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5 Ways to Cut Corners During a Lawn Care Hiring Crisis

Published on July 15, 2021

During a lawn care hiring crisis, it’s important you find ways to cut corners in order to keep on thriving.

In this article, we’ll talk about a few of the main ways you can cut corners and save money during a lawn care hiring crisis:

  • Streamline your everyday operations
  • Decrease your need for additional employees
  • Optimize your lawn care employee performance
  • Decrease your lawn care business’ overhead costs
  • Protect your investments and save money with insurance

After reading this article, you’ll find out some of the best ways to cut corners during a lawn care hiring crisis by saving money, time, and the need for additional employees.

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1. Streamline Your Everyday Operations With the Best Lawn Care Software

One of the best ways to save time and money in your everyday operations is by taking advantage of the best lawn care software.

When you start using Service Autopilot, you’ll have the power to track your lawn care employees with tools like:

  • GPS tracking
  • Time tracking
  • Performance tracking

Plus, you’ll have the ability to get more work done in less time by automating and instantly completing your everyday tasks like:

  • Billing
  • Routing
  • Invoicing

When you take advantage of all that Service Autopilot has to offer, you can lighten your workload as a business owner, decrease your need for additional employees, and optimize your team’s performance with employee tracking.

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2. Decrease Your Workforce Needs With Robotic Mowers

By implementing robotic mowers into your lawn care business, you can decrease your workforce needs.

When you use robotic mowers in your business, you can use it to help maintain lawns and decrease your need to hire additional employees.

If you mostly mow small lawns in set neighborhoods, then you can use robotic mowers to help you with your weekly maintenance trims.

For example, your robotic mower could be mowing the lawn while one of your employees does the edging. In turn, this could cut out the need to hire an additional employee.

Though, keep in mind, robotic mowers usually only mow up to one acre. In other words, you’ll need more than one robotic mower per route, and it might not be feasible for larger properties.

Think about how many acres you mow in a given day compared to how many robotic mowers you’d need. Then, consider your job’s needs. This information could tell you about how many robotic mowers you’d need, which will help you decide if robotic mowers are right for you.

3. Track Your Lawn Care Employee Performance

As we briefly talked about earlier, in order to cut corners during a lawn care labor crisis, it’s important to optimize your employee performance through tracking.

By tracking your lawn care employee performance, you’re able to ensure they’re meeting all of their job requirements:

  • Returning all equipment, tools, and chemicals in good condition every night
  • Completing jobs in the allotted time without unexpected overtime discrepancies

When you track your employee performance, you’re simultaneously ensuring everyone on your team is meeting their goals and job requirements.

Bottom Line: Employee performance tracking is always essential, but it’s especially important during a lawn care labor crisis. By the way, did you know you can easily track this using Service Autopilot?

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4. Decrease Your Overhead Costs

In order to survive and cut corners during a lawn care hiring crisis, you need to find whatever ways you can to decrease your overhead costs.

Take a look at a few different ways you can decrease your overhead costs:

  • Spending less time on jobs
  • Optimizing marketing and advertising costs
  • Talking to your employees about saving money (maybe they even have some ideas!)
  • Finding discounts wherever possible (seasonal discounts, bulk discounts, getting better vendors, etc… )

When you utilize these strategies to decrease your overhead costs, you’ll be saving money while also minimizing the need for additional employees.

As you find ways to decrease your overhead costs, also reevaluate your lawn care pricing. This will help you to increase your profit while also decreasing overhead costs.

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5. Make Sure Your Lawn Care Business Is Insured

By insuring your lawn care business, you’re able to protect your investments so there are no surprises.

For instance, you won’t need to worry as much about damaged, stolen, or lost equipment because it should be covered by your insurance provider.

Plus, if your business were to ever get sued or an employee were to steal or get hurt, you’d have insurance to protect your lawn care business.

Keep in mind, the insurance you choose matters. While you don’t want to break your bank paying for insurance, you also don’t want to skimp out on a subpar insurance plan.

At a minimum, there are three basic insurance policies you should carry in your lawn care business:

  1. General Liability Insurance
    • If you’re at fault and an accident happens while your employees are out in the field, you’re covered.
  2. Workers Compensation Insurance
    • If an employee gets injured while on the job, it’ll cover all expenses incurred from the accident - including medical bills.
  3. Property Insurance
    • Protects all of your equipment, including lawn mowers, string trimmers, and even the computers in your office.

In addition, you should consider these insurance policies as well:

  • Umbrella Insurance
  • Business Owner’s Policy
  • Commercial Auto Insurance

When you properly insure your lawn care business, you’re better ensuring that it’ll stay profitable and successful for many years to come.

As always, talk with your trusted insurance provider to choose an insurance policy that works best for your lawn care business.

Continue Thriving During a Lawn Care Hiring Crisis By Cutting Corners

At last, you know some of the best strategies for stretching your dollar and continuing to grow your business during a lawn care hiring crisis.

Use this tips to help you with things like:

  • Saving time on everyday operations
  • Minimizing your spending to provide more profit cushion
  • Decreasing your need for additional lawn care employees

When you follow the tips in this article, you’ll have everything you need to continue thriving during a lawn care hiring crisis by cutting corners.


Related: Top 5 Ways to Survive a Lawn Care Hiring Crisis


Originally published July 15, 2021 7:00 AM

Alyssa Sanders

Alyssa is the Team Lead of Creative Marketing at Xplor Field Services. Alyssa is an expert in field service industry trends, roadblocks, and solutions. When she’s not writing or creating engaging content, you can find her watching a new sci-fi series or shoving her nose into a good book.
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