4 Tips for Effective Employee Evaluations

by | Aug 27, 2018 | Employee Management | 0 comments

4 Tips for Effective Employee Evaluations

Written By: Eric Petersen, CIC

Why are employee evaluations met with such anxiety for the employee and the manager performing them? I believe it’s because of the way that they traditionally were performed. The manager would have a laundry list of items that the employee can improve upon and felt required to discuss just those items and create goals on how to change their behavior. An evaluation set up like this is doomed to fail from the beginning. In today’s society and especially in the tree care industry, it is imperative to support your employees and help them develop as a person, to truly gain their trust and loyalty to the company. Below are my 4 tips to restructuring your employee evaluations to help maximize the relationship with your team members.

Plan for & Prepare Ahead of Time – Evaluations should never be done spur of the moment. The employees will always feel a little bit of fear before an evaluation, however, scheduling it in advance and letting them know what you will be discussing goes a long way towards having a productive meeting. Make sure that you take notes on their performance throughout the year to supplement the conversation that pops up. Do this by keeping a list of positive and negative behavior that you or the crew leader have noticed throughout the year. The more concrete examples you can use to reinforce the right attitude you are looking for the more accepting the employee will be of the process.

Don’t Call it a Review – Unfortunately, the word ‘review’ carries a negative connotation with it. When an employee hears that they will be having an employee review, a wave a panic almost always will sweep through their body. This puts them into a defensive position and mindset that will be counterproductive to the goals of the meeting. At my agency, we call it a check point. For us, a checkpoint is a time for both the manager and the employee to formally check in with each other. We ask the employee to grade themselves on their proficiency or comfortability levels within their technical skills/knowledge, their customer interaction skills and overall company goals. We then ask how we can help them improve within these categories.

Engage the Employee – This should be a discussion between both parties, not a lecture by the manager. Give the employee a series of questions before the meeting to give them the chance to participate in the conversation. Be as specific as you can for their position. For instance questions for a climber could include:

What is your comfort level with different climbing techniques (SRT vs. DRT)?
What additional skill or piece of equipment would you like to develop competency in?
What is the largest challenge that you face each day and how can we make that better for you?
If you were CEO for a day, what would you do different?

Once a Year is NOT Enough – While performing multiple employee evaluations throughout the year may seem like overkill, just doing one of them is not nearly enough. In this industry where turnover is such a huge issue, consistent feedback from the employee is vital to their happiness and success. Make employee evaluations a quarterly priority for both sides. It will open up communication even greater within your company and gives you a pulse of how that employee is doing so they don’t take another job without you having some indication.

Additionally, a few things you definitely want to avoid in an employee evaluation are:

Making promises that you can’t keep regarding employee development or pay.
Making comparisons between employees.
Pretending to have all of the answers and not being open to suggestions for improvement.

Lastly, think back to when you were an employee, I’m sure you wanted to know how you were doing and what you can improve upon. More importantly, you wanted to know that your employer was truly interested in your individual success. If you succeed in promoting each employee’s individual success, you will see these employee evaluations transform your business in a short time.

If you need additional help with hiring and recruiting quality employees, or developing the leaders within your tree care company, contact our Thrive team today to learn more about our Hiring and Recruiting Thrive Package or our Leadership Development Package!

Work ON Your Business – Not IN It

by | Aug 27, 2018 | Business Strategy | 0 comments

Work On Your Business – Not IN it

Ever feel like you are constantly spinning your wheels with your business, always busy, but not making much progress? Of course you have. Every business owner feels this way, especially in the tree care industry. With all of the responsibilities of owning a business, a successful owner must be able to take a step back and work ON their business not IN it. Because this is extremely hard to do, I want to give you my 6 tips for beginning to work on your business and not in it.

Desire to work ON your business – If you want to achieve large goals for your company, you must have a desire to work on your business. This is an internal motivation that only you can provide and requires daily discipline and energy to stay focused on what is truly important to your organization.

Establishing the vision and core values – After you’ve committed to working on your business, you must get serious about creating a vision and a set of core values for your company. There are a lot of ways to write vision statements and create core values, but don’t get hung up on the exact words or way to do it right now. Start brainstorming what you want your company to look like in the future and what do you want it to stand for. This is a vital exercise that should be done at least once a year to properly evolve as a business. Over time, you will see a crystal clear picture of who your company is and where it is going.

Hire the right people – The only way you can successfully work on your business is to have the right team members to do the tasks that you used to do. I have always been a large proponent of hiring for attitude and culture fit and then training for the job. Sure the employee must have a base level of competency in the position before I hire them, however, it is much easier to teach the right employee than it is to manage an employee that doesn’t fit in. Now, hiring the right employee isn’t that easy. One of your responsibilities as the business owner is to develop a hiring and recruiting process that will eventually create a pipeline of new talent to your organization for years to come.

Delegation and Empowerment – What tasks do you do every day that could be handed off to someone else? Why do you still do these tasks? Are you afraid that they won’t get done the same way that you would do them? Most owners have a difficult time delegating anything to their employees, however time never stands still and the lack of delegation is the surest way to a stale business. Once you have identified what tasks and responsibilities you can delegate, give your employees the power to make decisions for these. It will only be natural to check on them and question their decisions, but resist this urge. If you have communicated your vision and core values well enough to your team, they will earn your trust by being allowed to carry out that vision. No one likes a micro-managing boss, so allow your employees to take ownership in projects and reward them with encouraging feedback when they do a good job. If an employee’s decision or actions do not result in a positive outcome, work with the employee to help them come up with a different solution for the future. Of all of your efforts to work on your business, this is the most important, your team must know that you trust them to make decisions on your behalf and that their job will be secure if they make a mistake.

Training on Standards and Procedures – The best companies build systems that are standardized and allow for employees to enter in and out of the system with minimal interruption. Developing the way your company operates around a process versus a person may seem foreign and a bit intimidating, but is the surest way to building a rock solid organization. Dissect every aspect of your business from the customer experience to the pruning standards to your equipment maintenance schedule. Create standards for each area so that a new employee can come into the company and know what is expected of them. Please don’t try to do this on your own. Part of the delegation and empowerment is getting your team members to help out with this. You will be surprised how much better your standards and procedures are when you involve your team to develop them.

Block out Time – This is my last tip, but really could be listed first. As the owner, you have to block out time to work on your business. This means uninterrupted time where you focus on the most important aspects of your company. Blocking out time is really hard to do if you work out of your home or if you have a busy office, so what works best for me is to schedule time away from my normal desk. This allows me to work on the proactive tasks that I need to do without feeling like I’m ignoring the needs of my team. Find a physical location that you can do some deep work for your business and regularly schedule time to go there.
Starting to work on your business is hard to do, however, by slowly implementing these tips into your work life, you will start to see a transformation within your company.

Written by: Eric Petersen

How Effective is Your Safety Program?

by | Aug 27, 2018 | Safety | 0 comments

How Effective Is Your Safety Program?

I’m sure you are like most tree care companies and attempt to provide a safe workplace for your employees by having a written safety program, creating a safety committee and performing regular tailgate safety talks. But how do you know if you are really achieving an effective level of safety awareness within your organization? Use the following to measure how well your safety program is doing.

Define Benchmarks and Goals – OSHA suggests to look at both Lagging and Leading Indicators to determine effectiveness of your safety program. Have your safety committee create a list of these indicators to set the baseline for your safety program. Have these indicators be measurable or quantitative rather than subjective or qualitative. Then as a committee, form realistic goals to improve upon these indicators.

A Lagging Indicator is a statistic from a previous accident or injury. Look at your OSHA 300 log or your insurance policy loss runs to show what has happened in the past. Examples can be simply, the number of work comp claims, the number of auto accidents or number of sick/injured days away from work. These indicators are typically negative events that an effective safety program will look to reduce or eliminate.

A Leading Indicator is a measure of how well your program has been implemented by focusing on preventative actions or behaviors. Examples of Leading Indicators can include, the number of attendees to your safety meetings, number of in-field safety audits, number of employee safety suggestions, or the number of near misses reported. These indicators are typically positive events that your safety program should encourage to grow. A quick word on near misses. You may be thinking why would you want an increase in near misses? You’re right you don’t want more close calls, but you do want to encourage and support the discussion of more near misses in your safety meetings to help others prevent making a similar mistake. Open communication is a pillar of a solid safety culture.

Track Indicators – Appoint someone on your safety committee to be in charge of compiling the data. Using Microsoft Excel is a simple way to store the data and compare it over time. These indicators should be looked at on a monthly basis to actively monitor trends both positive and negative so swift action or rewards can be addressed as soon as possible.

Audit your Program – Verify that the main elements of your safety program have been implemented by:
Asking employees from all departments to explain the procedure for reporting injuries?
Reviewing injury report forms for completeness and verifying that the suggestions to prevent future injuries have been performed.

Requesting to see the documentation from each safety meeting.
Consistently monitoring the indicator data for changes.

Of course a strong safety program will evolve and adapt over time. Use the information gathered from your audits and conversations with your team members to continually improve your program. Rotate the members of your safety committee over time as well so that everyone within your organization feels that they have some ownership in the safe workplace that you are creating. Remember everyone wins with safety!

Written by: Eric Petersen

5 Ways to Combat the Imposter

by | Aug 24, 2018 | Business Strategy | 0 comments

5 Ways to Combat The Imposter

Unfortunately, the tree care industry is an over-commoditized industry. A simple Google search in your area will probably show so many tree services it will make your head spin. So how do you compete against the non-professional guys; the ones that aren’t playing by all of the rules and paying cash for labor, not purchasing insurance, and skipping on safety? It is not an easy thing to do, but below are my 5 ways to combat your competition.

Don’t Create the Price Game – Believe it or not, the price game is created by tree services, not the customers. Companies that come in and say that they’ll do the work cheaper than anyone else are the ones who devalue the work that you do. Fight this by getting to know your customer and what their goals for the property are. Do they want a backyard oasis to play and relax in? Are they concerned about a branch falling on their house or children? Whatever their concerns are, focus your solutions around those. Everyday consumers choose certain brands over others and choose to pay more for those products or services because they believe in the value of it. Tree work can be the same way, but you have to believe in your value and know how to communicate it to the customer.

Specialize – What does your company do particularly well? Are you known for a specific service in your area? If so, concentrate your sales efforts on that service as it is much easier for you to explain why you are the better choice than a non-professional tree service. You also should be able to do the work in your specialty more efficiently than your competitors, thereby increasing the value to your customer.

Use Technology – What does your Customer Journey look like? Have you thought about the experience that your customers have each time they come in contact with you? There are many software programs out there to help you make your business stand out: from automatic follow up emails such as Active Campaign, to video email software like BombBomb, to creating proposals for the customer (while still at their house) using Arborgold. Each of these tools will help showcase the level of professionalism that your company has over your competition.

Use Pictures – Examples of poor tree maintenance are all over the place. With digital cameras in everyone’s pocket these days, you should be able to create a vast library of local trees that have been hacked at by an inexperienced tree service. Use these photos, along with before and after pictures of proper tree care, in your presentation to your customers. Your proposal should not be lengthy and full of technical details, but rather clean and crisp, showing what you intend to do and how it will help the customer reach their property goal.

Promote your Professional Designations – Are you touting your designations? Bragging about your credentials is not something that many people are comfortable doing, however when trying to separate yourself from a low bid competitor, you must be able to do so. ISA and TCIA both have great resources that allow you to show why your education and commitment to your industry makes you the best choice for your customer. When the property owner understands that you invest time and money into improving your own company’s professionalism, they will begin to see the value that your expert opinion brings.

Competing against illegitimate businesses is one of the most common challenges within the tree care industry and unfortunately, this problem is not going away. Use these 5 tips to begin to separate your tree service from the rest.

Written by: Eric Petersen

Unlock Your Potential: 4 Steps to Cross-Sell More Business

by | Aug 24, 2018 | Business Strategy | 0 comments

Unlock Your Potential: 4 Steps to Cross-Sell More Business

One of the most common goals that I hear from our clients is the desire to sell more Plant Health Care work, so I put together my list of 4 steps to effectively cross sell additional services to your customers. Whether you would like to perform more tree risk assessments or sell firewood and mulch to your existing customers, the approach is essentially the same.

Targeted Service – Defining what service you are looking to cross sell to your current customers is the first step. To determine if a particular service is appropriate to begin a cross selling campaign, ask yourself the following:

Is this service a strength for our company? If not, what will help it become a strength?
Can we handle an influx of additional requests for this service?
What challenges could arise if we have increased interest in this service?
Are we known for this service already or do we have to educate our customers?
Does our ideal client need this service on a regular basis?

It Is Not About the Sale – It is very important to understand that cross selling additional services should NOT be strictly about the revenue generated from the new service. Instead, the focus should be on the relationship with the customer. When customers hire your company for more than one service or product you will generate much more customer loyalty. These loyal customers will become your promoters and tell others about your organization, driving growth within your ideal clientele.

Training – Not everyone is meant to be a sales person, however, everyone within your organization that has contact with your customers should have a basic understanding of the services you provide and how it can benefit your customers. From the receptionist to the crew foreman, train your team members on the “why” your services are important. A few ideas to help your employees begin a cross sell conversation are:

Emphasize that healthy trees eliminate hazards to your customers and help increase their property values. Proper tree care is much more than pruning and a Certified Arborist can help your customer determine the course of action for their trees.
Use an Amazon approach: Whatever your cross sale service is, combine that with what your ideal client would also purchase for an easy transition into providing additional services. For example; those that have had their trees pruned, also have their trees fertilized. Or, those that have their trees removed also purchase firewood from us.

Reward employees for cross selling additional services. Create a monetary reward for a team member that goes beyond their normal job duties to cross sell your desired service.

Special Offer or Pricing – If your desired cross sell service is new to your organization or one that your customers rarely request, you probably will have to create a special offer or pricing structure to gain interest in the service. This can be a limited time offering for trunk injections or a multi-service discount if they also purchase mulch from you. Be creative with the offer to engage your customer into taking action with your desired cross sell service.

Cross selling additional services to your current customer base can be the hidden secret to growth for your organization. Use these 4 steps to unlock your company’s cross sell potential.

Written by: Eric Petersen