Landscaping is hard work and this is why most Americans, Government Agencies and Businesses hire out the service. The key to the landscaping business is staying efficient and having the right team. As a landscaping business expands it becomes harder and harder to get all the work done. If you have weather issues or cannot get to an account on your regular schedule the customer maybe left without good service and you may not be able to get to them for a week.
The most critical part to staying efficient is having good crews or teams, which hustle. Motivating your crews is difficult. One brilliant idea, which was developed by Expert Landscaper Jon Bitzer, was to modify summer work schedules due to hot weather and humidity. Jon takes care of the landscaping for much of the redevelopment area, including all the parks in Atlantic City. With only 42 people, his crews are broken into specialty teams. Each crew is designated tasks and assignments on a schedule, which includes every thing from mowing maintenance to installations of new parks.
Systematically and block-by-block Jon Bitzer has revitalized the ambiance of Atlantic City and is part of the reason for the tourism increases. Once a city known for its drugs, crime and graffiti adjacent those lavish casinos is now an area filled with pedestrians, shoppers, couples and tourists enjoying a multitude of events, restaurants, shows and loving every minute of it. It was the image which brought back the crowds; the removal of the graffiti and trash, the placement of custom potted flowers, well manicured sidewalks and medians and nearby parks where ghetto type buildings and debris once abounded.
Jon explained; "We recently set new schedules where employee come to work at 6 am in the morning and work straight thru until 1 pm, without breaks or lunch; 7 hours and then go home." But in his new plan they get paid for eight hours. Why? Easy explains Jon; "We were finding our crews coming back late from lunch 15-30 minutes sometimes, showing up late for work and this broke the momentum of the work pace." Additionally Jon took a gamble which paid off big time in his Atlantic City specialty work teams; he instituted a plan that if no one was late to work in the morning or getting back from lunch that they would receive a $1.00 per hour pay raise. Productivity jumped by huge margins, while the rates of tardiness to work which was nearly 30% went down to 5% then as some workers saw a $40.00 extra per week increase others decided that was a good bonus and then the rates of being late for work were cut again and some weeks is less than 3%. Imagine a 95% on time to work rate for a landscaping business?
Today Jon's teams take care of over 52 properties in the downtown area of Atlantic City, the city for lovers, and it shows. The city has never looked better, is up for City Beautification Awards and the Redevelopment Project is nothing short of a total success. Learn from this experience of how to motivate your crews from the man who made Atlantic City a new shinning star.
Lance Winslow - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/ |
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