The Good Wages Initiative certifies, celebrates, and showcases Marion County employers that are committed to providing full-time employees both a wage of at least $18/hr and access to employer-sponsored health insurance. EmployIndy launched the Good Wages Initiative in April 2022 and now has 59 partner employers. Marion County businesses can participate in the Good Wages Initiative as either a Certified Employer or a Committed Employer. Certified GWI employers pay all employees $18/hour or more and offer access to health benefits. Committed status is available to employers who do not yet meet one or both of the certification requirements but have created a plan to implement them within two years.
We spoke with Matt Green, the CEO of Green’s Lawncare & Property Services, a Good Wages Initiative Committed Employer, about the organization and why it decided to join the Good Wages Initiative.
Green’s Lawncare & Property Services started in 2017 with Matt as the only employee, focused on mowing, shrub trimming, mulching, and leaf removal. He partnered with another company that first year on leaf removal and split the revenue 50-50, which allowed Matt to bring on his first couple of employees in 2018. Green’s continued adding employees and expanding their service offerings over the next few years, but he was seeing a lot of turnover. Matt knew the value of reducing turnover on the quality and consistency of the services he and his team could provide, so he put his focus on increasing pay and expanding benefits. As he did this, he also expanded his service offerings to include fertilization, weed control, aeration, and pest control, as well as some winter-time services, ending up with a specialty in Christmas light installations.
Matt admits that “the first couple of years, we had no culture,” that the company was not intentional about building a strong culture for its people. He said that their initial location being based out of a storage facility made it difficult, as he would sometimes not see his employees for up to a month at a time, which created a lack of meaningful interactions. Matt realized that as he continued to grow the business he needed to be intentional about creating spaces for connection: “We had to start being intentional about it. We moved to the warehouse we’re now in and this allows us to be intentional about what we do. On my wall I have a culture calendar, and it’s scheduled out. Employees can come in and see what we’re doing. It holds me accountable, but it puts meaning and purpose and gets our team together. So many people think too much about culture and at the end of the day it’s really simple; it’s all about knowing who your team members are, caring about them, actually having meaningful dialogue with them, wanting to get to know them and wanting them to do better and helping them along the way.”
When asked about attracting and retaining talent, Matt shared that it took him until this year to learn that getting applicants and having a good culture is just part of the puzzle, and that the onboarding experience that connects those two experiences is critical. “We’re currently building out our full onboarding experience, introducing new team members to our culture. If you don’t have the onboarding, the training, and the culture the employees will never stay. On top of that, we’re working with EmployIndy to build out an apprenticeship, so we can bring in people that have no industry experience and teach them everything they need to know.”
Matt first heard about the Good Wages Initiative when he connected with an EmployIndy team member at an Indy Chamber event. Once he heard about the Good Wages Initiative, a light bulb went off: “Thinking about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, you have to feel secure in your life, you need to have a job that can provide for you at the very basic levels of humanity. If you as an employer don’t have good pay and meaningful benefits, people will always continuously leave. I thought that what the Good Wages Initiative does and my mission as the leader of this company goes hand-in-hand and I believe we meshed really well because you all are trying to provide better opportunities for the community. If we provide better pay, selfishly, we’re going to get the best talent. And we need to provide meaningful benefits, so that our team members feel secure in their life and have an opportunity to retire comfortably.”
The current benefits Green’s Lawncare & Property Services offers include life insurance, short-term disability, and retirement benefits. As part of the Good Wages Initiative, Green’s has committed to implementing health benefits, and they are in talks with various companies to provide medical, dental, and vision coverage. Matt shared, “These benefits are an investment, they’re expensive, but our team members are totally worth it.” When it comes to pay, Matt started the year at $16/hr and has gone up from there a few times this year: “We want to give the guys a percentage from the services they provide. We would love our entry-level pest control and fertilizer employees to make a minimum of $45,000 per year. We have a little bit room to go with that because we’re a seasonal business. We’re trying to push the envelope of what we can charge, but there’s some pushback on that. We’re trying to push through that ceiling and pay people better.”
To learn more about Green’s Lawncare & Property Services, visit https://www.greenslcps.com/.
To learn more about GWI, visit https://goodwagesindy.org/.