Should You Allow Smoking at Your Lawn Care Business?

Hey everyone, it's Mike Andes and you're listening to the Landscape business course podcast. Today's a very quick episode. I want to address smoking on the job. This is something that a lot of landscapers talk to me about wanting to change in their business. They feel like their guys live for their smoke breaks. They are always trying to smoke and they're therefore taking 10 minute breaks 10 times a day. And they're very worried about it and they're trying to change the culture of their business. And so there's a few reasons why. So, for example, at Augusta Lawn Care, we do not have, we do not allow smoking. We have a non smoking policy. We make it very clear in our employment process and in the process of hiring that people are not smokers. And this is a great way to weed people out right from the initial employment ad is saying that you do have a non smoking policy. And so there's a few reasons why we do that. Number one is professionalism and just the ideology around smoking and everything that it brings. If you're dealing with a lot of older customers and they have respiratory problems or they have lungs or problems with their throat, having that constant smell if they're around your guys is very difficult. Also, just the idea of your guy standing around the truck on the tailgate and constantly throughout the day, if you're at a big job and constantly smoking, leaving the cigarette butts on the ground, these are things that in general just leave a bad taste in customer's mouth and really gives a bad perception of the professionalism of your business. The smell. Even if you have team meetings and all of a sudden your whole office smells like smoke. And then how are you supposed to expect customers to come in there or to have office staff members in there? And so these are just things that we think about when it comes to whether or not to have a smoking policy and whether you should or should not allow it. My opinion is that you should not have us allow your guys to smoke. The reason is not because the distraction aspect, not even because of the breaks and all that. It's the whole concept of professionalism and it being a standard by which everyone is willing to achieve towards and is willing to come to that level of professionalism. And if someone's not disciplined enough and is not able to be that professional, I don't want them on our team. And again, it's not to do with making more money, it's not to do with them taking breaks or even the perception maybe of the employee or of the customer. It's really about our team. Collectively, we want to be able to have, whether it be alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, whatever it is, like we're talking about smoking today, but whatever type of substance is going to inhibit it or detract from their performance, we don't want to have anything to do with it. And we set that bar by making smoking the lowest denominator that we do not want to cross into. Another couple thoughts about smoking is if you make P4P pay for performance and you make it where it's in their best interest to be working as much as possible and generating as much revenue as possible, they're less likely to want to take a bunch of smoke breaks. If you're paying them by the hour, I can guarantee you you're incentivizing them to take as many breaks as possible because they're getting paid by the time, not by how much revenue they bring to the business. So again, P4P helps with this a lot. I've seen a lot of times when P4P is implemented, even if people have smokers on their crew, all of a sudden the actual breaks, people stopping while they smoke stops because people will figure out how to smoke while they're actually working. Again, I would still try to take smoking out completely. Like for us, if someone is caught smoking on the job or at our office or anytime when they have a uniform on, they're gonna be fired. And so a lot of times too, this is something you want to bring up during an interview process and just ask right open, like do you smoke? And there is certain laws and currently right now, as long as in your handbook, your employee handbook, it states that, that you all have a non smoking policy and what the requirements of those, that is, it is legal to not hire someone based upon that. So I really believe that if you currently have a culture where everyone is smoking lots of breaks, if you want to change that. In my opinion, when it comes to any sort of policy, any sort of procedure, anything that you want done in the team element of the business, firing is the way to set the standard. You can talk all you want, you can have team meetings, you can have presentations, you can have awards. But until you actually fire somebody, you're not really taking a stance on anything. And so until you're willing to fire someone because they're smoking, I would suggest do not create a smoking policy. If you're not willing to take your best guy and he smokes when he knows that's not allowed and you're not willing to fire him if he does that Then you should not be instituting a no smoking policy. Your guy will just instantly realize that this is not enforceable. They realize that you don't really care. And by not firing someone, you set the standard that it's okay regardless of what you say, regardless of what you reward, regardless of any of those things. Until you actually fire someone for something, a behavior you do not want to see, it becomes just a bunch of hot air. When we fire people based upon them just simply not being nice to other people in the organization or being proud or something like that, it sets a very clear standard of, hey, we are not that way in this team. And if you're gonna be that way, you're out. And so until you're ready to fire someone and set the standard in your culture, do not put a no smoking policy in place.

Now, generally, sorry about my throat. I have a little bit of a sore throat, but I'm getting through it. Just been screaming a bunch recently, doing workouts. But anyways, generally people who don't smoke want to be around people who don't smoke. So if you actually want to change the culture of your business, you might need a clean house, you might need to clean out all the people who are smoking your business so that when you go out and try to find new people, they're willing to work with your team. Cause they're non smokers. Like, if you're trying to find a non smoker, you're like, okay, well I'm gonna try to find people who don't smoke anymore. Okay, great. But if you're trying to bring them into a culture where you have a bunch of smokers, it's generally not going to work. Generally what you're going to need to do is institute that your current structure, your current culture has no smoking. And then you'll be able to go out and non smokers that want to work with those people. Now, a lot of people are always saying, this is the reason why most people tell me that they cannot institute a non smoking policy even though they want to. Even though they know it's better for the professionalism, better for the customer, better for efficiencies, all of those things. But they always say this. I would not be able to find enough people and enough laborers to help me. Cause they're all smokers. Now, let's just look at the logic of that. That is not true. There's a massive percentage of people who do not smoke even when they're in their 20s. And so the question is, are you even able to tap into that marketplace, that labor market, if you currently have smokers in your organization. Because I know for myself, if I was looking for a job and I'm a non smoker and I'm gonna have to be in a truck with a bunch of smokers all day, that's a no go. I'm not doing it. I don't like to be around that environment and so I'm not going to be there. And so by cleaning house, you can sometimes then start to attract that level of talent and that level of person that doesn't smoke and is committed to the policy that you've put in place. And so those are just some of the things I think about when it comes to smoking. I know some people, a lot of people disagree with me simply due to the fact that they say they cannot find enough good people that don't smoke. I just have seen time and time again where people clean out the smokers and they're able to find that tap into a talent market of people who do not smoke. And it's very important that in your hiring process, in the process of putting Craigslist ads or Facebook ads or whatever you're doing, indeed, or whatever platform, job board that you're going after, is that you make it very clear from the onset that you do not allow smoking. And it's gonna weed out a massive amount of people. And in general, and I don't wanna make generalities, but a lot of times people say, for example, someone who does not smoke, a lot of times they have discipline to do a lot of other things correct as well. They're generally going to have the discipline to not drink or, or do drugs or other things that would perhaps prevent them from being their best self at work. And so generally smoking is that low level bar that I know that if someone can pass that threshold and be past that level of professionalism, typically they're not going to have drug issues or they're not gonna come to work hungover and things like that. And so it's a great common denominator, I feel kind of weeds out a lot of people that are gonna have a lot of issues and, and it's again, something that you can institute much easier if you clean house and you make that the policy from the get go. And if you're not willing to fire because of it, just might as well not make the policy. That's just my two cents. Comment below what your thoughts are on the smoking policy and if you had to change your policy or change your culture in your business.