Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the Grow Show Powered by Steel. On the Grow show, we share ideas, tips, tactics and insights to help you grow your landscaping business. Based on our team's 40 years of experience running a landscaping company and working with other owners and their teams to do the same, new episodes are released weekly on Wednesdays. Filling in for our host, Marty Grunder this week is Grow Group Vice president Vince Torchia. I'll let him take it from here.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Hey everybody, Vince Torchia from the Grow Group here for another exciting episode of the Grow show Powered by Steel. Yes, if you're watching this, I am in my RJ swag on my RJ lawn and landscape pullover. Thank you, Ryan and Annette in Des Moines, Iowa. They were our GROW 2024 host. It did an awesome job last year in Des Moines. Ryan, Annette and Marty were doing their no snow, no cold weather dances right the second week of February. But we had an awesome experience. Doesn't mean I've forgotten about our friends at Hidden Creek. Right. Our grow host coming up here for February 2025. Gonna be an awesome experience in Columbus. If you're not signed up for grow, find a way to get there. Come see the rest of the community that Grow brings together and get some awesome content in the making. So I'm in my RJ gear. I've got my Hidden Creek mug out today. I want to talk about some things I've learned from them related to onboarding and orientation and things they do well. So that idea of onboarding and orientation really came out of my last ACE meeting. We were at my landscaping down in Raleigh. Shout out to Scott Myatt. They did an awesome job hosting. They have a great orientation and onboarding program. And then David Amigo of G and G Landscape Solutions in Charlotte was talking about those terms orientation and onboarding. And we all know they're different, right? But we maybe sometimes confuse the two when we're bringing on new team members. Something that RJ and Hidden Freak and G and G Landscape Solutions and my landscape really try to separate out. So, long story short, what are those two words? What do they really mean? And how do we build an effective program for new team members? That should start with orientation. Orientation reminds me of school. It reminds me of football camp in the summer. It reminds me of something that maybe I've not done before and I need to get a crash course on how this whole thing even works before I figure out what I'm trying to do. So orientation is that one time event for new hires. It is that one time opportunity that they are Going to get all the information they need about the company in one shot. The policies, the procedures, the paperwork, the administrative tasks, the overview of the company, the past, present, future. Where were we? Where are we now? Where are we headed? Where do I park my car? Who is my person that I report to? Am I getting paid weekly or bi weekly? Right. All of those things that in one shot, we're just giving everybody the information they need to be successful. That's orientation. The other thing that orientation does, if done right, is it sets a tone. It sets a tone about being on time, it sets a tone about being professional. It sets a tone about the way you're supposed to look, the way that work is supposed to feel around here. That can all be done in one shot. And again, imagine for me if you're. Again, I maybe do too many sports analogies, but I'll give you all one more here. Imagine for me it's 2012 and you just got drafted by the New England Patriots and you're going to orientation with Bill Belichick. For those of you that are sports fans, you can probably feel exactly what that orientation feels like. Oh my gosh, no smiles, no hugs, no thanks for being here. It is going to be all about do your job right and maybe we're glad you're here. And yeah, we could have drafted other people and this and that. And that is Bill Belichick, right? That is how it feels to be drafted by Bill Belichick. That orientation probably feels a certain way. I remember stories about Bill Belichick asking rookies if they knew who the backup long snapper was, if they knew who the third string corner was. Right. These are brand new people. He was setting a tone about what the Patriots culture was immediately for them. Okay, so that's one way of setting tone for orientation. Nothing good about that, nothing bad about that. Probably not how I would do it, but hey, I'm not Bill Belichick. Right? But that was the culture of the Patriots. Now imagine it's 20, 24 and you get drafted by the Miami Dolphins and Mike McDaniel's your coach, a little bit younger, a little more hip, a little more into his players. You can imagine what that orientation feels like. He might be in flip flops, he's got his sunglasses on, you're in Miami, it feels different. Right? And that also sets the tone for how the Dolphins play football, for example. So your orientation, your one shot, should also give your new team members an ability to understand. Oh, this is what it's like here. This is the expectation I have. Just because Mike McDaniel is laid back in a flip flop, it doesn't mean he doesn't want to win games. And just because Bill Belichick is tough and maybe not so fun doesn't mean it's not a place that people want to play because they win. Right? So neither one is good or bad or right and wrong. It just needs to set a tone. So again, we got to understand what our culture is and then we've got to understand how does our orientation, again, the way I'm defining it, this one shot event, get people caught up to speed on the details of it. But also more importantly, that feeling of what it feels like to work here again at RJ Lawn and Landscape. That is a fun culture. That is a we are friends culture. That is a, hey, we're going to be social at work and social outside of work. Their orientation feels that way, right? At Hidden Creek, they're landscapers. Everything they do goes back to landscaping. That orientation, it feels like what a landscaping company's orientation should feel like, right? It feels, you can tell by that orientation that design is important, that products are important, that the way these jobs mature is important. You can feel all that. So I ask you, what do you have your orientation program set up for? Can a new team member walk into that orientation and get the sense of really what this company is all about in that snapshot? So that's orientation. We have to couple that with onboarding. Onboarding is the longer term structured process for integrating new team members into your organization. So they have their orientation and now we're going to onboard them. Onboarding is this longer period of time that's going to be role specific. Depending on what they do and how they do it, there's going to be role specific training and development, continuous feedback and performance assessments. The most common way that we see it done well are those 30, 60, 90 day intervals for that onboarding continuation conversation. We've had orientation. You're going to have ongoing training. We're going to continue to teach you what your job is about. But we're also going to take a pause and at 30 days we're going to have a meeting and at 60 days we're going to have a Meeting and at 90 days we're going to have a meeting and that meeting is going to be a one on one meeting to talk about how are you doing? How is this stacking up? Is this what you thought it would be? Where are the gray areas? How can we help you be more successful? Here's what you're doing. Well, here are some things we see you struggling with. Let's work together to be successful beyond this, right? So that's what that onboarding plan is. That onboarding plan has that longer horizon. This is really to ensure that these new team members are productive and they're engaged, they're getting the work done, they need to get done and they're engaged while they do it. Right? So again, orientation is all about that immediate integration. Onboarding is all about long term engagement orientation, company focused, right. Market focused, macro, onboarding, micro. This is your role, this is how you do it. Here's who, the people that you work with, here's the processes that we do it with, orientation, short term onboarding, long term, right? You can begin to see how we can build this out for different roles and how they do that. All we're trying to do, number one, is increase retention, right? RJ and Hidden Brief have great retention as companies because they get to know their people. They both use hiring assessments. They both use this black and white indicator of, hey, by your default personality, here's what you're good at, here's what you might struggle with, given the role that you've had. We know that ahead of time, but we care about you and want you to be successful, right? So that is, number one, we try to engage team members from the beginning to retain them. We're also trying to make sure they're happy in their job and if they're happy in their job, they're going to be productive. Right? So again, that allows all this to happen faster, more efficiently, which ultimately strengthens the company, which ultimately makes the company more successful, which should reinforce that culture, that feeling that we're trying to get during orientation. So as you're looking out for 2025, think about what is your orientation program, how does that marry or match your onboarding program and where are the gaps between those that might make somebody not have the experience you want them to have, either in orientation or in onboarding? And take some clues from RJ and Hidden Creek at rj, right? They've got the assessments that are going to test your strengths and weaknesses. They open you up to other roles based on that. Hey, you may not be a fit for this based on your profile, but man, you might be really good at this. And again, rj, they're going to say, how can we embed this person in our culture once we have them? Right? Our culture is really important. Our team is really important. Once you're on the team, we want you on the team and then with Hidden Creek, very similar. How do we embed you into our culture? How do we make you a better person and therefore make Hidden Creek a better person? There's a great story about a hire that Sumay is going to talk about that Grow who manages HR and recruiting for Hidden Creek. But they have this way about them of trying to just improve the lives of even the candidates that come in to interview with them. Whether it's coaching them on the interview or coaching them on the recruiting process at Hidden Creek or coaching them on their resume, they want to build relationships with people at Hidden Creek from the minute they walk in their door. And their orientation and their onboarding process drives to that. So I hope in a small way I helped you this week in this short episode to think about your orientation, your short term one shot program at getting your team, your new team members to think and feel the way that they should based on your culture and how do we match and marry that to your onboarding program, your long term success for them, the 30, 60, 90 day check ins, the ability for them to continue to be engaged beyond their initial orientation. So think through those. Find the gray areas at your company. Lots more conversation happening around this at GROW 2025 in Columbus. Looking forward to seeing you all there. Have a great week and we'll talk to you soon.
[00:11:01] Speaker A: Thank you for listening to this episode of the Grow show. Be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode and head to growgroupinc.com for more information and resources to grow your landscaping business. A special thanks to the folks at Stihl whose support makes this podcast possible and whose reliable handheld power equipment makes our jobs easier daily. We'll talk to you next week.
