The Top 5 Ways to Survive a Lawn Care Hiring Crisis

While finding ways to survive a lawn care hiring crisis might seem intimidating, this article will show you EXACTLY how to get through it and come out on top.

In fact, many lawn care businesses GROW during a lawn care hiring crisis.

In this article, you’ll discover the leading innovative ways to continue growing despite a lawn care hiring crisis:

• Properly increase prices to accommodate higher labor costs
• Utilize the best hiring strategies to recruit top local talent
• Discover proven retention methods to keep your best employees for years to come

… And so much MORE!

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1. Raise Your Prices

In the last year, compensation has increased by 3.8% which includes base pay, bonuses, and merit increases.

With the rising employment cost, it’s important to reevaluate your pricing to ensure you’re still meeting goals.

As a result, you need to raise prices on clients who aren’t meeting your goals.

Here are 3 important factors to consider before raising prices with all of your clients:

1. Find your break-even point, then take your profit goals into consideration.
2. Test your price increase on unprofitable clients first.
3. Don’t raise prices during the selling season (you don’t want clients going to the competition). Raise prices during the middle of the busy season, the end of the summer, and the beginning of fall (or the end of your season).

Sending a letter explaining why prices are increasing is important to sell your clients on the value and services you’re providing them.

2. Take Advantage of the Best Hiring Strategies

During a lawn care hiring labor crisis, it’s important to take advantage of the best hiring strategies.

First off, in order to find the right employees, you need to be able to attract the right candidates.

Here’s how to attract top local talent:

• Make your lawn care business look professional by utilizing the top marketing strategies.
• Focus your efforts on creating effective, low-cost Facebook Ads to target specific neighborhoods.
• Use your local connections to network and ask vendors, great existing employees, friends, and family for recommendations of top talent.

Then, once you attract potential candidates, you’ll have to properly screen and interview them to make sure they’re the best employee for your business. Also, don’t forget to perform background checks!

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3. Put Your Business Growth on Autopilot

In order to survive a lawn care hiring crisis, you’ll need the best lawn care software. 

This means you can save time and money by streamlining your everyday operations and putting everything on autopilot.

The #1 lawn care software gives you the power to take back your business and optimize employee efficiency by freeing up time for more important tasks.

With Service Autopilot, your business has the ability to instantly complete everyday tasks that used to take extra time:

• Rapid invoicing
• Employee time clocking
• Asset and chemical tracking
• GPS employee and job tracking
• Same-day automated payments
• Instantly optimized routes
• Quick professional estimates on-the-go
• Detailed reporting to find and fix profit holes
• Accessible client accounts and job notes from anywhere

When you use Service Autopilot, the sky's the limit to the growth and success you can achieve.

Utilize these features (and more!) to help decrease your workload so you can survive any lawn care hiring shortage.

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4. Prioritize Employee Retention

Now that you know how to hire the right employees, you need to know how to keep the great ones you already have.

One of the most important factors for finding and keeping the right employees is making sure you’re paying enough.

Use these steps to set your employee wage at the right, competitive amount:

1. Price your services right
2. Know the average wages in your market
3. Pay your employees well—typically, your overhead (including the owner’s salary) should make up about 12% of sales
4. Incentivize employees to stay with things like bonuses for consecutive years worked and annual pay raises
5. Obey Overtime Laws

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In addition to properly paying your employees, there are numerous other ways you can prioritize employee retention.

Here are a few ideas for motivating your employees year-round:

• Be an example to your team
• Lay out a career path for growth
• Award gift cards “just because”
• Host monthly drawings for prizes
• Implement a commission program
• Provide end-of-year or seasonal bonuses
• Provide a membership to a gym or warehouse club
• Privately and publicly acknowledge their accomplishments
• Address their mistakes and provide a path for improvement

These are just a few of the many ways you can keep your employees during a lawn care hiring crisis. 

When in doubt, ask your best employees what types of motivating rewards they’d like to see!

Alternatively, you can send routine anonymous surveys to gain valuable employee feedback.

5. Implement Robotic Mowers into Your Workforce

While robotic mowers might not be a feasible solution for all businesses during a lawn care hiring crisis, it just might be the right solution for you.

If you mow small lawns, and many of your jobs are weekly maintenance trims, then robotic mowers might be the answer to your problems.

For instance, a robotic mower might cut out the need for an extra employee. For example, an employee could be edging while the robotic mower is at work.

Even though these robotic mowers typically only mow about one acre, you might be able to use it to help your crews finish jobs faster.

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Keep Growing Your Business During a Lawn Care Hiring Crisis

It’s easy to get intimidated by a lawn care hiring crisis. However, you now have everything you need to utilize these top strategies and keep growing your business during a labor shortage.

When you know the right steps to take, you’ll have the power to do things like:

• Keep your best employees
• Hire the top talent in your local market
• Put your business growth on autopilot

Follow these pro strategies, take back control of your business, and start thriving again despite a lawn care hiring crisis!

Related: 5 Expert Tips to Cutting Costs in Your Lawn Care Business

Originally published July 8, 2021 4:28 PM updated on July 28, 2023 at 2:34 PM