Outreach Opportunities for Tree Care Companies

by | Apr 3, 2019 | Marketing | 0 comments

Outreach Opportunities for Tree Care Companies

“I’m too busy to figure that out right now.”

“It seems like it would be difficult to do.”

“I don’t know where to start, or even what materials I would need.”

Community outreach, when combined with running a business, managing employees, and having any semblance of a personal life, seems like a daunting task. However, outreach is essential to developing and enhancing your company’s brand – and may be easier to tackle than you imagine.

When people think of your tree care business, what is the first thing you want them to consider? Obviously, your core values and mission should come to mind immediately, but you should also want them to think about how your business enhances the local community. There are many ways for your business to get involved with the local community, and the more time and effort you can put into it, the better your brand will look to current and future customers.

Partnering with a local charity

When you know a business is working with a charity, as opposed to one that does not, how much more likely are you to want to work with the business that is giving back? I’m not sure about you, but I know I am much more likely to want to work with a business that is giving back to the community. If you are not doing so already, I would highly encourage you to get involved with a charity within your community. Some great options include humane societies, nursing homes, veteran’s organizations, or even Habitat for Humanity!

Pro Tip: Use your equipment to show your support for a specific charity. If your charity utilizes a specific color, cover a piece of your equipment in that color. If they have a symbol, place that symbol on your equipment.

Participating in school career days

Career days are not only a great way to get your business out in the community, but an excellent way to promote an arboriculture career to future generations. Many schools offer career fairs that are very easy to get involved in. Having an activity at your booth, such as knot tying or tree leaf identification, is a great way to attract younger individuals and get them interested in arboriculture.

Another great way to connect with kids is going into each individual classroom and talking to them about being an arborist. ERIC is host to a multitude of Urban Forestry Laboratory Exercises for elementary, middle, and high schoolers. #Donotreinventthewheel These resources are available for you to utilize and can help strengthen your message for future generations of tree climbers. If you’re a Thrive member, we have them linked directly on our website for your use! (Let us know if you need your login and we’re happy to help with that, too!)

Hosting a kid’s climb

If there is one thing I know about kids, it is that majority of them LOVE to climb trees #Guilty Hosting a kid’s climb is an excellent way to promote your business and enjoy family fun. Your local ISA chapter may already have a format established to easily host a safe event. If not, partner with other tree care companies in your area to host the climb together. These opportunities are not about competition; it is about working together to enhance the industry and encourage future generations to get involved in arboriculture.

Branding yourself as a company that gives back to the community and participates in local events will help you gain more customers and will establish who you are. Customers want to work with businesses that support the areas around them.

Thrive clients have access to resources that can help develop your outreach efforts – logon to our website today to read more!

Written by: Katie Petersen

Stages of Business Growth

by | Apr 2, 2019 | Business Strategy | 0 comments

Stages of Business Growth

Written by Jim Skiera

Here’s an article ArboRisk published in the past that is a good refresher for business owners year after year. It helps answer the question: Is what we are working on today going to get us to the success we want in the future? Put simply, are we on course? With the challenges experienced the past few years, you may need to set a new direction for your business if growth is your goal. Understanding the stages of business growth will help you plan for the future business you want yours to become.

Whether you’re starting up a tree care business for the first time or growing the company you have been managing for years, understanding the stages of business growth can help you focus your planning for a profitable future.

This article presents a condensed overview of the Five Stages of Small Business Growth developed by Neil C. Churchill and Virginia Lewis for an article in the 1983 Harvard Business Review. The five stages are Existence, Survival, Success, Take-off, and Resource Maturity. Not all businesses go through every stage, but depending on your level of ambition it’s a quick read that may help you recognize where you are and how to get to the next level.

Existence

At this stage the business is an idea. The owner may or may not have a business plan at this stage, but it is a recommended first step. The owner is working hard to develop a product and or service that customers want. Success at this stage is measured by the development of a customer base that generates enough revenue to offset expenses. Consistent with the term existence, the business is likely doing just that existing. It may generate enough revenue to break even. The owner is experimenting with service offerings and pricing structure that will generate a profit. It is not uncommon in this stage for a business to run at a loss for a period of time. Keeping costs under control is paramount.

Customers at this point are your greatest asset. Customers that refer you to other customers are of even greater value. If you’re able to establish a client base that begins to get you past the break even point you may move on to the next stage; survival. If not, you likely will run out of capital and need to close the doors.

Survival

In this stage you have established a service a customer is willing to pay for and an adequate customer base to generate enough revenue to offset your expenses. Going forward the challenge will be to price your services appropriately and generate enough work to earn a profit, so revenue outpaces expenses. Businesses have good times and bad times. You’ll need to begin to develop a reserve during the good times to get you through the eventual bad times. You customer base and reputation has likely grown, and you may need to hire employees to keep up with the demands of a growing customer base.

New challenges come in the form of hiring, training and keeping employees, maintaining equipment, scheduling work, making payroll and managing cash flow. Businesses that eventually advance to the success stage develop systems to manage customer expectations and profitable production as the company grows. In addition, the business will need to find more customers to continue to grow revenue. If successful in this stage, the business begins to thrive, however, this is also where many businesses stall. Typically, the owner is very good at providing the service the customers want, but may not be good at managing a growing a business. Working harder may not be increasing profits, just the amount of time spent working. Moving past this requires the owner to develop business management skills or hire people who assist as needed with financial management, operations, hiring, legal issues, taxes and accounting, risk management, insurance, etc. to get to the next level; success.

Success

In this stage the business has begun to prosper. Systems and processes are in place that guide the business and the owner has been able to delegate control to qualified and trusted employees to run most of the day to day activities. This provides time for the owner to work on refining systems and processes to optimize business growth and profitability.

At this point the owner is receiving a good income from the business. They may choose to pour profits back into the growth of the company or allow the team in place to manage the business while the owner steps away to use profits for funding new ventures. Many entrepreneurs bring businesses to the success stage and then sell to start a new company.

Take-Off

If the goal is to reinvest profits back into the company, this stage opens the door to rapid growth. The success stage has allowed you to develop systems and processes that can be replicated to expand into new markets. The company can bring on and train additional team members and resources to grow the customer base profitably. At this point it is vital that the company has a well-defined business plan guiding growth. Strategies for growth will need to be monitored and refined as the company expands. What may have worked in the earlier stages, may not during rapid growth. Epic growth can become epic fail if it is not managed properly.

Systems may need to be decentralized as processes become more complex. The growth opportunities may require the company to find new funding sources such as venture capital partners or other forms of equity investment to keep up with demand. Your small business may begin to transform into a big company.

Resource Maturity

The expansion of the take off stage cannot last forever, eventually markets become saturated. The challenge here is to stabilize the company and remain profitable as growth slows. The energy of rapid growth will need to be replaced with new drivers to keep team members inspired. Customization of processes and systems will need to yet again be refined to meet the needs of this new stage for the company.

The company may begin to look at new services and or at purchasing new businesses to increase growth and revenues through different avenues. Departments may be formed to assist with budget development and management. The company will also need to keep fine tuning processes and products to keep up with changes in the industry and customer needs. As a large company you are always at risk from smaller nibbler companies like the one you were in during the success stage. One strategy is to purchase these companies to gain access to their innovations and manage competition.

The intent of the article is to inspire you to think about your current stage of growth and begin planning for your next. Recognizing the stage your business is in will help deal with the challenges and leverage opportunities that come with growth. For more help with developing your business, contact ArboRisk for more information on their Thrive Strategic Planning Package! With this package, ArboRisk can help you identify who you are as a company today, what you want to become, and what strategic milestones will be needed to achieve your goals.

Career Paths for Arborists

by | Mar 26, 2019 | Employee Management | 0 comments

Career Paths for Arborists

Written by Eric Petersen, CIC

I know you want to keep your best employees with your company for as long as possible, especially since you own a tree service and good team members are hard to come by. And you probably already know that one of the top reasons why talented employees quit is because they do not see a future with their employer. What is even more frustrating is that most of the time the advancement opportunities are there or could be created for those high performing employees, there was just a breakdown in communication and the employee went looking for a different job.

How do you easily inform your current and future employees of the advancement opportunities within your company? My simple answer is to build a career path! Construct an easy to follow diagram to show how an employee can progress through your company. Even if you are a small tree service and there are not be many positions available, set up different levels of their position based on skills and training so they have an idea how to develop their career.

To start creating your career path, ask yourself these four questions:

What are all of the different positions in your company today?
Will you be adding any new positions in the near future?
What is a logical career projection for an entry level employee?
What skills do you need at each position?

Use the answers to these questions to begin laying out the foundation of the career path.

When guiding some of my clients through this exercise, I’ve found it helpful to take a sheet of paper and turn it horizontally. Start with putting the entry level position on the far left side and move to the right adding the next level positions one at a time. In between each position draw a line to show the progression of the advancement. There may be a point where the employee could move into more than one position, like sales or plant health care; split the career path to show multiple ways for the employee to continue their career.

Pro Tip: Got job descriptions? Use those to develop your career paths! You probably already have your career path figured out within the different job descriptions for your company. These should list the skills required for each position.

Once you have the layout of the career path assembled, make notes based on what differentiates each level from the previous one. For instance, if you have a Climber I and Climber II positions, what training or skills must the Climber II employee possess? It could be a designation like the Certified Arborist or Aerial Lift Specialist or that they passed an in-house test to make the jump into the next level. Plotting these requirements out onto the diagram will quickly show any employee where they are in the career path and give them an easy visual of where they can go.

Your next step is to hand the piece of paper with your career path on it to someone in your office that can make the document look good. Making this document attractive and easy to understand is very important.

Lastly, communicate the career path with each individual on your team. Make it crystal clear to them that if they invest in themselves and their careers they will get rewarded by moving up in the organization.

If you’d like to see a sample career path that we created, click here to download our freebie of the month! If you need additional help with hiring and recruiting or leadership training, contact ArboRisk today! Our Hiring and Recruiting Thrive Package can help address pain points within your tree care company and take your hiring and recruiting practices to new heights!

Avoid Work Comp Audit Aggravation

by | Mar 12, 2019 | Risk Management | 0 comments

Avoid Work Comp Audit Aggravation

If I could do away with one thing with Work Comp insurance, it would be to eliminate the audit process! The mere word “audit” makes my skin crawl. Unfortunately, I cannot wave a magic wand to rid ourselves of the Work Comp audit, so here is some helpful information to make your audit go as smoothly as possible.

First of all, the purpose of the audit is for the Work Comp insurance company to receive the appropriate premium for the exposure that your business has. If you have more employees, you have more exposure to a workplace injury. Because your employee situation can change drastically throughout the year, looking back at the prior year is the only way for the insurance company to gain the proper premium. They do this by utilizing an audit. So if your audit shows that you had more payroll than estimated, you’ll owe more premium, if you had less payroll, you’ll get the respective premium back.

Understanding the timeline of Work Comp policy is critical. Here are the basic milestones for your policy:

Projected annual payroll is given to the insurance company to generate estimated premium.
You pay premium throughout policy year based on payroll estimate.
Your policy renews using prior year’s estimated payroll amount.
A Work Comp audit is required to adjust prior term premium.

There are four key points that I want you to be aware of regarding audits:

Non-Compliance – Audits are required by the insurance company and failure to complete them will result in cancellation of your current policy and any future policies until the audit is completed.

Class Codes – No matter how your policy was set up at the beginning of the policy, the audit will ultimately determine the classifications of all employees. To get the proper class codes, make sure:
– To have specific job descriptions for everyone outline their exact job duties.
– To keep separate payroll records for the different jobs performed by your employees.

Sub-Contractors – Sub-Contractors will be considered employees, unless you have a certificate of Work Comp insurance from them showing active coverage during the dates they worked for you.

Payroll Adjustments – You don’t have to wait for an audit to adjust your payroll estimate. This can be done at any time during the policy year at your request or it may happen automatically when the insurance company adjusts the payroll on your current policy to match the prior year’s audited payroll.

Because Work Comp audits are a source of frustration for every tree care company, here are my tips for being prepared for your audit.

Designate a friendly, knowledgeable individual to meet with the auditor. This person should know what each employee does for the organization. If an employee’s job duties are unclear to the auditor, they will assign the highest code to that individual.

Prepare payroll records by classification for the policy period. Make sure to have overtime pay in a separate category so the auditor can discount it back to straight time.

Show your officer payroll separately, as the officers payroll is capped and some companies have elected to exclude officers from coverage altogether.

Prepare a summary statement of the payrolls by classification.

If you use subcontractors or independent contractors, have Certificates of Insurance copied for the auditor verifying the subcontractor/independent contractor carries their own Work Comp insurance.

Have documentation of how you arrived at your payroll numbers available, but not copied, for the auditor. Often the auditor will only take your summary and a few pages of your documentation that the auditor will ask you to copy for them.

Talk to appropriate employees about attire and duties for the day of the audit.

Stay with the auditor at all times. The auditor should not be allowed to wander around the premises and question employees about their duties.

Ask the auditor to send you a copy of their worksheets. Get auditor’s business card so you can follow up for the worksheets.
Confirm the payroll and classifications from the audit worksheets as soon as possible to avoid any mistakes.

We have created a simple audit checklist to help minimize the audit aggravation. If you’d like a copy, contact me at [email protected].

Written by: Eric Petersen

Drug Free Workplace – Is it Possible?

by | Mar 5, 2019 | Business Strategy | 0 comments

Drug Free Workplace: Is it Possible?

One in four workplace injuries arise out of drug or alcohol abuse. Operating with a drug free workplace has become a hot topic, particularly with the legalization of recreational marijuana in eleven states across the country. No matter the stance you take on the topic, the question we all want to know the answer to is “How will this impact my business?”

Depending on your company’s operations, you may be subject to different standards in regards to substance abuse. For example, if you travel across state lines, you are subject to Federal laws and regulations in which case there is a Zero Tolerance policy for drugs and alcohol. The same goes for any tree services falling under DOT regulations, as the DOT took its stance stating “Marijuana is still illegal under federal law, meaning all “safety sensitive” employees who are subject to federally-mandated drug testing are still prohibited from using the drug. This group of employees includes anyone who operates commercial vehicles, including train engineers, pilots and school bus drivers.”

When looking at the state regulations, tree care companies are in an entirely different situation. In Colorado for example, there is Amendment 64, which provides business owners with the choice to test employees and determine the consequences should those tests come back positive. Make sure to check with your state and verify its stance on the topic.

Although some states say implementing a drug free workplace is up to the employer, here are my three reasons you should have one.

Your Safety Culture – Creating a drug-free policy at work is fairly straightforward. The easiest way to approach it is making it synonymous to your alcohol policy. Just as it seems ridiculous to think of an employee operating a 23 ton grapple truck after consuming alcohol, we don’t want anyone operating while being under the influence of marijuana. In doing so, you exemplify the importance of your employees along with others who would potentially be at risk.

Insurance Availability & Discounts – We recently attended the Ohio Tree Care Conference and had the opportunity to sit in on a presentation regarding Ohio worker’s compensation. Ohio employers are eligible for up to 10% rebates on their worker’s compensation costs if they implement a drug-free safety program, the same goes for employers in Washington. Here in Wisconsin, we have seen insurance companies require a drug-free workplace program from insureds in order to renew their policies. Check with your insurance carrier to learn about possible discounts from implementing a drug-free workplace policy.

Productivity – A WCF insurance company study shows employees who have substance abuse issues are twice as likely to change employers three or more times in a year. The average cost to account for the lost productivity, new training, and risk of higher claims adds up to about $35,000 per year in expenses to the employer. Minimizing these expenses will have a direct impact on increasing your bottom line.

Employers have many resources that will assist in building a drug free workplace for example: Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) offers a free document on their website that will serve as a good starting point. To view the site (click here: https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/policies/pages/cms_019908.aspx).

Personalize your program to your business’s location and operations, and have each employee sign off stating they have read and understand the policy.

If you are unsure of what guidelines your business may be subject to, contact our office as helping implement drug and alcohol policies is part of our Thrive program. Building and believing in this policy will help increase your bottom line and most importantly ensure that you are doing everything you can to make sure each employee gets home safe at night.

Written by: Malcolm Jeffris, CTSP