When you’re caught up in the immediate day-to-day demands of keeping clients happy, delivering jobs on time and on budget, and turning a profit, it can feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day to get done all that you need to.
It's easy for training to become an afterthought, a to-do item you put off and off and off, or address quickly before crossing it off your list and moving on. But the truth is you can’t afford to skimp on training, especially in the tight labor market we're in. Training your team is the best way to invest in your team, help them be more efficient in their roles, and to build a culture where people want to work. This week, I have five tips to help you make the most of training at your company:
Plan Your Training
Set aside a regular time for training, and set a start and end time. Then stick to it! Planning ahead is the best way to make sure your training is to the point and efficient, and sticking to what you say you'll do shows your team you mean business. Consistency matters.
Know What Your Team Needs
Identify and monitor your team’s deficiencies. Track where you’ve had warranty issues, callbacks, or any injuries. Your training should be focused on relevant topics for the time or year and the tasks your teams are doing then.
Work with your leadership team to agree on your top training priorities and then systematically address them week by week this year, and if you want inspiration, we'll share a list of the topics we train on at Grunder Landscaping during this week's virtual event, Build a Winning Training Program.
Teach, Don’t Present
Effective training is not standing in a truck bed, hovering above your team while you proclaim what everyone else should be doing. The only thing you’ll accomplish with this is a company culture that dreads training as much as root canals and the DMV.
Effective training is highly interactive, creative, and passionate. A good trainer is self-aware and asks questions, fosters discussion, and gets students engaged. Make it fun, too!
Reinforce Your Training
Follow up with your team in the days after a training session to see if they have any new questions. We always start training sessions by reviewing the key takeaways from the last training to reinforce the points once more.
Train Yourself
To be an effective trainer and teacher, you have to be constantly learning yourself. You need to be great at what you want your team to be good at. Read far and wide, attend industry events, and visit other successful landscaping companies or businesses in other fields. We have a Grunder Landscaping Co. Field Trip at the end of this month if you'd like to visit me and my team, or I highly encourage you to sign up for GROW! 2022 in Nashville where we'll tour Milosi Landscape.
And if you think you’ve got nothing new to learn, it might be time to hang it up and retire, folks. Or, as Albert Einstein put it “Once you stop learning, you start dying.”
Talk to you next week!
Marty Grunder
President & CEO
The Grow Group & Grunder Landscaping Co.
P.S. A key component to getting your team to do what you want and need them to do is effective training. Join us on January 13 for our next virtual event, Build a Winning Training Program, where we'll share the why, the how, and the what of GLC's training program. Plus, sign up for our Spring Series of virtual events all at once and get $200 off.