Top resources for hiring and retaining great landscape employees

We’ve pulled together some of our best resources on finding and keeping high-quality employees for your landscaping business.

Whether you’re desperately trying to recruit before the busy season or just interested in collecting some articles for your reading list, the content we’ve compiled below can help.

If you don’t want to go through all of the links included here, just download our free ebook, Level up your HR efforts. The comprehensive guide was created to help landscape business owners like you improve recruitment and retention efforts with or without the help of an HR consultant.

How to find and keep the best landscape employees

Finding excellent employees is hard enough. But once you have them, how can you make sure they stay?

We’ve produced content to assist landscape business owners with both recruitment and retention and grouped it accordingly below so you can quickly find the pieces that are most relevant for you. Up first, recruitment.

Recruitment

Attract high-quality landscape employees with these 5 tips

Type: Article

Summary: Business owners struggling to attract high-quality workers should explain their “why,” look for passive job seekers, take advantage of social media, pay attention to their brand, and reflect positivity. This post is based on key takeaways from a webinar with industry HR expert Ian Schotanus.

Should I hire mid-level managers with no green industry experience?

Type: Article

Summary: One of the best ways to broaden your hiring pool and attract highly competent staff is to hire mid-level managers from outside the green industry. Find out why this doesn’t have to make you nervous, what to include in job postings, and how to quickly turn new employees into landscaping experts.

8 tips for better job postings in the landscape industry

Type: Article

Summary: Savvy job seekers will click away from your application in seconds if they can’t find what they’re looking for or aren’t impressed. This article covers how to prevent that from happening by (spoiler alert) keeping it short, selling yourself, creating a careers page, optimizing for SEO, including the right details in your job descriptions, clarifying next steps, making it easy to read, and ditching formality.

5 ways you’re making your labor problem worse

Type: Article

Summary: The labor market is challenging enough as it is. Make sure you’re not getting in your own way by avoiding these common industry mistakes

The secret to hiring great landscape employees

Type: Webinar

Summary: This is the webinar we mentioned above featuring HR consultant Ian Schotanus. Download the recording for free to hear Ian share some of his best tips for job postings, recruiting new talent, setting benchmarks, and onboarding new hires successfully.

Level up your HR efforts

Type: eBook

Summary: This free ebook has sections on employee recruitment, retention strategies, and EDI (equity, diversity, and inclusion). It also includes a bonus worksheet to use in auditing your own company’s processes and identifying areas for improvement. The recruitment chapter takes you through approaches to recruitment, how to determine what’s right for your business, and strategies for reaching the best workers.

NALP’s landscape career resources

Type: Website

Summary: If you’re not already familiar with it, the National Association of Landscape Professionals’ workforce recruitment website has a ton of great resources (including infographics and printable flyers) to use at high school or college career fairs.

Retention

Landscape employee performance reviews that boost productivity

Type: Article

Summary: Contrary to popular opinion, performance reviews (when they’re done right) can actually help you keep employees motivated and engaged—key ingredients for retention. Find out how to hold successful reviews, including how to prepare, what to include, examples of evaluation criteria, and more in this post.

One landscape company’s secret to profitability and employee retention

Type: Article

Summary: Backyard Reflections is a Minnesota-based landscaping company that has developed an impressively simple but effective approach to managing employees. This article explores how they maintain such high retention numbers through processes and job roles, communication and feedback, and prioritizing company culture.

Gain a competitive advantage as an employer with Aspire Pay OnDemand

Type: Article

Summary: Giving team members access to earned but unpaid wages in advance of payday actually helps with both recruitment and retention. It's a perk that makes your business attractive to potential workers, and it helps keep current staff happy. Aspire’s Pay OnDemand program is offered to all Integrated Payroll Services customers at no cost to you as an employer.

Guide to keeping your crews safe in extreme heat conditions

Type: Article

Summary: Taking care of crew members often means being aware of potentially hazardous conditions, including extreme heat during the summer months. Learn about the various forms of heat-related illnesses, preventative measures to put in place, and ways to train your crews to respond when problems arise.

How to stop losing your best snow- and ice-removal employees

Type: Article

Summary: Snow and ice season is hard no matter what. But there are things you can do to make life easier for your employees, encouraging them to stick around even when the going gets tough.

Level up your HR efforts

Type: eBook

Summary: This free ebook has sections on recruitment, retention, and EDI (equity, diversity, and inclusion). The retention chapter includes policies, best practices, and strategies to reduce employee turnover for your landscaping company.

Stay in the loop

Whether you're looking for landscape professionals with special skill sets to fill lots of open positions, need to streamline your hiring process to attract top talent, or just want to boost employee engagement (and reduce your turnover rate), putting some of these tips into practice can help you stand out in a crowded job market—and have a positive impact on your bottom line.

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