Employer Branding: A Recruiting Must-Have for Landscape Contractors
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Content Team,
HALSTEAD.
“Crafting a compelling Employer Brand boils down to telling the story of your landscaping firm—what do you do, why do you do it, and why would someone want to be a part of it.”
—Corey Halstead
Your brand is your identity. It’s the public-facing image of your company, nurtured through years of round-the-clock dedication. As a successful landscaping company in a busy market, you know your brand is not just something you dabble in here or there, but rather something you continuously hone and perfect. That means paying attention to all the contact points within the market: website, social media, online reviews, vehicle wrapping, job site signage, and team uniforms. All of these elements work together to create your landscaping company’s “brand,” and your brand is what your local market thinks of you.
But what about your employer brand? What about the way your workers think about your company? Homeowners and property-owners are not the only audiences you need to engage. You also need to engage the labor market—now more than ever. While a great public brand can make up for a lot of shortcomings, if your company has a bad reputation among workers and prospective hires, then you’re going to have trouble finding talent.
So let’s take a closer look at employer branding and find some ways you can hopefully improve yours, including some recruiting and hiring tips for landscapers. But first: a definition…
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What is an Employer Brand and why is it important for landscaper recruiting.
It’s pretty simple: Your employer brand is the reputation your company has among team members—and, perhaps more importantly, potential future team members. A strong employer brand attracts top talent, while a weak brand attracts low quality talent, or in many cases, none at all. It directly influences turnover rates and the outcome of recruiting efforts.
But what’s behind your employer branding? That’s a tough nut to crack because what drives your public or consumer-facing brand—at the foundation, high quality work and professional marketing—is not necessarily the thing that drives your employer brand. While top talent certainly cares about service quality, project quality, and customer satisfaction rates, they are also looking for more. They’re looking for a great career. More than anything, they want good pay, quality benefits, meaningful work, opportunities to grow and learn, and a positive culture and work environment. They want to be a part of something bigger than themselves.
What’s important to understand is that satisfying those material concerns feeds the engine driving your public brand. A healthy employer brand undergirds a healthy consumer brand. With the right elements in place, you stand to reap all the benefits of owning and operating an enviable workplace. So what are those elements?
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The elements of Employer Branding for landscape contractors
We’ve talked a bit about what employees want from their careers, but those aren’t the only parts of the machine. There’s plenty that landscaping companies can do to attract talent and improve the retention of their best employees.
So let’s open the hood and take a closer look.
Good Pay and Benefits - You know better than most just how tight the labor market is right now, especially in the landscaping industry. Top talent is hard to come by, and employers are no longer the ones in charge. So companies need to be on top of their game when it comes to offering new hires competitive wages and robust benefits. What you’re offering needs to be better than what your competitors are offering. It’s that simple. For young companies who can’t afford to offer top wages, all is not lost. There are some things you can do to sweeten the deal—and that’s where these other elements come into play.
Employee Training - There’s always a certain degree of training with any new hire. But continuous learning can help workers build on their skill sets while enhancing the experience and professionalism of your staff. Most workers have a career in mind—an interest in learning new skills that they can apply to their current role or a future one. A 2019 LinkedIn study put this point in stark relief, with 94 percent of surveyed workers saying they’d be willing to stay with a company longer if it provided training and development opportunities. The message could not be clearer: Help your company by helping your staff.
Positive Work Culture - A good work environment with kind, friendly people goes a long way toward making people happy about their jobs. In fact, some studies show as much as 79 percent of workers who leave their jobs do so out of “lack of appreciation.” Bossy managers, negativity, impatience, exploitative behavior, disregard for workers’ safety or personal lives—all these eat away at the culture of the company and make it a nasty place to work. Good pay can only do so much to paper over all that negativity, which is why you have to foster an environment of positive reinforcement, good cheer, and camaraderie, even if it’s not your natural tendency. Here are a few tips for promoting a good work culture:
Host staff events or parties.
Conduct employee check-ins.
Advocate thorough communication.
Welcome new ideas.
Encourage safe practices.
Have a sense of humor about yourself!
Employee Testimonials and Social Media - Many career sites include detailed profiles and reviews of companies. These are the equivalent of reviews from customers—customers who happen to be reviewing your company as a place to work. And bear in mind, 84 percent of people trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Collectively, all that commentary surrounding your company deeply influences your employer brand. One way to boost your online profile is to leverage current employees as brand ambassadors. Maintaining a healthy relationship with current and departing workers can also help keep your company’s ratings above water.
Social Media - People tend to research companies before applying to work for them, and the best way to do that is through social media. Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn are the most important platforms for engaging and recruiting talent. That means you need to be cognizant of how your team comes across in all your posts—not just the ones targeting new recruits. Use your socials to show off your company culture, with happy workers, quality workmanship, and exciting opportunities.
Content - Landscape workers who are researching your company will want to see what your company is all about: What kind of landscaping projects do you do? What’s the company culture like? Are you the best in the biz? People want to feel proud of the company they work for. They want to be proud of the work they do. A steady stream of content—including blog posts, videos, and social media posts—can deliver those answers and attract new recruits and applicants.
Careers Page - A Careers section on your website is an absolute must. Now, what that section entails can range from a simple text form or list of openings, to a full-featured hub that includes articles, explainers, testimonials, benefits packages, career guides, job listings, trainee programs, Spanish-language content, and more. What you’re able to offer here depends on the resources available to you, but it cannot be understated how important good, well designed content is when it come sto attracting new talent.
Word of Mouth - In a business like landscaping, which is local, word spreads quickly and easily. Particularly in a tight labor market, turnover leads to gossip among current and former workers regarding which companies are good employers and which ones, well, suck. Today, more than ever, landscaping companies need to come around to behave like they’re in charge. The game has changed. Now, landscape workers know the companies in the market, maybe more so than workers in other, more dispersed industries, and they know where they want to work. Nurturing a good reputation is not a straightforward task, but by following these other guidelines, treating employees well, and encouraging a positive work culture, word-of-mouth will take foot and do its job for you.
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Why Invest in Your Employer Brand?
Like your consumer brand, your employer brand will take time and effort to cultivate. Moreover, you have to work on it. Like a good marketing strategy, your brand is not something you turn on or off depending on your needs. The machine has to be working round-the-clock.
That being said, a strong employer brand can benefit your company in four key ways.
Save Money - A strong employer brand means, first and foremost, that current and potential workers want to work for you. And they don’t want to leave. So, rather than having to headhunt or settle for low-skilled applicants, your candidates come to you. That means less money spent on training new hires, and less promotion on job sites. Over time, employees who are happy with their current jobs are more likely to speak positively to others in the industry. That kind of word-of-mouth promotion helps your recruitment efforts without needing to spend a dime. When the applicant pool is competitive you can also save on wages. Of course, as discussed above, you have to strike a delicate balance with wages, because low wages will very quickly chew away at the satisfaction of your workers and, consequently, your brand.
Improved Productivity - An engaged workforce is a productive workforce. When employees are happy with their pay, they like their job, and they feel like they’re being properly respected in their work, then they will repay the positive attitude in kind. The best part is that this happens naturally: When people are happy they are more productive. A study by Oxford University found happy workers are on average 13 percent more productive. It’s that simple. No need to overthink it.
Improved Consumer Brand - A dissatisfied workforce has a way of showing itself publicly—whether through social media, career sites, word-of-mouth, customer service, or just unfriendly staff at the job site. You’re always concerned about your customer-facing brand, but if you don’t pay attention to your employer brand it will start to damage your public image, as well.
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The Employer Brand sits at the center of a landscape company’s recruiting strategy.
At Halstead, we talk a lot about how successful marketing programs are like well-oiled machines. When every part is in its working order, it will pump out new business opportunities with reliable consistency.
The same is true for your employer branding strategy. It is a foundational element of what’s known as "recruitment marketing"—the practice of using marketing strategies to promote the value of working for an employer in order to attract, engage, recruit and retain talent. Alongside branding, the mission and values you put forth help distinguish your company (and your brand) from the leagues of middling competitors. Remember, in addition to good pay and benefits, employees want to work for a company they believe in.
Often, building a great employer brand comes down to empathy. Put yourself in the boots of your workers: What would you want if you worked for your company, and how would you expect to be treated? Operating from that perspective will, more often than not, put you on the path to a healthy employer branding strategy.
The best part is a good employer branding policy becomes a feedback loop of recruitment and retention: When people like the company they’re working for, they want to stay; they’re also more likely to promote your company’s benefits and work culture when talking to others. Over time, you’ll attract more and more talent, becoming “the place to be” in your market.
