As part of its pursuit to run its business by the book “Mastering the Rockefeller Habits,” the team at Sun Valley Landscaping is working on implementing key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure its success.

(Omaha, Neb.-based Sun Valley Landscaping was featured in the LM July 2015 cover story “Committed to the core.”)

“I’ll start by saying ‘Rockefeller Habits’ takes years to be good at,” says co-owner Paul Fraynd. “We’re learning what we’re doing with KPIs.”

In the past, the company has tracked long-term KPIs, such as annual employee turnover rates or quarterly sales goals.

Those things are important, but because they’re long-term, it’s difficult for team members to feel like they have an impact on them, he says. So Sun Valley switched gears to more immediate goals.

“At the longest, we wanted them to be two weeks because that’s what our payroll is,” Fraynd says. “At least you can make changes fairly quickly.”

For this summer, here are a few “shorter-term” things Sun Valley is tracking:

• Attendance rate, measured by division;

• Safety, measured by the number of days with no injuries;

• Gross profit, measured by division every pay period; and

• Truck and equipment care, rated weekly by crew on a 1 to 5 scale, measured by division.

“We put the divisions against each other for friendly competition,” Fraynd says. Rewards for the “winning” division include simple items like Gatorades, gas cards or getting a steak at the company picnic instead of a burger. And to keep safety top of mind, the company buys breakfast for every 45 days without an injury.

Fraynd says staff members don’t seems to care what the reward is. “They only care about being acknowledged,” he adds.

The company will continued to monitor and tweak the KPIs as it goes to see which are most effective.

“You just have to start doing something,” Fraynd says.

Image: Gazelles