Did you know that many management experts believe every company actually has two sets of customers? There are “external” customers, who are the people who actually purchase your product or service. But then there’s also your “internal” customers, who are the employees that ensure your external customers are satisfied and happy.

When you make the effort to ensure that your internal customers are happy, able to effectively do their jobs, and maintain a degree of job satisfaction, you naturally set them up to succeed. More importantly, this support shows that you appreciate their efforts and consider them a valued part of your company team.

There are many ways to show your employees – those “internal” customers – this support. We’d like to offer a few ideas as ways to show you value their presence and effort this quarter:

1) A Beautiful, Attractive Workplace

Maintaining a neat, clean, and visually attractive physical workplace sends a quiet message to both your employees and your customers. It shows that you take pride in your company and want your image to be one of professionalism and expertise, regardless of your industry.

While many of us only think of curb appeal when buying or selling a home, maintaining the curb appeal of your business sends the same message. Landscaping doesn’t need to be over the top or excessive to be beautiful. Nicely maintained green space, trimmed bushes, perennial flowers, or pops of annuals all send a terrific message about your company

2) A Devoted Outdoor Break Area For Employees

One of the most powerful ways to ensure productivity is to take a break! But how effective is that break if it simply means your employees remain at their desks, squeeze into a breakroom or find a spot to sit on some boxes?

Creating a space, even a small one, outdoors where your employee can step outside, grab a little sunshine and breathe some fresh air, can work wonders for their mental health and productivity. emi can help you create a pleasing, attractive, and functional space that all employees can enjoy, whether it’s for a short break or lunchtime.

3) Spread Cheerfulness With Seasonal Displays

Whether you are the lone tenant in your building or part of a complex, seasonal displays spread cheerfulness. Adding potted displays that can be changed out seasonally at your entrance gives your employees a great start to the day with little effort.

4) A Safe And Secure Place To Park And Walk

Never underestimate how much a clean sidewalk and safe parking lot can set the mood for employees arriving and leaving the workplace.

An emi contract for snow removal ensures that your sidewalks are clean and salted and walking to the car does not mean dodging snow and ice. These services are especially important in the waning weeks of winter when snowstorms can be quick, wet, heavy, and unpredictable.

5) Consider Bringing The Outdoors Inside

Let’s face it, work environments tend to be busy, productive places, and natural light is almost always at a premium (or even non-existent) for some employees. But that doesn’t mean you can’t incorporate low-light plants or cut flowers into the workplace, especially at points that have heavy employee traffic, such as designated employee entrances, common meeting areas, or internal break/lunchrooms.

According to a 2015 study of 7,600 offices workers in 16 countries, nearly two-thirds of workers reported having no live plants in their workspaces. Those who did enjoy live plants also reported something that doesn’t surprise us: environments that incorporated natural elements reported a 15% greater well-being score and a 6% higher productivity score than those who didn’t.

It’s the start of a new year, and we can help you kick off 2022 with a great start by integrating these new ideas into your workplace.

Give us a call and let’s talk!

It may not seem like it now, but spring is only a few weeks away. Our yards and landscapes have been taking a nice long nap and have been dormant over the winter.

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a little necessary work to be completed before the weather warms and things start to grow again. At emi, our approach to spring cleanup is comprehensive. You’ll recognize our sites by the way we prepare our properties every spring.

We have specialized crews that focus on each of the following spring cleanup tasks.

Step One: Trash Pickup

Our first step is to address the trash and debris that collects over the winter. It typically gets buried by the snow, and once that melts, it leaves behind an ugly sight. It’s a general cleanup – trash, sticks, and so on. Not glamorous, we know, but highly necessary.

Step Two: Establish Bed Edges

Next, for every bed and tree ring, we use a Turf Teq power edger that cuts a two to four-inch deep wedge, depending on the soil conditions. This gives those rings a nice defined edge, and we’re able to then go in and shovel out all that debris.

Here’s the kicker. It’s a little different than how our competitors approach this task – they generally don’t cut a wedge as deep as we do and they also just push the dirt back into the tree ring. That’s not good for the tree: over the years, that will build up and become unsightly.

Step Three: Apply Pre-Emergents

At this point, our bed management team will visit to spray pre-emergent on the beds and tree rings. We use a combination of Dimension, which targets grassy weeds, and Gallery, which takes care of the remaining broadleaf weeds to ensure they don’t have a chance at germination when the temperatures warm up.

Step Four: Make It Beautiful With Mulch

Once this is complete, all the beds are topped with about one to two inches of mulch. We use triple ground natural wood mulch, which decomposes over time. We typically use natural-color brown mulch, which will eventually fade to gray through the summer, but dye options are available for our customers who are looking for that fresh mulch appeal longer into the season.

Another emi difference, you ask? Many of our competitors use mulches that contain pallet wood, which doesn’t naturally decompose and stays on the bed forever. This is no bueno in our books and we don’t compromise on quality!

As far as mulch application, we use a mulch blower for most jobs, but if your landscape has small perennials or high-profile areas, we’ll go in and mulch by hand so that we don’t bury anything. In addition to that, we take special care around your flowers, bulbs, or other plants that may just be starting to sprout, because the natural heat on the mulch can burn them.

Now, since we specialize in commercial landscape maintenance, we’ve even created a special approach for mulching alongside buildings that stops the mulch from blowing right up against the building itself. This is especially important if you have us apply dyed mulch because the black mulch, for example, will dye anything it touches. Our crews know to pay particular attention to this.

Here at emi landscape, we’re also mindful about how we approach tree rings. In both our existing client sites but with new clients in particular, if trees are planted near each other, we will combine the tree rings and create beds rather than mowing between the trees – that’s not good for their overall health. This approach means that there’s less competition for nutrients between the trees and the grass below. This is something we particularly do with evergreens, and we extend that bed outward so that the whole evergreen tree and its branches are in the bed. All of these efforts also make the landscape look so much better!

If you’re a new client, we’ll also focus on bed maintenance. The last thing you want is “mulch volcanoes,” where the mulch gets piled up year after year. We’ll actually go in and remove all that old mulch and replace it with some fresh mulch to get it to the proper height.

Step Five: Final Walk-Through And Cleanup

After all of this is complete, we’ll then do a final cleanup and walk-through, blowing off hard surfaces and making sure your landscape is ready for the new season!

You might not think of early spring as a time when a lot of effort gets put into landscape maintenance. But our goal each year is to have this work done for you by mid-April so that we can switch over to mowing, planting, and making your landscape look spectacular for the warm months ahead.

It may not seem like it in January, but taking care of your property is something that happens year-round. You won’t hear lawn mowing and trimming going on when the turf is dormant, in fact, you’re more likely to hear our plows and shovels – but believe us when we say that a lot of work is going on here at emi in planning for the upcoming season!

This is the time when we reach out to our clients – we want to see how your property is looking and make sure you’re happy with the work we’ve done over the past season. We’ll also ask about your hopes and dreams for the property and if you want any changes to your contract to achieve these goals. Ideally, we like to meet with our clients at renewal time, but many of them just ask us to email over the new contract and they sign it and get it back to us. Here at emi, we celebrate that fact. It shows a level of trust in the relationship we have with the folks we work with!

If you’re looking to put out bids for the upcoming year and are interested in having us give you a bid, this is the prime time to do it. Here’s why: what we call the growing season starts March 1, so if you’re a property manager, you’ll want to lock in your contract well before then. A proactive vendor wants to be ready at least 30 days before the season starts. Ideally, you don’t want to leave the month of February without having that contract in place. This will go a long way in getting the schedule and quality of service you deserve.

In early spring, your commercial landscape company has a lot of timely tasks on its to-do list.

You’ll find the emi team:

• Applying crabgrass preventer on your turf. We use two different preventers for the best defense against pesky weeds.
• Edging and mulching before the mowing season happens. This allows us to remove any debris and winter weeds – we get those beds sparkling clean!
• Applying weed preventer in your beds. The timing on this is absolutely critical. Many weeds must be controlled from growing early on, and are tougher to control with post-emergents if they’re already growing later in the season.
• Looking at degree-day charts. We know it’s a race against the clock for the products that we use to prevent weeds so we check the temperature of the soil as well as follow the “forsythia blooming philosophy”. Haven’t heard of it? Generally speaking, when you see those forsythia petals drop, it’s the right time to apply pre-emergents. Mother Nature definitely knows the right time.

Early in the season, we’re also taking stock of your property. We’re estimating what needs to be done to get and keep your property in tip-top shape. We’re taking inventory of your trees and shrubs, so we know what we’re dealing with. We’re setting up a holistic approach that will allow us to best take care of your property. Once we get your signed contract back, you can rest easy. We’re doing all the dirty work!

All these important steps need to be finished by mid-April at the very latest. If you find yourself renewing or signing a contract sometime in March, that can really cut that time frame down.

We know proposal review takes time, especially when it comes to commercial landscaping contracts. When it’s just a property manager, it can be very different than when there are layers of stakeholders involved. But usually, when the numbers get into all the right hands, it’s typically only a week or two until the decisions get made. Bringing in a third party to review bids can add a month or so. The key is just to be proactive in getting the process completed.

And a final hot tip: the opposite advice is true for commercial clients reviewing or seeking snow removal contracts. The best time to work on those? Right in the middle of summer!

Please let us know how we can serve you this season.