BUILDING YOUR TEAM
Engage, Train, Retain: Building a Skilled Workforce
By Jill Odom
SKILLED LABOR IS HARD TO FIND, which is why many lawn and landscape companies opt to start from the ground up with their employees. Even when they do hire an employee with prior industry experience, it is still important to train them so they’re on the same page.
“Training is a key ingredient in devel- oping our team,” Bryan Word, president of Blackjack Horticulture, based in Birmingham, Alabama. “If we want to be excellent in our service and our work, we must continue to teach and develop our people. As new people come in, we can’t assume everyone knows everything we expect.” Shawn Fitzgerald, technical advisor
for The Davey Institute’s commercial landscape service line (CLS), based in Kent, Ohio, says training is essential because it allows their team to keep up with new technology and science. It also helps them attract good talent and retain them.
ENGAGING EMPLOYEES One of the greatest challenges of training can be getting your employees to engage and care about the information you’re conveying. This is why Ryan Lawn & Tree, based in Merriam, Kansas, decided to reverse their model. Shawn Scheffler, director of learning
Photos: Blackjack Horticulture
and development for Ryan Lawn & Tree, says they stopped pushing training and
“We’re not dictating to them to get the training done, with the exception of anything that’s safety or compliance related. We’re providing them an opportunity. They choose not to take advantage of the opportunity. It’s really on them but the worst thing we could do is check them off on things and give them a bump in pay because that doesn’t teach them
anything.” - Matt Evans, director of arboriculture training for Ryan Lawn & Tree
14 The Edge //January/February 2025
requiring employees to use their learning management system (LMS) a few years ago. “Rarely do you get performance,” Scheffler says. “You just get compliance, and rarely do you get buy-in or produc- tivity. You just get people who don’t like training because they’re forced to do it. So we flipped the table.” Now, Ryan Lawn & Tree employees
can choose to access the education needed to advance to the next job title when they’re ready to pursue it. “There is a job progression to specialist
one, specialist two, senior specialist, crew lead and on, all the way up,” Scheffler says. “Each one of those bumps in title also gets an additional $10,000 in salary.” Scheffler says their employees tend to be engaged without needing all the
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