By Neal Glatt

Now that spring has sprung, it’s time for most of us to start hiring employees and preparing for the rush of spring work. This year, the task of finding great people seems even more difficult, but there is one secret to beating the competition when it comes to building a rock-star team.

First impressions matter more than we often realize. When you hire, you judge your candidate by the layout, grammar, and content of their resume. Then you judge them based on their communication speed and if they show up promptly for an interview. Finally, candidates are judged based on what they wear to an interview. In fact, a lot of times hiring managers have subconsciously decided whether they’ll hire an employee before they even answer a single question!

Here’s the problem. Once you pick the best candidate, it’s your turn to make first impressions.  The employee’s first day on the job is their first impression of the company and dramatically influences how hard they will work and how long they will stick around. If, on the first day, an employee experiences total chaos, hostility from co-workers, and a frustrating experience in trying to do work, it wouldn’t be a surprise if they never show up for a second day.

Now, of course, your company isn’t that bad. But according to Gallup, only 12% of employees strongly agree their organization does a great job of onboarding. If you haven’t thought about the employee onboarding experience lately, it’s probably a safe bet that you’re not in the top 12% of companies and your turnover rate is higher as a result.

The good news is that doing a great job of onboarding isn’t that hard and GrowTheBench is here to help.  We’ve built a course to show your new hires that you care about them, that there is a real career in the landscape industry with your company, as well as to cover the basics of what to expect and best practices of work.  So, if you’re too busy to spend a full day with your new hire, simply enroll them in our onboarding course, which costs as little as $17 per employee, and start getting the best out of your people.