CREATORS

Nickole Selensky

William Stephens

Katherine Kersey

Vrunda Agnihotri

Devanshi Padsala

MAJESTIC
LANSCAPING
SERVICES
ORGANIZATIONAL PLAN FOR HUMAN CAPITAL
Majestic Landscaping provides an efficient and affordable landscaping service to local
homeowners. Our Service Crews work on multiple lawns a day, completing services such as mowing,
hedging, weed-eating, laying mulch or fertilizer and treating lawns for pesticides and weeds. Our
company starts out with 5 employees and our goal at the end of three years is to obtain 100. It is
important that the Company plans accordingly in order to be successful. Majestic Landscaping will
develop two departments, Service Crews and Corporate. The Service Crews will perform manual labor
and service our customers lawn’s, and Corporate is in charge of the day to day operations such as
accounting, marketing, human resources and so on. It is important to focus on the individual differences
in hiring, especially because we will have a variety of employee types and it is important to hire an
employee with the right fit for our company and culture. Many of our service crew may not have a
formal education, however our standard for corporate employees will at least be a bachelor’s degree in
their profession. It’s also important to establish how our teams will be organized and what their duties
will be, along with what culture we want to project. Working outside, especially in the summer, can be a
very tiring job. We want our employee’s to know that we care about their health and safety and job
satisfaction. We will have a couple initiatives to show appreciation to all of our employees, because
without them our company will not be successful.

In order to run a successful landscaping company, we are focusing on developing a strong

structure for our employees, especially how our teams are organized, properly evaluate their
performance throughout the years, look for distinct attitudes in hiring and establish a strong culture.

YEAR 1
STRUCTURE FOR YEAR 1
Centralization: Due to our goal of growing our company from 5 employees to 35 employees by the end
of year 1 and with our end goal to have 100 employees by the end of year 3, it is important that the
decision making stays at the top levels. The CEO has a clear vision of the company’s future and
maintaining a centralized level will create the success of this company.

● It is also important for all new hires to see the clear chain of command.

Formalization: The nature of our industry results in a diverse group of employees.

● Corporate: White collar, highly trained and educated individuals

● Service crews: Blue collar and no education requirement.
It is important to have an explicit set of rules and guidelines, especially when it comes to safety and
training. This will create a structure for our company that will provide our employees with an important
understanding of the necessary guidelines and expectations we have of them.

Specialization: Employees will specialize in specific business functions that pertain to their division.

Structure: Our Company will be divided by a corporate division and a service division.

● Corporate is the CEO, who will be in charge of all internal decision making and business
functions such as marketing, accounting, human resources and legal.

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● Service Crews will consist of 2 service members and they will specialized in lawn care and
customer service.

We will start with 5 employees at the beginning of year 1.

By the end of year 1 we will grow to 30 employees.

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Structure: Our Company will be divided by a corporate division and a service division.

CORPORATE

• CEO: Overlook all internal decision making and business functions. Maintain human resources
and legal duties as well as anything else that may come up
• General Manager: responsible for administrative duties and manage corporate office.
• Marketing: responsible for developing company brand and selling it to our customers.
• Accounting: responsible for maintaining our expenses and revenues and also process employee
payroll.

SERVICE CREWS

• Service Managers: 4 managers will each in charge of leading 2 service crews in order to obtain
excellent customer service and timeliness. Decision maker for service crew if anything comes up.
Be liaison between the service crew and CEO by communication and guidance.
• Service Crew: 6 Crews which consists of 4-5 members each. Crews will work together to service
our customer’s lawns in a timely manner with quality work and meet all of the customer’s needs.

TEAMS AND HOW GROUPS ORGANIZE FOR YEAR 1

OBJECTIVE: GET THE WORK DONE EFFICIENTLY WITH 5 EMPLOYEES

SERVICE CREW:
• Consist of 4 members
NORMS: Service team members will practice a consistent commitment to sharing all the information
they have
ROLES: service members’ roles will be to divide and conquer. There are 4 service members, so they can
decide the work as follows:
1. Prune trees and shrubs
2. Mow lawns with riding lawn mowers or manual mowers
3. Sweep walkway of debris
4. Apply pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides to get rid of pests, fungus, and
diseases that destroy plants
These roles will help them understand their specific work and will reduce the chances of clashes.

CORPORATE:
• Consist of one CEO/Manager
NORMS: Managers will open a space in which service members have information and are comfortable
asking for what they need.
ROLES: Manage the service crew, plan landscaping projects and schedule work for crew

END OF YEAR I

SERVICE CREWS:
4 managers each for 2 service crews and 6 crews each consist of 3-4 members

NORMS:
• Managers: Managers are open, communicative, and authentic with each other and their teams

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 • Service Crew: Don’t be defensive and support each other. It is really important to support each
other at the growing stage of the business because during this period company fluctuates its
business every day.
ROLES: 6 crews of 3-4 members each will be going to 6 different places and working with our motto of
dividing and conquering.

CORPORATE:
• consists of 6 people
NORMS: Having communication with from higher to lower level. Letting know what the company is
doing and its goals to everyone is very critical because it is one of the factor of job satisfaction and losing
an employee can affect company badly at this point.
ROLES: Service manager and General manager are under CEO. Service manager is responsible for the 6
service crew teams, while General Manager works with marketing and accounting manager for
developing company brand and maintaining expenses and revenue respectively.
INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN HIRING FOR YEAR 1

SERVICE CREWS

Important characteristics:
• Demands-Abilities Fit
o At this point in time, we are looking for members who have the technical skills for the
job. We are looking for people who are already experts in this field.
• Employees need to have the ability to work in teams of 4-5. Teams will need to communicate to
one another effectively. This means effectively listening to one another for any
misunderstandings and reaching a compromise on who will do the tasks.

Other Characteristics that are essential for a job in the landscaping business that we will target
throughout the years are:
Having a certain level of self-efficacy.
• Our customers trust that our employees know what they are doing. In order to increase levels of
self-efficacy, we will provide a proper amount of training to ensure our employees are confident
in their skills and abilities.
Employees need to have high levels of emotional stability.
• For most of the day Service Crew Members will be working outside and unless it is under
extreme weather extreme circumstances, employees will be working in all seasons especially
during the summer. They need to be prepared to work in a hot environment by being calm and
resilient. They also need to be proactive with an internal locus of control because the weather in
the environment should not impact the way they treat our customers. Negative behavior would
include retaining information or shortening communication with them.
Our employees need to be high in agreeableness.
• We want to keep a good bond with our customers. Inevitably, we will have a long-term
relationship with them. Our services are such that they can be provided over and over again to
even the same customer.
Our employees need to be high in conscientiousness in their work.
• We want to produce high quality work so being thorough and feeling responsible for the work
being done is necessary. Our customers should not complain that they did not get the proper
service they paid for.

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Employees need to be organized and efficient in their work.
• Finishing the job should be the priority of employees with a steady focus. We want our
customers work done efficiently, not drawn out over long periods of times. If that happens, then
the customer will be dissatisfied, and we will not make any revenue as well.
A proactive personality is also recommended.
• For instance, if the house has indication that there are poisonous plants growing in the
customer’s backyard, our employees should alert the owner’s and lay out possible solutions to
the predicament. This may not be in the employee’s job description, but going out of the way
will create appreciation in customers and leave a good impression for our company.
A performance goal orientation is necessary.
• Additional recommendations are that workers need to be highly responsible, self-controlled,
and positive

INTERVIEW
As part of the interview questions, we will explicitly state that the job requires physical exertion. It is
recommended that potential employees feel they are physically healthy to perform at this job.
For the interview, a set number of questions is all we need to filter the best candidates for the job
position.
1. Why do you want to work here?
This will allow us to know what our candidate’s motivations are, so we can properly reward
them later.
2. How do people describe you?
We can assess how other people see our candidate and this will give us insight on how well they work in
a team.
3. What is your greatest strength and what is your greatest weakness?
Knowing this will help us find a good partner for this candidate based on his strengths and weaknesses.
4. Why do you think you are a great fit for this job?
We can assess how his qualities overlap with the qualities we want in our employees.

CORPORATE

Important characteristics:
• We are looking for managers that can do two things: Take care of the revenue that is coming in
from the service and supervise the current workers.
• In Year 1, we do not need that many managers and the managers we do need will need to run
only the essential aspects of the organization at this point.
• We need a demands- abilities fit for our managers as well.
o They simply need to organize and manage the few employees we do have.

HOW WE MANAGE PERFORMANCE FOR YEAR 1

ORGANIZATIONAL SMART GOAL

Scale employee count from 5 to 35 by increasing servicing of properties from 17 per month to
68 per month. Or in other terms a 75% increase in serviced properties per month by December 31st,
2018. We will evaluate progress each month documenting what works and what does not from January
1st to December 31st, 2018.

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Specific
We specifically want to increase our employee count and property servicing capabilities by the
end of the year.

Measurable
This is measurable by tracking the amount of properties serviced over the course of 12 months.
We should be increasing the amount of properties serviced by 1.5 per month in order to reach
our goal by the end of the year.

Actionable
It is actionable in that we can drive the relevant factors that increase our property servicing
quantity, which then increases our employee count. Investing in marketing initiatives, ensuring
employee job satisfaction, efficiency, attitudes, good performance, and well-structured reward
systems should drive increased service quality, which will drive increased service demand which
will then increase employee demand.

Realistic
It is realistic because based on the number of properties we average per month; reaching this
goal would be a 35% increase in properties serviced which would justify the large increase in
employees. This is doable for a growing company that provides an in demand service in a high
quality way.

Time-bound
We are determined to reach this goal by December 31st, 2018. Monitoring progress on a
quarterly basis will be how we track this progress and ensure the goal is met.

YEAR ONE PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT STRATEGY

PERFORMANCE GOAL
Consistently perform evaluations each month of both Service Crew members and Administers.
CEO will hold self and management accountable to finding the time to administer performance
evaluations and analyze them. We want at least 90% customer satisfaction, 90% project completion
within time frame.

SERVICE CREWS
How We Monitor Performance

● Monthly appraisals/evaluations administered by the manager to each service crew employee

personally.
● Customer satisfaction survey on the quality of work done.
● The amount of time each crew spends to finish a property assuming that all properties
undertaken are of relatively equal size.
Employee Expectations

Employees will be responsible for doing the physical landscaping work. We expect our
employees to present a professional image in their uniforms, meet calculated expectations of property
servicing, and be respectful in their behavior towards co-workers and customers. Crew members are
expected to have:

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 ● 90% Positive customer service
● 90% Property completion on time
● 90% Overall workplace behavior
Process of Performance Monitoring and Evaluation

-Customer Service Evaluations: The customer’s response to the survey questions will affect employee
evaluation. There will be 5 questions based on a 1-4 quality scale from highly satisfied to highly
dissatisfied.
-Productivity Evaluation:
• Management will evaluate employees based on how long it takes each team to complete a
property. There is a standardized time it should take to finish a project and crew members will
be held to this time-to-complete standard.
• If employees do not meet standards there will be intervention by management to determine
cause of low productivity. Based on what the issue is, management will do what is possible to
assist the employee to bring productivity up to standard.
-Individual Workplace Behavior Evaluations:

This will be administered by management and determined by various metrics including

observations and numerical recordings.
Example:
1) Is John Doe consistently in uniform? Always|Often|Somewhat|Never
2) Is John Doe punctual for work? Always|Often|Somewhat|Never
3) Does John Doe respect peers? Always|Often|Somewhat|Never
4) Is John Doe reliable? Always|Often|Somewhat|Never

Performance Reviews/Method of Feedback

Once per month, management will evaluate service crew members. This evaluation outlined
above will take place on the second Friday of each month. Management will carve out a 2 hour window
of the work day to sit down with each service crew member and provide individual feedback to improve
the overall team measures. Teams will review together in a similar fashion directly after individual
performance reviews.

CORPORATE
Employee Expectations

Managers will be expected to perform monthly performance evaluations with each employee
for all 12 months. They will also ensure job satisfaction by being available to employees, allowing
process of appeals by employees, and hold service crews to standards of productivity, customer service,
and professional image.

Process of Performance Monitoring and Evaluation

-360 Degree Evaluation:
Each member of the company will evaluate members of management. This includes other
members of management. This will give the company an unbiased view of the management team’s
performance. The results will not be shared with any employee besides the administrator. This will occur
quarterly.

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 Example:

1) Does John Doe clearly define expectations? Agree|Neutral|Disagree

2) Does John Doe communicate well? Agree|Neutral|Disagree
3) Is John Doe fair in treatment? Agree|Neutral|Disagree
4) Is John Doe’s conduct professional? Agree|Neutral|Disagree

Performance Reviews/Method of Feedback

Each year, managers will be evaluated through a 360 degree system. Their feedback will
presented to them by the employee responsible for administering the evaluation. The administrator will
not reveal any of the participant’s identities to the person being evaluated, only the areas for
improvement and areas that are excellent.
In the event an employee underperforms in some capacity, management will meet with the
employee, discover what the underlying problem is and then take the appropriate measures to correct
the performance.

MOTIVATION OF EMPLOYEES
Rewards/Pay
We believe these rewards will motivate employees to go above and beyond the standards as
well as lead to satisfying outcomes for the organization. Ideally, these rewards will not incentivize bad
behavior. If bad behavior results from this structure we will revisit it next year to improve if necessary.
Service Crew:
● Piece Rate System, paid biweekly.
● Potential bonus of $250 dollars at year end for each member of the best team with customer
service rating of 80% positive.
Management:
● Fixed Salary at competitive/comparable market value.
● Bonus at year end dependent on profitability of company.
PUNISHMENT

There will be a process by which employees will be punished for not meeting performance
standards. Managers are responsible for responding to and resolving conflicts as well as administering
punishment to those who apply. Appeals will be allowed if any employee believes their punishment was
unfair.
Process:
1. Issue is observed/reported by manager, customer, or co-worker
2. Investigate the incident
3. Manager meets with employee in question
4. Determines what the cause of the complaint/underperformance is
5. Discusses possible solutions to the issue
6. Resolve the problem

CULTURE FOR YEAR 1

CREATING CULTURE
Our goal will be to create and maintain a culture focused on employee safety, satisfaction, and being
environmentally friendly.

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EMPLOYEE SAFETY
General Safety Highlights

Proper gear must be worn ALWAYS. You may not be using the woodchipper, but someone else might be. If they
wear safety glasses, SO WILL YOU!

Employees must stay hydrated. Coolers with water MUST be stocked before heading to a job.

Hats and sunscreen are HIGHLY recommended. EVERYONE is susceptible to sunburn.

If feeling faint, STOP WHAT YOU ARE DOING! Especially if operating machinery or using sharp equipment. We
prefer you keep your hands, fingers, etc. attached to your body.

Our pesticides may be environmentally friendly, but they are still CHEMICALS. Protect your body from them by
wearing your uniform. ☺

Landscaping is one of the more dangerous jobs someone can do, and we want our employees to be safe
and aware of that. This silly, but helpful safety reminders are something that would be posted in highly
active employee areas. Things such as this, that emphasize safety would be implemented day one. Also,
employees who work here are to go through training that explains proper use of equipment and how to
maintain their health while on the job.

SAFETY TRAINING
We assume most new and existing employees have worked as a landscaper before, so training would be
minimal and more of a reminder for them.

Consists of:
• One 2-hour session with supervisor on proper safety procedure

EMPLOYEE SATISFACTION
Since it is the first year we will not have much to offer employees tangibly, other than their salary and
adequate management.
• At the end of Year 1, we will host a small party for all employees to celebrate being in business
for one year

ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY
From day one our company plans to:

• Use primarily locally grown vegetation in landscaping

• Use safe pesticides that have no negative impact on the environment
• Not “dump” excess plant matter, but give to a mulch processing plant to be “recycled”

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OVERALL
Motto: A beautiful lawn doesn’t happen by itself.

Mission Statements

Provide the highest quality lawn care service, in an environmentally friendly manner

Build long-lasting relationships with each other and customers

Act with integrity, don’t do it if you wouldn’t tell your kids about it

Treat landscaping as an art, make masterpieces

Maintain a safe working environment for employees by complying with Osha standards and more

These mission statements would ideally become the “etiquette” of the company. The founders are to
follow them from day one and spread it to each incoming employee through practice and
encouragement.

YEAR 2
STRUCTURE FOR YEAR 2

60 Employees by the end of Year 2

CORPORATE

• CEO: Overlook all internal decision making and business functions. Gets information from COO
and CFO to understand how the business is operating and reaching its goals.

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 • CFO: Overlook Marketing, Accounting, and HR
Accounting is responsible for maintaining our expenses and revenues and process employee payroll, the
Marketing team will maintain company brand, get our service to the customer’s eyes and sell it and
Human Resources will recruit new employees, create training and development programs, and manage
employee relations, conflict resolution and legal issues.
• COO: Overlook operations of the company and Service division.
The Service Director is responsible for leading the service managers and keep them accountable to their
duties. The Service Managers consist of 5 Service Managers who overlook 2 service crews each to
ensure they are maintaining company standards of work in a timely manner and providing great
customer service.
-10 Service Teams with 4-5 service crew members each
IT Director will maintain company information systems and technologies for corporate division

HOW GROUPS ORGANIZE FOR YEAR 2

Objective: To maintain cohesiveness, we kept the groups smaller and minimize status differences within
the group.

SERVICE CREWS

Service crews will remain the same.

CORPORATE:
NORMS : Continuously striving to improve and achieve the team’s strategic goals.
ROLES: CEO looks over the COO and CFO. There are two departments under COO: Service supervisor
and IT Director. Service supervisor supervises the service manager who works directly with the service
crew. While CFO has HR, Marketing, and Accounting department to work with. HR Manager deals with
Recruiter, Marketing Manager with Sales, and Accounting Manager with Bookkeeper who then deals
with Payroll Specialist
INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN HIRING FOR YEAR 2

SERVICE CREWS
Individual characteristics and differences in hiring for service crews will remain the same as outlined in
year 1.

INTERVIEW
Interview Questions will remain the same for year 2.

CORPORATE

Important Characteristics:
• In Year 2, we want our corporate employees to demonstrate eagerness to help the
company grow and contribute to overall brand for our services.
• They simultaneously should be looking after our employees.

INTERVIEW

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Interview Questions for hiring corporate

1. What are your long term plans?

This is to see how committed the candidates are for the company going forward. This is especially
critical in the initial months for our business.
2. How have your previous experiences prepared you for this opportunity
Being one of the first managers for a new company is going to be different than being in a manager at
an established firm.
3. On a scale from 1-10, where would you rate yourself on being a “Self-starter”?
This is to assess candidates’ originality and creativeness
4. What skills do you have that will make you successful for this job?
We want to see organized and diligent managers.
5. In what ways do you think you can make a contribution to this business?
Contribution is key in our business especially in the beginning.
6. What motivates you to seek out a new job?
Again this ties into that we are a new company, and we want to know what our employees’ priorities are
to make a good environment.

PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT PLAN FOR YEAR 2

(Most items will not change from Year 1 to Year 2. To prevent redundancy the focus will be on what has
changed in this section. The primary ways and standards of evaluation will be the same throughout.)

WHAT HAS CHANGED :

Frequency of Service Crew evaluations will be reduced to quarterly instead of monthly. This allows
management more time for increased duties while still tracking performance.

CULTURE FOR YEAR 2

EMPLOYEE SAFETY
Everything regarding employee safety will remain the same, except for the safety training, which will be
expanded.

SAFETY TRAINING
For Year 2 training we will assume most new hires have mixed experience, between having landscaping
experience and having none.

Consists of:

• One 4-hour group session on safety

• One 4-hour individual session with supervisor on proper use of equipment
• Those who are inexperienced are assigned a “mentor” to work alongside for a few weeks to
learn from and be monitored.

EMPLOYEE SATISFACTION
This year, we will start to offer more regarding employee satisfaction such as:

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 • During “off” seasons such as winter, we will have alternating work weeks for each service team,
so they have time off when the demand for lawn care declines
• Full time employees will be eligible for benefits such as medical, dental, and vison
• Mid-year catered event, like a barbeque in a park, for employees and their families

ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY
Practices will stay the same for Year 2.

OVERALL
Practices will stay the same for Year 2.

YEAR 3
STRUCTURE FOR YEAR 3

100 Employees by the end of year 3.

TEAMS AND HOW GROUPS ORGANIZE FOR YEAR 3

Objective: To maintain cohesiveness even after having 100 employees

SERVICE CREWS
Remains the same as previous year.

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CORPORATE
NORMS: Transparency is a big component for running a business smoothly. Our company will run on
three values: Transparent, Accountable, and Integrable. Transparent because it is very crucial for people
in the company to be honest from CEO to a service crew member to avoid any internal issues.
Accountable because we don’t want any of our employees to sweep things under the rug and blame
each other instead of accepting their mistake. Lastly, Integrable because being righteous and having
strong moral principles benefits everyone including the partners, customers, and most importantly the
entire company.

ROLES: There will be three main department COO, CEO, and CFO. Under COO. Under CEO comes legal
who maintains ethics and standards. Under CFO, there’s Accounting, Marketing, and Human Resources
who works with maintaining expenses, company brand, and recruit new talent respectively. Service and
IT Directors are under COO. Service Directors are responsible for leading the service managers who are
in turn responsible for 14 service teams to go and mow lawns. While IT Directors are responsible for
maintaining all technical stuff.

INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN HIRING FOR YEAR 3

SERVICE CREWS

Individual differences in hiring will remain the same as outlined in year 1.

INTERVIEW
Interview Questions and methods will remain the same as previous for year 3.

CORPORATE

Important characteristics:
• This is the time when our corporate employees will be engaged emotionally and mentally in our
company.
• Our corporate employees need to form strong bonds with our service teams and be motivated
to ensure their success.
• Corporate employees also need to work effectively among themselves creating a culture of
respect, trust, and effectiveness.
Personality: Extroverted vs. Introversion
Employees do not have to be extremely extroverted. They simply need to be able to
communicate to landscape owners about their needs and wants. Employees also need to be able to
communicate back about the job they are about to do, in what order, and what other options and
additional things they can do for the customers.

INTERVIEW
Interview Questions and methods will remain the same as previous for year 3.

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PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT PLAN FOR YEAR 3
(Similar to Year 1-2. Not many changes so to avoid redundancy the focus will be on what will change)

What has changed:

● Shift to a Management by Objectives model for the corporate branch to encourage goals to be
formulated across departments and for each department to have focused objectives to
complete the overall objective.
● Corporate employees will be given flexible benefits packages on top of profit-sharing
● 360 Degree reviews will be annual for corporate employees/managers.
● Most functions of performance management evaluation administering will be done by the
Human Resources department rather than individual managers.
● Appeals process for punishments will go through new HR department.

CULTURE FOR YEAR 1

EMPLOYEE SAFETY
Everything regarding employee safety will remain the same, except for the safety training, which will be
expanded.

SAFETY TRAINING
For Year 3 we will assume most new hires have limited experience.

Consists of:

• Two 4-hour group sessions on safety

• Two 4-hour individual session with supervisor on proper use of equipment
• Assigned a “mentor” to work alongside for two months to learn from and be monitored.

EMPLOYEE SATISFACTION
This year everything regarding employee satisfaction will remain the same, except there will be 2
catered employee events

• Semi-Annual Catered Family Park Event

• Beginning of Spring and Beginning of Fall
• We will host a barbeque in a local park
• Family of all workers are invited--even pets!

ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY
Practices will stay the same for Year 3.

OVERALL
In this year we will begin to “give back” to the community. We plan to:

• Donate employee time to mow lawns for lower income families.

• Begin a children’s gardening club that meets monthly, and is hosted by employees who
volunteer

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