Trust and honesty help retain employees Email
Written by Colorado Green NOW   
Wednesday, November 09, 2022 02:00 AM

Colorado Green Now

Trust and honesty help retain employees

Companies share benefits and challenges  
When Dan Grange, ALCC 2022 board president and hiring manager at BrightView Landscape Development, concluded in his July letter to members that “the cost of low trust is poor employee retention,” Colorado Green magazine wanted to explore this more deeply. ALCC sent a survey to all members with several questions to prompt their input on key issues affecting employee retention. 

Responses are anonymous and mostly verbatim, and key findings are summarized here. ALCC received detailed responses from three companies that have been in business for a varying number of years. Each offers a broad suite of services including design, landscape construction, landscape installation and irrigation. Some offer additional services. Companies are referred to as follows: 

  • Company A: 12 years 

  • Company B: 21 years 

  • Company c: 39 years

What have you learned overall? 

Value of trust 

Company B 

I trust that leadership will do the next right thing regardless of inconvenience, discomfort or financial impacts. They will do whats best for the common good of the company, community and the larger world around us – to the extent possible. 

Building trust 

Company B 

Trust is built through honest goodwill, transparency and constant communication over time. Most people have good reasons not to trust a new employer until trust is earned and proven over time through consistency in decisions and actions that reinforce our commitment to fair labor practices. 

Eventually you can grow a culture in which the benefit of the doubt is given to the employer/ leadership when situations arise. This allows time for clarity around the issue and time to solve it in the correct manner. In a non-trusting environment, there are negative or wrong assumptions made and drama and ill will toward the company boils to the surface. 

Company A 

Trust and honesty are built and demonstrated through giving everyone respect, first and foremost, and secondarily through building camaraderie at site visits and company meetings. As an owner, I see the respect and trust come back my way often and certainly from those who keep returning season after season. 

I have learned that being as honest and real with your team as you can pays dividends by keeping good people around. Rather than keeping people at an arm's length, I really try to engage them all and get to know them on a personal level. We are a smaller company and that lends itself well to that culture [of honesty and realness] naturally. 

Patience 

Company C 

It is best to be patient to fill needed spots. It can be easy to hire people with even a modicum of experience, but ultimately, they prove not to be a good fit and do not last long. By focusing on the right fit for our organization it has lessened the stress on our tenured employees by not having to constantly train new employees and always having to pick up loose ends left from having a higher state of turnover.

Read the full article to learn more in the Nov/Dec 2022 issue of Colorado Green.

Read more in this issue of Colorado Green Now:
Time for landscape pros to renew nursery license
Plant lovers, don't miss
Red Birds in a Tree - a native 'must-have'