The customer comes first. Now that’s a "duh" statement if you’ve ever read one. But what about that collection of seasonal employees you bring in every spring? Now, that "duh" statement may turn into more of a "huh?" statement for some of them.

Seasonal helpers aren’t your franchise players. They aren’t at your garden center for the long haul or to one day inherit your job. So getting them to buy into your company’s values may be a tall order. It all starts with training, and in this case, the less-is-more approach may be your best.

Narrow The Focus

Before tackling the inexperience of your newest team of seasonal employees, take a long look at those employees who are with you year round. Your permanent staff is your go-to staff and they are the ones who know the products and the customers.

"Do you really want them doing the watering?" asks consultant Doug Fleener, founder of the Dynamic Experiences Group. Fleener has worked with garden centers in Cape Cod and Nantucket. "I think one of the mistakes we sometimes make is having seasonal employees come in and do the same job as the year round employees."

When it comes to new hires, Fleener has noticed that a good deal of training time is spent on the processes. He advises that training practices need to be refocused, and make key elements to customer service a priority (assisting every customer to their car, saying hello, giving good direction, etc.).

"It can be as simple as saying, ‘excuse me,’ when you walk between a customer and the product," he says. "So often we focus on the processes instead of the behaviors. The customer’s experience is only as good as the employees they interact with."

In terms of inventory knowledge, Fleener adds that getting your seasonal staff to know as much as possible about the most in-demand products is more important than knowing just a little bit about everything.

And if by chance they don’t know the answer to a question, it’s not the end of the world. When they redirect a customer to a more knowledgeable employee, make sure they know to stick around to hear the answer, too.

"Even though you might want to, you can’t put the big orange blazer on the new employee that says, ‘Only let me help you if everyone else is busy,’" says Fleener.

The "Why" Factor

While basic customer service training is important, it’s also important to explain to your new additions, why.

"Management will tell you to smile, leadership will tell you why," says John Kennedy of Kennedy Consulting. Kennedy recently spoke at this year’s ANLA Management Clinic.

One of Kennedy’s strengths is helping develop core values for a business. He works closely with his clients to develop a small list of core values that pertain to their company’s mission and goals.

Marina Del Ray Garden Center, near Los Angeles, is a great example of a business that institutes those core values on a daily basis, says Kennedy. One Marina Del Ray value he spotlights is the "every job is my job" value.

"You’ll have a cashier that’s been standing there for 15 minutes doing nothing, and when a customer asks for help to their car, the cashier will page somebody three times," he says. "Well, get off your butt, walk out there and do it yourself."

The "I care" mentality is crucial here, he says, and without it, slippage can occur. That same cashier can make routine errors at the register. Being off $40 on a given day might happen. But multiply that by 100 days and you have a major problem.

Here, management needs to lead their employees into understanding how "they fit into the bigger piece of the pie and that their job is important to the overall success of the company."

To understand the bigger picture, Kennedy suggests rotating a new hire from team to team during their first week of work, in one-hour shifts. "Three positives will come out of this," he says. "You met a lot of new people, you understand the bigger picture, and you can step up and take the risk and do something in another department if the need is there."

The morning meeting at Otten Bros. Nursery keeps employees
up on sales totals, goals, current specials, deliveries and in-demand products.

The Morning Meeting

Along with having a new employee shadow experienced workers in different departments of your garden center, Kari Line, manager of Otten Bros. Nursery in Long Lake, Minn., is an advocate of the morning meeting.

During the spring, the morning meeting is held everyday at 7:30 a.m. It starts with sales totals and the top performing departments from the previous day. Then follows the present day’s goals, expected deliveries, specials and any new plants or products that may have come in.

The remainder of the meeting is reserved for product and plant training. Items up for discussion are timely and broken down for easier understanding.

"We shoot to cover those products that customers repeatedly ask about," Line adds. Usually one product a week is covered, unless there are tie-ins, like a soil activator and grass seed.

At the end of the week, a small quiz is given with incentives. "It’s a great way to see who’s interested and where you’re employees are at," Line says.

For those workers coming in for later shifts, detailed minutes from the meeting are posted on the bulletin board.

"It’s very important to make sure these meetings aren’t stagnant," reminds Line. She and other supervisors include team-building activities into the morning huddle. She gets many of her ideas from simply searching on the Internet.

They also implement additional training for those who are new to the staff. Line points out the importance of watering.

"As little as it may sound, watering is an extremely important job and some people have never worked in a greenhouse before."

The Woodley Way

A few years back, Kathryn Dager, president and founder of Profitivity, visited Woodley’s Garden Center in Columbia, S.C. Profitivity is a full-service training and consulting firm.

During Dager’s time there, she looked at the garden center’s existing training manual and, via personalized training cards, she made some much needed changes.

"The Profitivity training cards are great for new hires," says Robin Klein, general manager of Woodley’s. "It touches on training points that you may miss with verbal training, especially in the short amount of time we have."

With the help of a mentor, the new employee goes through the training cards and then signs off on them. There are approximately 40 Woodley training cards that are color-coded and broken up into six sections: orientation, values, loss prevention, customer support, garden selling and cashiers.

Klein says the customer support cards are geared toward those employees who load the customers’ cars and do most of the physical labor. "They may not realize it, but they are very important. They are the last person a customer sees before they leave," she says.

This will be the second full season Woodley’s Garden Center will be implementing the cards.

"They do work," says Klein. "I’ve actually heard employees say things that I know came directly from the cards. They help them be more comfortable around the customer."