3 Ways to Upskill Your Employees to Grow Your Business in the Slow Season

Adding to crew members’ skillsets, known as upskilling, and putting their native talents to use can result in big wins for both employees and business owners. The slow season is the perfect time to conduct that training.

Here are three ways you can empower your employees, and grow your business through upskilling:

1. Add Skills, Increase Versatility

The more skills a crew member has, the more they can do for you and for themselves.

Scot Tolson, one of three Signature Landscape branch managers in Kansas City, Missouri, is a huge proponent of training. During its slow season, the company conducts two trainings a week in a classroom setting, with topics that range from mowing, irrigation and applications to how to use products and calibrate machinery. Every training session includes efficiency, quality and safety components.

“Training is important to us because it creates opportunity. The more you know, the more you can move up. You’re constantly training your replacement for when you move up,” said Tolson, who has five account managers, three production managers and a field staff of 70 working for him at Signature Landscape - East. The company employs about 300 field staff over all three branches.

Ewing conducts Continuing Education Courses and webinars like the Two-Wire Dos & Don’ts and New Technology session that Tolson’s crew attended in November. We also maintain a large archive of how-to videos on YouTube. Many of our education offerings are in both English and Spanish.

2. New Business Development

They may not all be salespeople, but every one of your employees can contribute to new business development just by keeping their eyes and ears open to new opportunities and passing on leads.

PJ Rovinelli, Director of Talent Development at Ewing, suggests training crew members how to recognize business opportunities at their jobsites, and appointing one or two crew members to pitch new services or upgrades to clients.

For more suggestions on ways to upsell and to grow your business, visit Ewing’s blog for details.

3. Leverage Younger Workers’ Skills for Marketing

For many younger employees, making the most of cell phone cameras, creative apps and posting on social media are skills that come as naturally as breathing. You can easily leverage their native creativity to create marketing content.

Rovinelli suggests assigning a younger crew member to take before and after photos and videos at jobsites, create time-lapses, film customer testimonials and create other relevant content. If you don’t already have a social media presence, check out our Social Media for Landscapers blog series for how-tos, and download Ewing’s Tips for Social Media PDF.

If you have questions on how Ewing can help you grow your business through training and education, email education@ewingirrigation.com or call 800-343-9464 for more information.