Being a landscape business owner is hard. There are a million things vying for your attention, and it’s usually the most urgent that gets it. Meanwhile, your business keeps going – but is it growing? Has it increased in value over the last year? The truth is that most landscape business owners have no idea what their business is worth or how it’s actually doing. They’re usually fantastic technicians, happy to be working IN the business, but rarely ON the business. But knowing the value of your business, and understanding the steps needed to take to increase its value are critical for the growth and health of the business. It will increase profitability now and also make your business more attractive to potential buyers – whether you’re looking at selling now or in the future.

Let’s take a look at six pillars of business and identify some best practices and tools you can implement fairly easily to increase efficiency, productivity and profit.

SAFETY

The health and safety of your staf...

The original article by Kate Heinz and updated by Jessica Powers can be found HERE. 

Organizational culture influences the success of your company, directly affecting the sort of candidates you attract and the employees you hold onto. There are several different types of organizational culture too; so you have to find the one that works best for you.

What Is Organizational Culture?

Organizational culture, or company culture, is defined as the shared values, attitudes and practices that characterize an organization. It’s the personality of your company, and it plays a large part in your employees’ overall satisfaction.

Having a strong organizational culture is important because it helps attract the right candidates and it keeps them engaged as employees. According to a 2019 Glassdoor study, 77 percent of adults would evaluate a company’s culture before applying to an open position, with more than half ranking an organization’s organizational culture as more important than compensati...

The original article by Kate Heinz can be found here. 

Engaging employees is a highly effective business strategy, but it’s easier said than done. Your first inclination might be to build out a new benefits package or offer office perks like cold brew on tap or a wellness room. While your team will likely appreciate the new stuff, these changes do more to increase job satisfaction than boost employee engagement — two related but different concepts. 

Employee Engagement Strategies:

• Take employee surveys.
• Uphold your company’s core values.
• Carve out career paths and provide opportunities for growth.
• Promote employees from within.
• Recognize top performers.
• Promote transparency.
• Allow for honest feedback.
• Hold employees accountable.
• Hold leadership accountable. 

What Is Employee Engagement?

Employee engagement is defined as the degree to which an employee is motivated and passionate about their work. While it’s often confused with job satisfaction, employee engagement has ...

The original article by Alan Kohll can be found HERE.

Company culture is an integral part of business. It affects nearly every aspect of a company. From recruiting top talent to improving employee satisfaction, it’s the backbone of a happy workforce. Without a positive corporate culture, many employees will struggle to find the real value in their work, and this leads to a variety of negative consequences for your bottom line.

According to research by Deloitte, 94% of executives and 88% of employees believe a distinct corporate culture is important to a business’ success. Deloitte’s survey also found that there is a strong correlation between employees who claim to feel happy and valued at work and those who say their company has a strong culture.

There’s a reason why companies who are named as a Best Place to Work see so much success. These organizations tend to have strong, positive corporate cultures that help employees feel and perform their best at work. Research gathered by Cu...

Our industry offers a vast amount of professional development opportunities. This is one of the things that sets us apart from other industries.

As we continue our focus on lifelong learning, we wanted to make you aware, if you aren’t already, of some of the great learning opportunities available to you that are specific to our industry.

LANDSCAPE ONTARIO PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Landscape Ontario's Professional Development has extensive resources to help provide you with tools for personal and business growth. They offer a wide range of topics, allowing you to update your skills or learn something new. They offer in-person and online seminars. Click HERE to see the list of 2023 seminars.

LMN (Landscape Management Network)

LMN offers a number of ebooks, videos and on-demand webinars covering topics related to running and growing a business: budgeting, business planning and growth, estimating, hiring, improving efficiency, and marketing and sales. For a list of the resources, click...

Clockwork is a book for business owners. The purpose of the book is for owners to design their business to run itself. It is a book that has freedom and fulfillment as the ultimate goal. It echoes Peter Drucker's quote "Efficiency is doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right things.” Michalowicz has taken this concept and created a process to put it in place. 

One of the most impactful elements of the book is identifying what Mike calls the Queen Bee Role. He writes, “Identify the core function in your business that is the biggest determinant of your company’s success. Within every company there exists a single function that is the most significant determinant of the company’s health. It is where the uniqueness of your offering meets the best talents of you and/or your staff.”

The process of thinking this through is valuable in itself. But it is not easy. We all think that every aspect of our business is crucial. Michalowicz says, “The biggest cause of business inefficienc...

Want to start your season off right? Plan a spring kick-off meeting. A seasonal kick-off meeting is a way to get everyone on the same page, remind them of policies and procedures, review your company values and priorities, celebrate achievements and get excited for the year ahead. It's a great team-building opportunity that will bring everyone together and create a positive company culture. 

Below are some great ideas from an article for Lawn & Landscape by Steve Cesare (original article can be found here).

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A business owner from Massachusetts called me the other day to talk about the annual transition from the snow season to the landscape season, and what he should do to get all the employees on the same page to ensure prompt, aligned and optimal field execution. With 85-90 employees to consider, it is important for the business owner to design a well-crafted, organized “Landscape Kickoff Day” that is informative, fundamental and engaging.

As ...

(Original article by John Janes can be found here.)

Bookkeeper, Controller, CFO. Are you uncertain about what each role emcompasses? Or when you should outsource the role vs. hiring someone in-house? We hope this will help! 

Should I hire a bookkeeper?

I get this question a lot. The truth is that a business of any size needs a person to handle their books. When first starting out, outsourcing a bookkeeper is the best option as it reduces your costs since you only pay for the time you need. And by having a bookkeeper throughout the year, you will save money on your accountant at the end of the year, since there’s less for them to do.

A big mistake that small business owners make is thinking they can do the books on their own. Once the season gets busy, the last thing owners want to do is the books at the end of the day. The result of leaving the books until the off season is a nightmare that ends up costing you more money and more headaches.

So, what does a bookkeeper do? The bookkeeper will enter all the payables, record payments re...

If you are looking for a way to make an immediate impact on your organization with little expense, try implementing the 5S Methodology. 

The 5S Methodology originated in Japan and is a systematic approach to workplace organization, broken down into 5 steps:

Sort - go through each work area and eliminate all unnecessary tools and materials (especially in the shop and yard areas). 

Set in order - arrange all tools and inventory in such a way that the most frequently used items are the easiest and quickest to locate.

Shine - clean and maintain the cleanliness of all the workspaces and equipment.

Standardize - all equipment, tools and workstations should be identical.

Sustain - maintain and review standards regularly to maintain focus on the new way of doing things. 

Have you heard of this before? I love it because I’m big on systems that simplify what we are doing as business owners. 

For more information on the 5S Methodology and a breakdown of each of the steps, click HERE.

If ...