7 Benefits of Outsourcing Your Property Maintenance

If you have a facilities team, you’re a park director, property manager or custodian that wears far too many hats, chances are outsourcing grounds and landscape maintenance has come up in budgeting conversations.

After 15 years of working with these types of clients, we’ve found that the companies who outsource are able to save money without sacrificing their image.

A building’s curb appeal is important. It can help create an environment that employees are proud to call their own and give guests a positive first impression on the type of experience they can expect upon arrival. Having a trusted landscape contractor as your partner with broad capabilities and experience can help free up resources without sacrificing the upkeep to your property.

Here are some of the ways outsourcing to a landscape contractor can bring your company value.

Expertise Through Experience

A successful landscape contractor has grown their business by becoming an expert in their field and perfecting processes that help their crews operate efficiently.

Your payroll employees are expected to know the building and what it takes to operate. Let them continue to learn the nuances and make sure your building functions efficiently, while working together with outdoor maintenance experts to beautify the landscape.

When it comes to making landscape enhancements above and beyond regular maintenance, the process will be seamless if you are working with a trusted contractor. You will not need to resort to RFP’s from companies you’ve never worked with, taking up even more of your time. Your landscape maintenance partner will have the capacity to handle the project and can work with you and your budget.

Delegation

Outsourcing your landscape maintenance work allows you to maintain control of what needs to be done on your property. Along with hiring a professional landscape maintenance company comes a single point of contact for you to work with. One weekly conversation with this key person and your groundskeeping needs are done for the week. Any tasks or requests are easy to delegate to a company like Peerless Properties, who can either complete them or do the back-end project planning/research work for you and report back.

Real Wages, Real Talk

Let’s be honest with ourselves, hourly employees will milk out the time spent mowing the lawn outside on a 70 degree day. It’s that simple. You are overpaying in-house employees to work on your facility’s landscape because they are going to take their time before heading back inside to fix a leaky sink.  

As you are well aware, there are other expenses that come along with paying your payroll employees - salaries, overtime, employee benefits, workers compensation, equipment costs. With all of these added expenses, outsourcing can yield an operational savings of as much as 15-20%. When calculating your total cost in grounds maintenance specifically, outsourcing landscape maintenance services can help lower expenses like workers compensation. For example, the rate is likely going to be higher if your payroll employees are using outdoor power equipment - or get hurt using it.

Additionally, what happens if it were to rain on your normal weekly lawn mowing day and your payroll staff falls behind? Does this add to overtime for your business when your payroll staff needs to make up these responsibilities? The benefit of hiring a dedicated landscape maintenance company is that they are contractually obligated to mow each week no matter the weather conditions. Let them work the long weekend hours to catch up on the grounds maintenance while your staff clocks out after their 40 hours. 

Repair & Maintenance Factor

Along with owning zero turn lawn mowers, backpack blowers, tractors and plow trucks comes the repair and maintenance necessary to keep them running. For every 50 hours of equipment operation figure an additional half day worth of maintenance. If you want to own your own equipment, preventative maintenance is crucial in longevity. 

Peerless Properties has a maintenance schedule built into our workflow to ensure all equipment is running properly. This is just another opportunity where you can save time for your payroll employees and ensure you have properly maintained equipment caring for your property.

Snow & Ice

It’s all hands on deck when a Minnesota snow storm comes to town. As far as snow and ice control, keeping your grounds safe for business operations is vital. You can’t afford a single slip by anyone on your property. During a snow event, let your payroll employees continue to respond to internal maintenance responsibilities and simply be on hand to fill in the gaps between visits from the contractor. Your contractor will take the brunt of the wear and tear on their own equipment while your staff worries about nothing more than shoveling doorways before employees leave for the day depending on the severity and timing of the snow event.

Accountability Between Seasons

If you can find a contractor that is capable of handling both your snow removal service as well as grounds maintenance you are in control of determining who pays for accidental turf or concrete damage. Make them accountable for the repairs if they have both contracts with you. You are off the hook for any damages.

On the flip side of this, if you hire a contractor for snow removal that already has crews on site all summer, they are going to be very familiar with the nooks and crannies of the parking lot and sidewalks. It’s more likely that they will avoid damages and not miss a crucial high foot trafficked sidewalk.  

Overall Quality

Landscape maintenance can be a cut-throat business, so beyond price, contractors are competing on quality. The right contractor will take as much pride in your property as you do because they want to show their competition that they are not going to lose your account because of shoddy work.

Remember - curb appeal is a direct representation of your business. Don’t cut out quality by having your staff tend to the grounds when they have time. Rather, make it a priority to constantly enhance your curb appeal by hiring it out.