Brainstorm solutions with your employees. Changing habits can save money.

Click Podcast #25 in the orange side bar to the right — >
as you follow the outline below

Part one will discuss ways to help minimize this increased cost. Part two will focus on ways to approach your customers with varying ways to offset this added cost.

Get Your People Involved

• Meet with your people and get them engaged
• Make them aware of the challenge. Be specific, say our gas cast have gone up $/month
• Make sure they understand the potential impact this will have on the financials
• Brainstorm on possible solutions, ideas or additional info needed
• Decide on some specific areas that we can address or measure
• Assign champions to these areas
• Meet regularly to review progress or make any needed adjustments
• Measure results and reward positive results

Right Sizing Your Equipment and Vehicles

• Take an inventory of all vehicles and equipment
• Now determine if these really make sense. Are we over kill on size?
• Look at the sales, supervisors and owners vehicles
• Get rid of the clunkers, they eat gas, look bad and are often unsafe
• Update vehicles and equipment with up-to-date fuel efficient technology

Minimize/Eliminate Driving Habits and Behaviors that are Gas Guzzling

• Needless Idling: in the yard, at the pump
• Don’t Tailgate: It’s not only dangerous and illegal but there’s wear and tear on the brakes, and the fuel efficiency drops considerably
• Cruise Control: Use when practical. It saves 12 to 14 percent on fuel
• Slow Down: It’s safer and saves fuel in a big way. Some use GPS on this
• Acceleration: Jack-rabbit starts suck up fuel and tax the transmission

Proper Maintenance and Tire Conditions

• Clean Air Filters: Clean or change on field equipment and vehicles on regular scheduled basis
• Tire Pressure: This is a BIG one, have metal caps, check pressure weekly, have a gauge in each truck, over inflated wears out tire, under inflated causes “Drag” and loss of MPG

If you have any other ideas on how you’re saving on gas costs please share them with us

This is an important area that requires a lot of time, documentation and research to make sure it is done correctly.

Click Podcast #24 in the orange side bar to the right — >
as you follow the outline below

This podcast will focus on another key driver of business potential – your human resources plan. Steve Cesare is The Harvest Group’s point person to help companies improve their human resources programs. He is also writing a monthly series for Lawn & Landscape magazine identifying the “Top Ten Most Serious Human Resources Mistakes” that companies typically make.

The Grow Show will highlight those topics each month as part of its continuing podcast series. Here is the “Ninth Most Serious Human Resources Mistake that companies make:  Employee Leaves of Absence.”

There are several reasons why employee leaves of absence are important to landscaper contractors.

• Many landscapers think that employee leaves of absence include vacation and sick time, when in fact there could be as many as 20 different types of leaves of absence that an employee may be legally entitled to take.
• Understanding employee leaves of absence is becoming increasingly complex because many state governments have specific employee leaves of absence that may be partially redundant yet still unique when compared to federal employee leaves of absence.
• A recent survey showed that the average legal fees for a company to defend itself against a single Family and Medical Leave Act violation approached $78,000. Keep in mind, this is just the legal fees and does not include costs related to the employee’s lost wages and benefits, administrative penalties, or emotional distress.

Common types of employee leaves of absence — There are three types of employee leaves of absence:  federal, state and employer discretion.

• The federal government requires that employers provide employees with multiple unpaid leave programs including:  the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Act (USERRA), and Federal Jury Duty.
• Beyond the federal laws, each state has its own unique set of employee leaves of absence, some of which are unpaid, while others require that they employee get paid while off from work. Some examples of state leave programs include:  The New York Military Spouse Leave Act, Tennessee Maternity Leave Law, Illinois Blood Donation Leave and the California Time Off to Vote Leave. And of course, each state has its own workers’ compensation leave program.
• The final leave of absence category is employer discretion. This type of leave is not required by law.  It can be offered by the employer if so desired, and must be applied without any type of discrimination.  Employer discretion leave includes:  vacation, sick leave, bereavement leave and personal time off.

Three common mistakes landscapers make regarding federal and state leave programs.

• Negligence: Negligence is when the employer does not offer, communicate or approve the available leaves of absence as defined by law. For example, if an employee was injured on the job and the employer did not inform the employee of his/her rights to workers’ compensation.
• Improper administration: This occurs when an employer does not abide by the legal procedures outlined by the particular leave of absence program. For example, not using correct administrative forms, violating employee privacy rights (e.g., HIPAA and FMLA) and not continuing medical benefits while an employee is on a leave of absence.
• Retaliation: Retaliation against employees who take leaves of absence. Many recent court decisions have ruled in favor of employees based on employer comments (e.g., “Aren’t you back from medical leave yet?”  “What am I going to do to cover your work while you are out on workers’ compensation?”).  Similarly, an employer must never document any aspect of a leave of absence in an employee’s annual job performance review (e.g., “John’s performance this year was severely hindered due to the fact that he missed five weeks of work while on leave of absence.”).

Basic steps to minimize risk exposure in this area.

• Take an inventory of all federal and state leave programs that may affect your company. Document them in your employee handbook, and develop procedures to ensure legal compliance.
• Understand the criteria for taking each specific type of leave of absence.
• Identify which employees are eligible for all of the available leave programs.  Some programs are extended to all employees, while others have limitations based on length of service.
• Determine the duration of leave program. For example, time off to vote is usually two hours, while the FMLA is 12 weeks.
• Make sure you know if the employee will be paid or unpaid on the leave, and if the employee can continue to receive their benefits while on a leave of absence.
• Specify the right to return to work after the leave is completed. For example, can the employee return to an “equivalent” position or does the employee have to return to the “same” position after the leave has been completed.

A few landscape industry best practices:

• Training: Leading companies train all appropriate staff (e.g., administrative, human resources, supervisors) on how to identify, discuss, and review leaves of absence relevant to their company.
• Communication: These companies have all of the required state and federal employment posters in place, an employee handbook and policy manual that addresses each available leave of absence.
• Employment Practices Liability Insurance: This protects companies against various human resources issues including violations of federal and state leave of absence laws.
• Established Procedures: Detailed procedures that track all aspects of each type of leave of absence for every employee across all legally required time frames.   Some leaves of absence can overlap with certain leaves of absence, but not overlap with others.
• Best in class companies frequently rely on expert legal guidance when confronted with the technical complexities inherent within many leaves of absence programs.

If you have any questions about your company’s leaves of absence or any human resources related question send an e-mail to Steve at Steve@Harvestlandscapeconsulting.com.

Next month, we’ll share the Eighth Most Serious Human Resources Mistake Companies Make: How to avoid claims of retaliation. The Harvest Group will also provide listeners with another installment in our Making More Money series as our Grow Show series continues.

The 10 Fundamentals for Growing Forward Leadership

A Leaders Guide for “Growing Forward” in Today’s Challenging Times

Today’s leaders are faced with business challenges as tough as any over the past 35 plus years. In order to provide the needed leadership for their organization’s success leaders today need to demonstrate some very fundamental leadership skills and behaviors.

So far we have reviewed 2 fundamentals:

1 – Work Hard (and Smart) and Perform

2 – Radiate Confidence and Optimism

Today, we will review the third fundamental behavior that “Growing Forward Leaders” must model for their team during challenging times, and for when things may not always be going the right way or perhaps as well as planned.

Fundamental 3 – Enlist and Enroll vs. Command and Control

Micro management breeds distrust. Without trust, things will slow down and costs will Go Up!

With TRUST things move faster and the costs go down!

“Growing Forward Leaders” need to enlist the help and talents of their people. Here are some ways to do that.

Learn How to Delegate: Give your people a sense of control and ownership. Give them worthy assignments. Give them something to do to help make a difference.

Enlist Your Team’s Help: Listen to your people. They are the ones who are closest to the action. Your people serve as great recon with clients, competitors, market status etc.

“Growing Forward Leaders” energize others’ talents to generate and implement critical business solutions. When leaders share authority and responsibility it will deepen their people’s commitment to the organization.

In challenging times, leaders make sure everyone is focused and engaged or fully “enrolled” to helping the company being a success.

“Growing Forward Leaders,” ask yourself:

• What is the level of trust in your organization?
• How fast or slow do things move around your organization? Why do you think this is?
• How would you rate your company’s level of trust? Morale?

Now ask your people how they would rate the level of trust? Morale?

The season just started and it’s the crucial “100 days of Hell” before July 4th when you can either make it or break it. It’s when your operations go from 0 – 60 at mach speed but are they running as efficiently as possible?

Any of this sound familiar: Weak cash flow, high payables, skyrocketing overtime, nerves on edge and payroll going through the roof. Why? Most of the time it’s because processes haven’t been implemented to optimize operational efficiency.

Imagine having a process to:

• Increase productivity
• Cut the overtime
• Reduce the payroll
• Increase your cash flow

Yes, imagine having more cash, immediately in your pocket that is reclaimed from, “non-billable time”. Non-billable time runs between 10% and 20% of your labor cost each year according to Industry Experts. The result? Thousands of wasted dollars!

Think about it, if an un-billable hour costs you $18.00 (with labor burden) and you turn that into a billable hour of $ 36.00 the swing is $54.00! If you had 10 crew people and saved 1 hour a day each for a week, that’s 50 hours. Turn those hours into billable time it’s a swing of $2,700.00 a week, $10,800.00 for a month! But HOW!

Now, The Harvest Group has developed an Operational Efficiency Assessment. Our Head Harvesters use this tool to reveal all areas of inefficiency and associated cost. We then create a customized plan with proven recommendations that will immediately provide a solution. When adopted, we guarantee it will improve effectiveness and lower cost!

Some Harvest clients have increased gross margins from 2%-8% the first season, that’s a pile of CASH. By shifting non-billable inefficient time to billable – huge swings can occur as described above. We think that’s pretty darn good!

NOW, during these crazy “100 Days” is the best time to have an expert assess your operations while they are in full swing!

Call or email to schedule your assessment:

Ed Laflamme LIC – US East
203-858-4696 (cell phone)

Bill Arman – US West
949-466-8837 (cell phone)