BALANCED SCORECARD-EMPLOYEE KEY INITIATIVES

Steven Cesare, Ph.D.

This is the second of a four-part series summarizing a conversation I recently had with a business owner from Michigan during which she sought assistance in developing her company’s 2025 Strategic Plan. As stated in last week’s posting, I recommended the business owner organize and present her annual plan within the context of the Balanced Scorecard, which postulates that organizations must have equitable, synergistic focus on four concurrent goal quadrants to promote sustainable success: Financial, Employee, Process, and Customer.

Likened to a dinner table with four legs or a set of tires on your automobile, the Balanced Scorecard avers that if any goal quadrant is not symmetrical with the other interdependent quadrants, ineffective results will occur, impeding long-term viability. By way of metaphor, if that pesky table at your favorite cafe has one leg that is too short, thereby causing you discomfort, you and I both know you will get the obligatory napkin, fold it, and place it under the shortened table leg to regain its balance and your convenience. Similarly, it does not matter which of your car tires has low air pressure, the undeniable result is substandard vehicle performance, indicative of a potential long-term hazard.

While the Financial quadrant was presented last week, and the Process and Customer quadrants will be presented in the next two weeks, this week’s topic shares the Employee quadrant.

To refresh your memory, the Employee quadrant is primarily concerned with human capital, organizational culture, and other capacities that are key to breakthrough performance. Within the Green Industry, this goal quadrant normally tracks field employee staffing levels, position turnover, and Foreman retention rates, as well as the number of fully-trained field employees, average days to fill a staffing vacancy, bench strength percentage, and myriad organizational culture measurements.

Given that overview, here are the most common key initiatives that most landscapers consider when addressing the Employee quadrant.

Employee

Establish monthly staffing goals by position for each department
Define, role model, and institutionalize the Company Culture
Publish the company goals and hold employees accountable for achieving them each month
Significantly increase the payout for the Employee Referral Bonus Program
Be in the yard every day, for dispatch or arrival; smile and talk with your field employees
Create a Career Ladder, with job descriptions, tandem performance evaluations, and wage scales
Implement a quarterly employee Rewards and Recognition ceremony
Design an annual Safety Training Calendar
Develop a series of Field Employee Training Programs (e.g., Laborer, Foreman, Irrigator)
Hold all Foremen accountable for achieving their OSHA 10-hour certification
Institute monthly Foremen Pulse meetings
Complete the Performance Planning Matrix for each position
Implement a real Foreman On-boarding Program
The owner should attend every New Employee Orientation Program
Develop an Employee Density Recruitment Map, Recruitment Plan, and Social Media Calendar
Conduct all annual employee performance reviews during the same week, in Quarter 1
Read, research, and revise the Employee Handbook every year
Conduct all employee audits (e.g., I-9 Forms, SDSs, OSHA records, payroll, file management)
Create Success Behaviors for each Company Core Value; disseminate them to all employees
Develop an individualized Training Plan for every executive, supervisor, and manager

While clearly extensive, this list of Employee initiatives is far from exhaustive. This quadrant is fundamentally dynamic, demanding exorbitant time, effort, and resources to either proactively create and sustain a results-based team-oriented culture, or respond reactively to a significant calamity (e.g., serious injury, lawsuit, government audit). As a based capitalist, if you think any of these Employee initiatives is unnecessary, frivolous, or too costly, I suggest you check the air pressure on that tire very soon.

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