Building a Strong Team to Grow Your Lawn Care Franchise
Growth is likely one of your objectives when you buy a lawn care franchise for the first time. The more you grow, the more satisfaction and profit you can enjoy.
However, you typically can’t experience growth on your own. It often requires a strong team to take your franchise to new heights. While you won’t always get it right, you may be able to build a solid team to achieve business success by taking the following actions:
Hiring the Right People
A team is only as strong as its weakest member. This can mean that even if you have a few star employees, those who aren’t as strong may bring your entire team down. As a result, hiring the right people can be crucial for long-term success.
You may not always know whether you’re hiring the right people to join your team, but there are actions you can take to improve your chances:
Contact references
Ask friends and family for recommendations
Use leading recruitment channels
Hire on a trial basis
Depending on the hiring process and whether you have any commercial contracts, you may also like to require your prospective new employees to undergo a background check.
Ensure Your Employees Have Clearly Defined Roles
Communication can make or break a team. If your employees don’t know what you expect of them and what their roles entail, there’s room for disappointment and frustration.
Define your employees’ roles from the beginning. You might give them a specific area to cover or their own client list with various lawns to mow and other services to provide. When they know what’s expected of them, you may enjoy a competent team you can trust.
Provide Training and Development Opportunities
Many people enjoy on-the-job training in lawn care franchises. The more lawn care services you provide, the better you get, and the more customers benefit. However, your team can have more than just on-the-job training. You may also provide them with proper training and development opportunities to improve their skills, enlighten them on safety protocols, and learn new lawn care techniques.
When you take the time to help your team enhance their skills and knowledge, your business and its customers benefit.
Prioritise Feedback
You can’t hope to have a great team where everyone respects each other and gets the job done unless you make them feel appreciated. Prioritise feedback so they know what they’re doing right, what you appreciate about their workmanship, and what they could do to improve.
If you’re going to be offering feedback to seek improvements, go about it the right way:
Be respectful
Be direct and honest
Avoid being harsh
Give examples
Choosing your timing
Provide solutions and advice
Give Them What They Need to Succeed
Your team can only be as good as what they have to do their jobs. Ensure your employees have everything they need to do their jobs to a high standard. This can include high-quality lawn equipment, enough fuel, a company vehicle to get to jobs, and adequate training for customer service and their jobs.
If you’re unsure whether your employees have everything they need to succeed, don’t be afraid to ask them. Remember, they are a reflection of you. If you give them what they need to do their job to a high standard, your business benefits.
Lead By Example
Many business owners aspire to own and operate businesses with competent employees to take the lead. The more competent their employees are, the easier it can be for business owners to step back and reap the rewards.
However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t lead by example. Act in your business the way you would want your employees to act. That would mean that if you wanted your employees to have incredible attention to detail, you’d train them to take the same approach. If you wanted them to treat all their customers with respect, you would do the same. Employees are likely to mimic what they see, not just what you tell them to do or what they read in training manuals.
Promote a Positive Working Environment
Lawn care employees get to work out in nature with reasonably flexible working hours. That can certainly lay a foundation for a positive working environment. However, business owners can also contribute to that environment.
You can promote a positive working environment by rewarding and recognising employees for hard work and encouraging open communication.
Are You Ready to Buy a Lawn Care Franchise?
The thought of building a strong team within a business you own can be exciting! If you’ve thought about purchasing a lawn care franchise, now might be the right time. You can then put steps in place to hire employees, grow a strong team, and guide them to success.