Enhancing the Work Environment

From Enhancing the Landscape to Enhancing the Work Environment- MPS’s 1^st HR Position

Hey again! Last blog post I quickly ran through some of the big changes MPS is going through and briefly mentioned the re-vamp of our HR.   One major change change we’ve made at MPS is the creation of a specialized human resources position.  In the past, individual operations managers have been in charge of interviewing, hiring and training their own staff.  After all – they’re the ones who have to organize and oversee the work their team performs, so it made sense that they would choose their own people.  As we’ve grown, however, the time requirements to deal with an ever increasing staff began to be too much, and started to impact our manager’s ability to actually manage their crews.  So we looked in-house to one of our long time summer students, Jenna, to fill this role.  Just finishing her 4th year at Queens University, Jenna was a natural for this position. Jenna worked as a Landscape Enhancement Crew Leader, enhancing many of our commercial site through mulching, planting, and pruning, to enhancing MPS’s work environment. Already knowledgeable about the inner workings of MPS, Jenna leverages her naturally out-going personality to recruit, interview, hire and on-board all of our new staff.  With a systematic employee review program, we’re able to effectively evaluate and reward our high-performing staff, and provide residual training to those who require it.
Jenna’s also been tasked with increasing opportunities for our team to interact in more social situations such as “TimBit Fridays”, where everyone starts their Friday at the office with coffee, donuts, and an opportunity to get to know their fellow workers, or talk to their managers in a non-pressurized environment.  We’re also doing a company outing to a Blue Jays game later this month.  With enough time to dedicate to this function, we’re already seeing an overall improvement in our staff’s morale and performance.  Landscaping can be a tough job, but little things can help make it more enjoyable.  The end result of a happy, engaged staff is a better landscape installation, or higher quality grounds maintenance.  We think you’ll be able to notice these results!

Jim Monk | President