If your lawn or landscape company is on the smaller size, effective internal communication with your staff probably is not a struggle because you can host meetings all in one place. But as your company grows and opens multiple locations, staying connected with your teams gets more complicated.

Email and texting are great tools, but utilizing a variety of different communication methods can help ensure your messages are not being overlooked and reach the right teams. Investing in a more robust communications system allows you to streamline messages to a specific audience, share important information in real-time, sort and store data by client or property, and easily access records.

Good communication doesn’t require building a system from scratch or a huge IT investment. Cognito Forms is a popular online form builder that allows companies to create custom reporting forms for complex data that are stored in the cloud and can be routed to appropriate recipients. Employees can access things like manpower and billing requests and site issues via an app. There’s even a social media submission form. 

Other apps and tools that can help facilitate good communication include Microsoft Teams; Go Happy, a texting solution for company announcements; Evite, which sends notifications about company events to employees’ personal and work emails; and Paylocity, which has a community feature to share announcements and general information.

When choosing a new communication platform, evaluate your company’s needs, including the size of your business, coverage area and client mix. Efficiency is key. You’ll want to be able to send out reminders, set events in Outlook calendars, reach employees quickly and easily, and have multiple redundant communication channels. Whatever tool you choose should be easy to use because a complicated format will discourage people from using it.