CENTS 2015 looks at personalities

COLUMBUS – It’s important to know your employees’ personalities and how they can hinder and/or help your business. That was the message during Richard Arlington’s session “Managing Personalities and Processes not the People” at CENTS in Columbus.

The owner of Richard Arlington & Associates said there are four types of personalities that landscape contractors should know about – caloric, sanguine, phlegmatic and melancholy.

If you have an employee with a caloric personality, it’s important to let them make decisions, even if they’re only minor ones. Caloric employees work best if they feel as if their choices play a large role.

Sanguine personalities are the type of people that will do any job, as long as it’s fun. Making a task into a game will make them more likely to do it willingly.

Phlegmatic employees are the people who stand around and wait to be told what to do, so always make sure you know these employees and give them tasks to complete.

Melancholy employees analyze every part of a situation before doing anything. Arlington said these are the types of people you want as landscape architects because they will break everything out into great detail before getting started.

Arlington also said there’s no such thing as a bad employee.

“A bad employee is an uneducated employee,” he said. “It’s just someone who hasn’t been trained properly.”

He said it’s important to train your employees well and make sure they know every step of every process, even if it’s something as simple as “step one, put key in the ignition.”

Money, money, money. Another session at CENTS was called “Improving your cash flow” presented by Marcus VandeVliet, MV Enterprises. VandeVliet said there have been many challenges for companies the past few years and this may be the first time some companies are dealing with cash flow challenges.

“As the marketplace has become more competitive, many companies have lowered their prices,” he said. Because of this, the companies are also lowering their profits. “It’s vital that companies analyze the operational profit guaranteed.”

VandeVliet said labor inefficiencies have more negative impact on your business than anything else.
“Effective utilization of your labor resource will have the biggest impact on profit,” he said.

He said another important thing to consider is non-billable hours. Non-billable hours can’t be completely eliminated, but if you break down what they are, you may be able to lower them.

Stay tuned to lawnandlandscape.com and to the February issue of Lawn & Landscape for more coverage of CENTS

CENTS Marketplace 2015 is currently taking place at the Greater Columbus Convention Center. The show opened on Jan. 7 and runs through Jan. 9. Along with the tradeshow, CENTS University is also taking place, providing education to Ohio green industry members.