At Grunder Landscaping, we have a wide range of experience on our crews. We have some team members who have been doing this job for 30+ years, while others are in their first season.

Our company is known for the high-quality work and the high level of service we provide. It’s why our clients choose to do business with us, but it can be hard to maintain as our team grows and changes. Keeping the customer’s experience with us consistent — no matter which crew is on the property — is hard but important. We have two strategies for doing this:

1. Quality audits. Our Group Leaders have a goal of spending 30 percent of their time out in the field in 2022. These are the people managing our crews, and we want them out there to help our teams maintain quality and be more efficient. In that time, they’re teaching new skills, showing how to do tasks faster and regularly performing quality audits. They follow the quality audit process set up in Aspire and take notes on anything that is or is not up to our standards. We then can review that information with that team so that they learn for next time or schedule a follow-up visit if it’s necessary. 
2. Don’t underestimate the power of a compliment. Give specific compliments about what was done well on a job site and show your entire team pictures of work done well. Publicly celebrate the particular tasks done very well. Set the goalposts up clearly so everyone can understand what the standards are. 

It’s, of course, good to also correct mistakes as you see them, but do that calmly and do it in private. Public shaming isn’t an excellent motivator or teacher. 

As my team works on growing our business, I’m excited this summer to head to R.P. Marzilli as part of the Field Trip we host in partnership with NALP. They’re a large company serving the Boston area and known for their quality of work and craftsmanship. They are a much larger company than mine and have maintained that quality every step of the way. I can’t wait to see how they’ve done it and take some ideas back to my team at GLC to get better ourselves. I hope you’ll join me there on June 23-24.