CNGA LooseLeaf Aug/Sept 2019

19 colorad o nga.org LooseLeaf  Aug/Sept 2019 When and how many outside laborers do you usually hire? It varies significantly. That’s one of the challenges. Specific staffing needs are often very difficult to forecast, hence the real value of shared resources. Sharing gives organizations the flexibility they need without the cost of holding extra staff. We’ll team up with organizations throughout the year, depending on what’s happening in the fields or the nursery. Recently, we combined with another team to do irrigation installation at our new location in Fort Collins on Prospect Road. We asked a group from one of our customers to come in and work with us to ensure that the new nursery was ready before the 2019 season started. It was at the end of their season, and they had no other projects going on. We could be flexible, such that whenever we had a nice day, everyone would go jump in and knock out some of the project, and on rough days, we would take a break. We knew, given a little time—even in the dead of winter, together we could get the work done. Why is the green industry well-suited to this type of labor solution? We are in an industry that is traditionally very collaborative and helpful; growers, distributors, landscapers, designers… all need one another to create the vision and make it a reality. Because of the close working relationships, we understand and share each other’s pains. One of the most common pains is that we are all dealing with an uncertain labor pool. Partners can be challenging to find at times and quite easy during others, but letting people know that you have a need is perhaps the most important piece of the puzzle. There are organizations in your market looking to fill in their employee schedules; you just need to reach out to see if their schedule has a hole that works well with your project. A lot of times, just through our business relationships, we will know who has H2 guys and when their projects are going or closing out, so nurseries like ours may be a good place to start as well. What are ways to be most successful when using outside labor? Setting expectations about timeline as well as scope of work is very important. That way partner organizations send the right people, and they don’t have to back out midway through a project due to timing. Financially it’s important that both groups come up with an agreed- upon billable hour or overall cost from the start. Then, the borrowing group needs to make sure that information gets passed on to their accounting team. From a cashflow standpoint, because it’s labor, that’s a cost that goes out immediately from those organizations, and you usually can’t delay payments more than two weeks. Otherwise, you could place the lending organization into a tough financial spot. Although our organization doesn’t practice it, other organizations literally loan their staff out and have the borrowing organization hire them. This can be a valid process, especially for a situation where insurance or workers compensation rules are very different for the task at hand than their usual duties at their initial organization. That’s why understanding the scope of the project right at the beginning is so important. If it is significantly different from what that partner does normally, the rules around the project may not be the same. Let’s take a retail nursery, they have a salesperson that typically just waters plants as part of their job, but if someone would take that individual and put them on a commercial irrigation project where they are running a trencher—that’s a different scope and the retailer’s insurer may consider that outside of the scope of their coverage. In that case, the hiring organization would have to bring that person on as an employee, so he/she is covered properly under the labor regulations. In the end, with a little forethought, a little flexibility, and a lot of communication, sharing staffing resources can provide significant efficiencies for both the lending and the borrowing organizations. ? ? ? Photos courtesy of Arbor Valley Nursery