If you want to attract leaders to your organization, outlining a viable career path for them from the start is one key to success. This is one of the benefits Weller Brothers Landscape Professionals, based in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, has reaped through their Foreman Fast Track program.
The FFT program provides clear growth opportunities for field-level team members, which isn’t commonplace for other trades or organizations.
Bryce Bills, landscape project manager for Weller Brothers, says the program also helps identify motivated team members and teach them the company-specific skill sets required to be a landscape professional foreman.
How It Works
New hires and existing employees can sign up for the FFT program, which is tailored to the team members’ skill level and past experience.
“The program consists of eight quarters of training, starting with easier tasks,” Bills says. “As the program progresses, the difficulty of the tasks follows. We train on everything from technical install skills to jobsite planning, and crew/people management.”
The employee’s current skillset will play a role in which quarter of the program they start and how fast they progress to the next quarter of on-site training.
The FFT program can take up to six months to become a lawn maintenance foreman and up to two years to become a landscape foreman, depending on the individual’s experience.
Cole Weller, CEO of Weller Brothers, says they try to have around four to six employees go through the program at a time as this is manageable for the training coordinator so they can adapt to each FFT member’s different skill level.
Bills says the most challenging aspect of the program for team members is always being on projects that involve new skill sets to learn.
“This helps fast-track the training, which includes more constructive criticism and faster-paced learning, but can be challenging to the employee,” Bill says.
To graduate from the program, Weller says there is a series of job-specific, tactical elements of each job the foreman in training needs to master.
“The bigger challenge is finding someone with the right attitude, willingness to learn new skills at a fast-tracked pace, and the ability to take constructive criticism frequently,” Weller says.
Typically, one to two team members graduate from the program in a year, and some candidates graduate halfway through the program at a lower, less experienced, foreman level.
If an employee decides the program is too much at the time, they can always work on a crew as a technician to gain experience and enter the program again later.
Benefits of the Foreman Fast Track Program
When employees sign up for the FFT program, they receive a 50-cent to a dollar raise and receive additional raises and incentives based on hitting milestones within the program.
Graduates from the FFT program are recognized at the company’s monthly breakfast celebration and receive the keys to their own Weller Brothers truck as they are ready to lead their own crew.
Weller says they’ve had a good overall response from their team since introducing this program four years ago.
“The program demonstrates our commitment to continue career development opportunities for operation team members,” Weller says.
Bills notes that their productivity, quality, and jobsite efficiency all improve when a motivated FFT member is trained on professional installs and jobsite skillsets.
Weller encourages other companies to just get started when it comes to creating a similar program for their employees.
“It doesn’t need to be perfect,” Weller says. “Get a general layout of the program, have someone own the implementation, and tweak it as you learn. Your team will thank you for it!”
