By Taylor Tuomie
If you’re a seasonal field service business, you probably have trouble with employee turnover. Every year that we run our Green Industry Benchmark Reportsurvey, we see that business owners have trouble hiring and keeping quality employees. This is partially because of the seasonality of plenty of the businesses that we survey. A lawn care business is going to have a tough time keeping the same employees on board year after year if they’re in a location that doesn’t allow them to work more than half the year.
Some solutions to keeping the same, good employees coming back is by offering competitive pay and maybe an annual pay bump, but some businesses can’t afford to do that each year.
There is a pool of quality employees, who will be available each summer, they’ll be looking for extra cash and you know that they are able to handle the physical demands of landscape work, lawn maintenance or irrigation. Here are 6 reasons why you should be hiring college athletes to work for your green industry business.
Team Players
Athletes know what it means to be on a team. They work well with others because their sports require it. Even if they’re not playing a team sport, they are part of a group of individuals working towards a common goal. They know that they need others to make themselves better.
Dedicated
It takes a lot of dedication to be a college athlete. Not only are they getting an education, but they are putting in hours and hours of hard work to improve themselves for their sport. They are willing to put in the time because they know that the improvement they’ll see is worth the hard work. You know that they can be relied upon to show up on time and put in the work.
Coachable
As a boss, you hope that all your employees are coachable. Athletes know that they need to be coached in order to succeed. They are typically responsive to leadership, as long as there is respect shown by their leadership. Athletes respond well to being trained and they are used to being shown what they could be improving upon.
Learn to do things right
For all sports, there are techniques and skills that athletes need to learn to perfect. They know the importance of learning the fundamentals and are willing to put in the practice. They understand that some things will come naturally and that other skills need to be practiced and honed in order to do them the right way.
Set goals (and achieve them)
Collegiate athletes make great employees because they know the importance of setting goals. If you’re a green industry business that wants to decrease the time spent on a certain service, an athlete will understand why you’re setting a goal to improve your business.
Competitive
This might be the biggest reason why you should hire collegiate athletes for your green industry business. They’re competitive spirit is beneficial to your team. They push themselves and others to do better. They also make great advocates for your business because of this reason.
Tips to Finding Athletes to Hire
Get in touch with the career centers at local schools. It might be easier to get in touch with smaller schools. Career centers are typically looking for any job opportunities for their students. See if they can post your job description on their website.
Another option is to get in touch with the coaches of teams in the area. They’ll typically be happy to keep their athletes busy during the offseason. See if they’d be willing to spread the word for you.
Now that you're optimizing your team, how about optimizing your web presence? Download our free eBook, Local SEO for Green Industry Businesses, click the link below!
