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7 Tips for Retaining Great Employees

7 Tips For Retaining Great Employees

It’s hard to find a good employee and yet it feels like it is even harder to keep them around. Especially in the tree care industry, employee turnover can be the most demoralizing challenge that you as the business owner face. While every organization will have employees leave from time to time, top level tree services make a concerted effort to retain their team members. My list of 7 tips for retaining great employees come from working with and observing these top companies over the years.

Hire for culture fit – Okay this is more of a hiring tip than a retention tip, however, it’s the best way to improve your retention. It is a lot easier to keep your employees when you start with employees that fit the culture of your organization. Skills can be taught, but you will never be able to change the personality of your employees. If you hire to fill a specific skill set and do not pay attention to whether or not that employee will fit the culture you will either have that employee leave sooner than you want or they will push out good employees.


Communication – Everything within your company depends great communication. Knowing what matters to your employees and what motivates them is the key to keeping them happy while working within your organization. Provide a work environment that encourages communication between management and laborers without fear of repercussions and you will dramatically increase your employee retention.


Career development – Supporting and encouraging your team members to pursue additional training lets them know that you are committed to them and their careers first and your profits second. Great employees will produce more profit for the business, so allow each of your team members to grow individually. Also, developing a career path structure that an employee can follow to advance in your company will provide motivation and clarity for all team members.


Provide challenges – The best employees on your team want to be challenged. They want to use their skills and talents to accomplish goals that not everyone can. This helps them feel fulfilled in their work and wanting to stay with your organization. A clear defined career path, provides one way to challenge your employees, but you can also have a number of special projects lined up that an employee can sign up for. Perhaps starting a safety committee, researching the latest equipment, figuring out a way to utilize the latest client management software, or creating small videos for use on social media channels for marketing purposes are all examples of simple challenges that you can provide your employees that would be valuable to your company.
Flexibility – In general, most employees today are looking for a work place that can be flexible with them. Understanding that just earning a paycheck is less attractive now than it was in the past. Employees want to be able to take time with their families and perhaps work from home from time to time if they do sales or office work. When talking about field staff it is a little harder to be flexible, but not impossible. You must have great communication and a solid set of rules for flexible schedule so that everyone knows what to expect of them and their teammates. This eliminates one person from taking advantage of it and creates respect for everyone. Let your employees come up with ideas on how this would work that would be fair for all.


Diversify work opportunities – Providing a varied work day for your employees is nearly impossible within the tree care industry, but what isn’t is creating a rotation where employees get to work in different areas every so often to break up the monotony of their work. This starts by having the roles and duties of each position outlined and written down for everyone. Then create a structure where each employee spends one day out of every two or three weeks in a different area of your business. That could mean that a production arborist may spend one day working with the plant health care crew and one day in the shop with your mechanic each month. Resist the urge to keep pounding production out of your best employees to avoid burnout.

Compensation – I listed this as the last tip, because while important to retaining employees, if you master the points above, compensation takes care of itself. With a flexible work schedule and chance for career development, warranted performance based pay increases become a normal part of your company’s culture. If you have trouble figuring out how much to pay your employees, start by using the TCIA’s Wage Survey.

Written by: Eric Petersen

5 Tips for a Better Website

5 Tips for A Better Website

We all know that you only have one chance to make a first impression. In today’s digital world, that first impression usually comes from your website. It is critical that your website is fresh, exciting and portrays your company’s personality and vision to potential customers.

 

Besides the obvious things such as being visual appealing and mobile friendly, here are 5 tips for giving your website a face-lift:

 

Add Video – If a picture is worth a 1,000 words, then video is worth a million! Video is a great way to stand out from your competition and showcase your business. You don’t need expensive equipment to make it happen, just use your iPhone! The quality of an iPhone camera is excellent and uploading to YouTube is simple. Want an easy editing program? Download the app iMovie, you can easily add an intro slide with your company logo & music. Video ideas:Film your crew working safely on a job-site, showcase your different equipment, get a customer testimony, or an about us video. These videos can be used on a variety of different pages on your website & make great social media posts.

 

Ramp up your “About Us” section – People want to know the people behind the company, so show your personality! People do business with people they like, so share what values you believe in, how your business was started, tell your story and be real. Also, include photos of the staff with short bios.

 

Start a Blog – This should be a must! Not only is it important for your customers to get information on current industry trends, you can also write about what’s going on at your company and other important topics. Our good friend Google wants to see fresh content added to your website for SEO. If you don’t like to write, find one of your staff members that can write a weekly or monthly article to share on your blog.

 

Incorporate Live Chat – This may seem tricky or too tech savvy for some, but adding a live chat feature onto your website is fairly easy and can be activated whenever someone from your team is available. If a team member is not available, it still allows for clients or prospects to send a message with their questions and it is sent to your email. There are a number of software vendors who offer live chat services for your business. We utilize Pure Chat in our office and have found it to be well received by our customers. Allowing people to communicate with your team via chat is yet another way to being viewed as the best choice in the tree care industry.

 

Call to Action – Every solid website allows the customer to take action immediately by offering clear buttons to request services. Each page should have a call to action on it with a clear message for the consumer.

 

There you have it. 5 simple tips that will revamp your website and give the first impression that you want to have for your company.

Written by: Eric Petersen

3 Ways to Jump Start Your Marketing

3 Ways to Jump Start Your Marketing

With spring finally at our doorstep, I want to ask you; is your marketing ready for spring? The best tree services are already deep into their marketing planning for the upcoming growing season. If you haven’t given much thought to how you are going to make the phone ring this year, here are 3 ways to jump start your marketing.

 

Create Your Plan – No marketing happens without a plan and most plans are not perfect. So don’t get caught up in trying to make a masterpiece marketing plan, just get started by brainstorming with your team.

First focus on what service you want to provide the most of this year. What service is the most profitable for you? What service contains the least amount of headaches or hassles? Which service fulfills your mission as an organization and fits your company’s strengths the best?

 

Next, identify your ideal customer that fits your targeted service. Who are they? What do they value? Where do they live? What is the best way to communicate with them?

 

Lastly, craft an Early-bird deal for customers who sign up for your service in advance. You probably already do this with different discounts like winter pricing, senior citizen discounts and repeat customer credits, but by truly offering a lower rate for a short bit of time you will increase interest from new customers.

 

Social Media Blitz – After you have your plan formulated it’s time to support the efforts online.
Write a blog or two offering free information on the subject/service that you want to promote. In there, dispel any rumors about the service in a non-salesy way. You can offer pros and cons to educate your customer.

Post the blog on all of your social media channels and follow it up with links to similar articles on that same topic.

Edit your website to show the Early-bird deal right on the home page with an easy way for the customer to contact your team.

 

Customer Contact – Now that you have your online backing for your Early-bird deal set, it’s time to reach out to the public. Looking at your ideal client profile that you developed decide on how to get the word out.

 

Start by contacting your current customer base with the Early-bird offer. These are the customers that are the easiest sale because they already know you. You can do this a number of ways, from a flyer in the mail, to an email or even phone calls to the top 20% of customers.

 

Reach out to prospective customers that you have had some interaction with in the past, but for whatever reason they did not choose your services. This may be best through email or hand selected phone calls.

Finally, sending out a series of postcards to designated zip codes will help introduce your company and services to new potential customers. Work with a marketing firm to design a three part series that builds off each other to promote your professionalism, service and company’s brand.

 

By focusing on one special deal to start the season that fits your company’s strengths, you will intentionally gain more trust with your current clients and pick up new customers that fit your desired buyer profile and obviously lead you to greater revenue this year.

Written by: Eric Petersen

7 Deadly Sins of Work Comp

7 Deadly Sins of Work Comp

Is your work comp program not working for you? Read the 7 Deadly Sins of Work Comp from ArboRisk Insurance, the experts for tree service insurance: 7. Allowing injured workers to stay at home 6. Assuming your classifications are correct 5. Not monitoring your claims 4. Not being prepared for your premium audit 3. Thinking that your Experience modification cannot be controlled 2. Accepting the fact that injuries are a cost of doing business 1. Believing all work comp programs are equal! Need help to avoid the 7 Deadly Sins of Work Comp? Contact ArboRisk to have a free work comp cost analysis with a Certified Work Comp Counselor!

Written by: Eric Petersen