It is already the final days of January, is it just us or did this month fly by? March 1 is just 30 short days away, and the spring rush will be here before we know it.
At Grunder Landscaping, we've already started to prepare for the unofficial start of our busy season. We have job openings posted to our website, are sharing our openings and the benefits of working with us on social media, and are preparing printed materials and signage.
As we're ramping up our hiring, I wanted to talk to you about three things we're doing to make sure we're filling the openings we have and keeping the team members we've already hired.
We're publicizing starting pay, average hours, and the maximum pay for our production positions. We don't see a reason to keep this a secret, and we've noticed that we get better responses and applications numbers when we lead with the money. We hope that by sharing both what a starting team member makes and what an experienced team member makes, we're showing candidates the future potential too.
We raised our wages to be more competitive with what other jobs in our area are offering too. We want the best of the best, we have to pay more to get them!
We're setting career goals. We set goals with our team members, team leaders, and group leaders twice a year. During that goal-setting review, we're having conversations about career paths and what a team member needs to do to get promoted to the next level. We're setting clear steps, and then we're following up with team members throughout the year to talk about their progress.
If we can show team members what's possible, we hope that they choose to stay at GLC for the long run. We have ambitious growth goals for 2022, and along with growth comes opportunities for our team to do more. If a team member is interested in trying something new, we want to give them the opportunity.
We're getting ready to advertise our positions. We are in a good place right now for the start of Spring in large part because we've retained team members, but we're still preparing to fire on all cylinders come March and April. Right now we're drafting and reviewing social media posts, discussing advertising plans, and getting organized so we're ready when we need to launch.
In this week's virtual event, Finding & Fielding a Winning Team, we will share more information on what we are doing to recruit and retain team members. Join us on Thursday, February 3 for three one-hour, live virtual sessions. If you can't make it, don't worry, everyone registered will also have access to the session recordings for 7 days.
Talk to you next week!
Marty Grunder
President & CEO
The Grow Group & Grunder Landscaping Co.