Get Helpers for When You're Gone | Part 3 - Before and After Your Helpers Mow

Welcome to Teen Lawn Care's very first series post! I wrote a post about "Getting Helpers for When You're Gone", and it turned out to be too long for one writing. So, here's the third in a four part series about getting helpers when you're gone. See Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

Setting up for When you Leave Town

By now, you have all the preparatory work set up with you and your helpers. When the actual time comes when you are going out of town and you need your workers to take care of your customers' lawns, there are a few steps you should take:

1. First, you'll want to see what times are best for each of your helpers. Figure out when each of your lawns need mowing, then give your helpers the times they will need to be mowing. Drill it into their heads, they can't forget.
2. Next, you'll want to email your customers. Tell them you will be out of town for [a certain amount of time] and [your helper] will be mowing [at this time]. You might want to tell them that your helper knows their way around a lawn and that you expect that they will do a good job.
3. Leave town and don't stress. If you can, remind your friend via text message or something that they need to mow. Don't be annoying about it-- just remind them a little while before they will have to perform the job.

This set of steps should work fine for you and your helpers. Just be methodical and don't forget anything when coordinating jobs.

Monitoring the Work of your Helpers

Since you aren't actually performing the work, you can't be absolutely sure how well your helpers will do their job. So, after they mow/weed eat, you should go to the lawn(s) they worked on and make sure they are done well. If the lawns are in good shape, then give your helper a pat on the back, because all is well. However, if not, there are a couple things you need to do.

First of all, you need to fix it. If you can, get the buddy who worked on the yard out with you so you can show them what they did wrong. Making a mistake isn't necessarily grounds for releasing them from service-- however, you do need to fix your customer's lawn and reteach your employee. You should also have another, more extensive training session to help fix whatever issues your helper has with mowing/weed eating lawns.

If you have to do this a lot, and it turns out your helper just plain sucks, don't call them to mow your customers' lawns anymore. Find a new employee, and move on. It's not worth it to you or to your business.

This is the third in a four part series. View the rest of the series: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 4

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