition, review customer insights, discuss strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT), and evaluate progress toward benchmarks to develop growth and contingency plans that get company-side buy-in are invaluable. This specialized process aims to remove the planning process from the "select few" at the top and put it in the hands of the people who actually execute the strategies. In the absence of involving the "players," strategic business planning often has minimal results. Would you rather have a fan who knows the score or a player who knows the game and can change it?
Seven years ago, Zach Neufeld started with CRL straight out of high school and became one of the five per cent employee owners in 2021. “I’ve been able to participate in and engage in some life-changing experiences with high-level business people and leaders,” Neufeld said. “Through thick and thin, I always believed in the company, the people and the vision that was there. I believed that the Path to Partnership was real and it was for me.”
Roman Romenskyi, a recent immigrant from Ukraine, is in his first year at CRL, but is already forming bonds with his team thanks to our inclusive nature. “I really like the team and, specifically, the relationships within the team,” Romenskyi said. “Each employee is always open to help and share their experience; the cheerful atmosphere more than compensates for the hard work. The organization of work in the company, at the highest level, is arranged simply, is intuitive and always easily accessible.”
Share in the outcome
Our Profit Gain Sharing program ensures all employees benefit from the company's success without compromising its financial health. Our team appreciates this approach because they are actively involved in both financial and cultural planning, giving them clear insights into our performance metrics. This transparency fosters a deeper understanding of market realities compared to employees at other companies. It reinforces the idea that our company is like the goose that lays the golden egg; by nurturing and supporting it, we create more opportunities for everyone to prosper.
Rik VanEspen is in our construction division and is likely to be our next and fifth employee partner. “I love the feeling of accomplishment finishing a job, knowing that I did my very best to organize a team and all the logistics surrounding a job and gave the client a product that they can be proud of — a place where they can build memories to last a lifetime,” VanEspen said when asked why he stays with CRL. “The opportunity for growth professionally and personally, too. I want to do more than just work in construction. I want to own a piece of this company and continue building on the foundation laid before me. I grow every single season from every challenge I face.”
Intentional focus on personal and professional growth
Employees love to win but often lack awareness of what needs to be done in order to win at business and their work. One of the biggest ways to help employees win is by proving you care, which just happens to be one of our core values. Considering the skilled labour shortage, it’s more important than ever for businesses to take the position of being the new educators. For us, this includes a highly participative onboarding and site-specific training of skills and safety, which also covers financial literacy, a five-year forward looking organizational chart and even a path to potential partnership. This progression helps each employee get what they need to succeed. The desire to do so is then up to them.
Jacob Neufeld, a second-year employee, said the fact that he learns something new every day is a huge motivator. “The owners/leads care about the crew/team,” Neufeld added. “And they try to accommodate everyone’s needs and focus on things we’d like to learn, and in return, we get some pretty awesome rewards.”
Enriched earning potential
Our employees can work nine (some even 10) months and earn the equivalent of 10-12. How is that possible? The math is not that hard… if you consider a typical work week to be 40 hours and an employee is willing to work 45 on average by working the odd Saturday and/or a few overtime hours per week, it adds up to 1,800 hours in nine months instead of 1,600 hours if they had worked 40 hours. This additional 200 hours is equal to five weeks of work! In addition, the profit gain share potential is up to 15 per cent of gross earnings. In our 2024 profit gainshare program, that potential is 226 hours or 5.65 weeks of pay. Our 2023 payout was 10.75 per cent. When you educate your team in the company financials, the realities of the marketplace and your industry, and allow them to define what winning looks like, all you need to do is stand back and get the hell out of their way.
Seasonal freedom
Many of our returning employees love the opportunity to work hard during the landscaping season in order to play hard over the winter. “The seasonal aspect of the job is great for me,” Zach Neufeld said. “It allows me to travel in the winter or snowboard and enjoy the mountains and downtime resting from all the hard work throughout the season.” First-year Rhian Jeffrys appreciates the flexibility: “I think that offering the extra hours doing snow removal and not being the normal nine to five shift is great. It gives options to those who just want to take a break or be able to work a few hours here and there.”
Perhaps it is our mission/purpose statement, our North Star if you will, that summarizes and guides us to build a company where people want to stay: “We are building a people business with those who share our drive for excellence and appreciate the many rewards that accompany working in a transparent and inclusive way: exciting challenges, camaraderie and friendships, a sense of purpose, feelings of accomplishment, profits, and a path to partnership.”
Wherever the credit lies, in some magical way it all works together to form our ever-evolving, perfectly imperfect, organizational ecosystem. The processes, the systems, the huddles, the mindset of continuous improvement, the regular missteps, the small wins and the dedication to our mission: this combination helps enrich our desirable culture that retains high-achieving crew members. I think it will work for you, too.
Ryan Markewich has been fascinated by business since starting Creative Roots Landscaping in 1994. After selling a majority of his successful company to key employees, he launched Rmark, a coaching service to help other business owners achieve better results, have more time for themselves and find enjoyment along the way.