5 ways greenhouses can improve employee engagement
Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees they will take care of your clients
- Richard Branson
Healthy, engaged employees are a business’s biggest competitive advantage. When the employees feel valued, feel motivated, they will go the extra mile to get the work done. That’s why you will never see the best greenhouses have a drop in quality or miss a shipping date. Because the employees of that greenhouse always make sure that the standards are maintained. The work culture of those greenhouses encourages employees to take risks, try something new and challenge the status quo. And that breeds innovation and progressive thought process.
Let’s see five ways how greenhouses can improve employee engagement to encourage more innovation and progressive thought process.
Communication
There’s nothing better than having your team on the same page and moving towards the same goal.
What’s wrong with the current mode of communication?
Majority of greenhouse use text messaging, email or walkie-talkie as the best mode of communication. As a result, any valuable information is only shared on a 1-to-1 basis and doesn’t educate other members in a department or between departments.
For example, if a question coined by one grower doesn’t educate the other growers even though it might help them. Any delay in plant shipping dates not conveyed to the sales team result in a loss in revenue and loss in trust with the vendors.
How to fix it?
All departments of an organization can use a centralized platform for communication where every piece of information shared by one person educates all the relevant people connected to that information.
When a new grower asks a question to the head grower regarding the next steps to take for irrigating a plant, the answer conversed on a centralized platform will educate every other grower in the team. And the best part of it is that growers can search past conversations while looking for answers.
Large greenhouses employ contract growers to grow plants on-demand. Accomplished managers and growers like Mike Goyette, of Pleasant View Gardens Noah and Derohanian, NH Facility share their growing recipe with the contract grower and maintain a constant contact to remain up-to-date. We can streamline the communication between Mike, the contract grower, and every other department by using a centralized platform.
Centralized Note Taking
Top growers in the industry suggest making a habit of consistent note-taking so that you track your progress and measure successes and failures accordingly.
What is wrong with the current way of doing things?
Currently, growers take notes on paper and the information collected by one grower is only limited to that grower and the head grower. Hence, another grower cannot access any valuable information recorded by the first grower.
As a result, the knowledge remains confined to a single person which can be used to educate the whole team. As more and more notes piles on, it becomes very difficult to search for a single piece of information, let alone educate someone else.
So how can we solve it then?
The first step to solving this problem is to get rid of paper and adopt a more digital way of taking notes. Google docs and Dropbox paper are the best examples of collaboration tools that let multiple people edit a single document. In that way, every grower is contributing to a single document.
As a result, the information is being used to educate each and every grower in the organization. On top of that, the same information can be used to educate future employees without having to go through the whole shadowing process again.
Four Star Greenhouse has an awesome training program for every new grower. Worth checking out.
Show how it looks
We absorb images better rather than text or sound. Growers will absorb and understand much better with visualization of plant images and data graphs.
How to use images to improve employee engagement then?
Greenhouses should encourage growers for a pictorial note-taking practice across the growing cycle of the plant. It has a two-fold advantage. First, images are easy to diagnose and prescribe the next steps by a head grower. Second, greenhouses can use the images to train new employees.
Images can also encourage positivity among the growers. Images of successful grow breathes positivity in the growers.
Similarly, charts and data maps are easier to explain a problem or a solution to a team that is not in sync with the raw data. Normally it is just raw data jotted on a spreadsheet and it only makes sense to the person who is maintaining the data. Visualization tools can be used to highlight the important aspects of a data set or results, but in spreadsheets, it’s hard to see the forest for the trees.
Team Meetings
Team Meetings has been the best way to bring everyone together to discuss strategies, evaluate results and prescribe a plan of action
Aren’t greenhouses conducting meetings right now?
Although greenhouses do conduct team meetings, a lot of the meetings are conducted in isolation within a department and that does not bring cohesion in the whole workforce. For example, growers assigned to certain plants or zones will have meetings with the head grower. Similarly, with the sales team and every other department. This methodology isolates a person in the organization and individuals can’t see the value they add to the overall vision.
Now you will ask me, okay how do you suggest to do these team meetings?
Greenhouses can conduct cross-department team meetings to talk about the progress, make adjustments, and get ideas from the group. It is important that employees have a voice and report their own numbers, which allows them to celebrate their successes and learn from their failures with the rest of the company. Company owners should make sure that everyone is in line with the company’s vision.
The best example of creating this company culture is Willoway Nurseries. They have an excellent team and their ethos is really admirable. Pacific Plug & Liner is another greenhouse that takes care
Scoreboards
Scoreboards have been the epitome technique of creating a competitive culture in any workplace.
Now, what’s wrong with scoreboards at greenhouses?
Actually there is nothing wrong with the scoreboards at greenhouses. The only problem is that not enough greenhouses do it. Most of the greenhouses don’t have this competitive culture at their workplace. Some of the greenhouses have employees that are working there for more than 20–30 years and they feel it will be disrespectful to them. And some just don’t have it. No reason.
But why should greenhouses include scorecards?
The scorecard is not a bad thing. Competition is not a bad thing. Competition is always healthy if your message towards the competition is healthy. A scorecard in a greenhouse helps the employees remain on top of their game every single day. It also gives a chance to reward high performing employees. Greenhouses can put scoreboards throughout the nursery to share weekly progress on the profit and loss statement and show how each person can make a difference in making improvements.
Culture eats strategy for breakfast
— Peter Drucker
And it is true to its bone. A company’s culture normally thwarts any attempt to create or enforce a strategy that is incompatible with that culture. If your strategy is to increase revenue or grow organics, then your team should be in sync with the “Why” of your company.
Why getting organics certificate matters to the organization and should matter to them!
Why increasing revenue matter! If you bring everyone onboard on your “Why”, the “How” will take care of itself.
If you are doing something interesting to engage your employees at your workplace. Comment below!
