In early April, a team of ambassadors representing the Society of American Florists (SAF) trekked through the Pacific Northwest in a vintage-style van — "The Flower Power Mobile" — offering unsuspecting people free flowers and tips to alleviate stress. Their journey from San Francisco to Portland, Ore., to Seattle received a flurry of press coverage not just because of the rad van, but also because SAF was telling the story of how scientific research proves the stress-reducing powers of flowers.

SAF Vice President of Marketing Jennifer Sparks was quoted on “Afternoon Live” on Portland’s ABC affiliate.

“We are providing a solution that helps people cope with stress in little ways throughout the day.”

During the live broadcast, Sparks introduced April as Stress Awareness Month, and shared statistics from Wakefield Research (68 percent of Americans report feeling stressed on a weekly basis; 32 percent endure it every day).

Sparks then dove into results from the University of North Florida's recent research study, "The Impact of Flowers on Perceived Stress Among Women."

"It's that contact with nature so many of us crave. The really great thing about flowers is that they bring the beauty of nature indoors. Simply having them on your desk or nightstand can significantly improve your wellbeing."

Two anchors from Portland’s NBC affiliate helped SAF distribute flowers, both of whom experienced the recipients’ joyful reactions when handed a bouquet.

Prior to the #StressLess Tour, SAF sent a press release to news organizations nationwide. SAF followed up with a nationwide media blast after the San Francisco events with pictures and video footage to carry the flower power message far beyond the three cities visited during the tour.

To take the message even further and to reach the millennial audience, SAF partnered with key social influencers with large, dedicated followings. Portland fashion blogger Kristina McInness joined SAF on location and spread flower power to her 87,000 Instagram followers and 5,000 blog subscribers.

[For more information on social influencers, revisit our story in the February 2019 issue, “Screen time sway.”]

McInness’ April 20 Instagram post, which featured a photo of the Flower Power Mobile and facts from the UNF study, got nearly 1,000 likes and more than 100 comments, including:

“Love this! I believe it too. Flowers are just too beautiful, so it makes sense they reduce stress.”

“What a happy soul – this is why I always have flowers around.”

“Definitely agree that flowers help relieve stress.”

“I completely agree! Love my flowers.”

In Seattle, YouTube star Monica Church, whose channel “Millennial Life Crisis” has more than 350,000 subscribers, joined the effort and vlogged about the experience as she counted flowers as a top way to relieve stress. Her video, “6 Ways to Destress Your Life This Spring” has more than 18,500 views and counting.

Source: SAF

The #StressLess Tour is another fun and clever example of how to get green industry products in front of consumers and in the news. In next month’s issue, I’ll give you more inspiration from a group of your peers giving away plants and spreading joy.

‘Chief Joseph’ is slow growing, reaching 4-6 feet in 10 years and attaining a mature height of 20 feet in 30 years. It has an irregular-conical shape which starts out somewhat compact and opens up as the tree matures. Many growers candle prune these and other pines to keep them more compact. The stunning yellow-gold color makes ‘Chief Joseph’ a dazzling specimen in the winter landscape. It fades to lime-green in the spring and through the summer until is shows of its golden cloak again beginning in the fall as the weather cools. It does best planted in full sun. It requires well-drained soil and regular water during the dry season for the first couple years.

Are you tired of hearing about the “candidate’s market?” Do you want to relieve the stress and strain of finding new talent just to meet the daily demands of your business, let alone grow your business? Well, there are two sides to this coin --recruitment and retention.

Recent polling of CEOs by The Conference Board, released in January of this year, reflect that their top internal concern for 2019 is obtaining and retaining talent. According to a September 2018 article from CNBC, “Workers are quitting at the highest rate since 2001.” A driving need for obtaining talent is retention. Certainly, some of the small- to medium-sized nurseries are reading this and thinking, “Those studies are all fine and good, but I bet they apply only to the big companies.”

Think again. Look at your current situation and I bet you will relate to it more closely than you think. We have been intimately involved with serving the horticulture industry for close to two decades and can definitely say the concerns uncovered by these studies are shared throughout the industry. It stands to reason that if your business retained its employees longer, the pressure to hire more would recede. Well, at least somewhat. If your business is growing, then the need to hire more employees will always be a key business challenge. Even if your business is stable or even contracting, in all three situations the retention of employees will certainly reduce the stress.

How does a business retain its employees? Every employee is different. Some are there just for a paycheck. Some think of it as just a job. Others are there to launch a career. Regardless of how an employee looks at their employment, what keeps them there is how an employer invests in them. Investing in your people is not exclusively about paying them more money, it includes helping them do their job better, expanding their responsibilities and growing their careers. Cultivating your employees will drive engagement and improve retention.

When the Great Recession of 2008 hit, two core business areas were cut almost immediately: recruitment and training. Since then, recruitment has roared back, while training (now often referred to as learning and development or L&D) has slinked back at a snail’s pace. Part of the reason is the perceptions of these two critical business initiatives that predate the recession. It is, however, time to shift perception and properly invest in your people in order to retain them.

I had the privilege of speaking with Claire Chandler, SPHR, President and Founder of Talent Boost, a company that helps leaders build legacies by inspiring the “Whirlpool Effect” in their teams. Claire consults with small- to medium-sized businesses just like yours all over the country on L&D initiatives that are customizable to their unique size, corporate structure, and budgetary constraints.

“Leading up to the recession, a lot of the focus of L&D was more on the remedial side,” says Chandler. “[The idea of] ‘let’s get people into L&D opportunities to improve where they are’ is weak.”

Chandler says that though there were some soft skills training, it was mostly about technical skills.

“[L&D] lacked the holistic training that we are seeing today. It was focused on filling holes, especially for corporate led training.”

She characterized the pre-recession training as driven by the “carrot and the stick” approach.

Of course, this was also a time when many businesses were investing more budgetary dollars in training their people. Many businesses invested in new technology, innovative techniques and remedial skills to lay a foundation for growth. But since the recession, Claire has seen budgets for L&D cut drastically — in many cases by more than 50%.

“If you hire the right person the right way and if you nurture the new hire, just like your plants, they will grow and flourish.”

It has been 10 years since the declared end of the Great Recession, yet many businesses have this old impression of L&D that holds them back from spending time, talent and money to appropriately invest in their people. But the perception is beginning to change. Businesses are becoming less interested in large corporate training departments and more driven by customizable solutions-based training. Today, according to Chandler, L&D is more partnered with the business and unit. More outsourced. There is an opportunity to get more tangible and granular.

A consistent theme she has seen, from small- to medium-sized firms and in both union and non-union environments, is the clamoring for more operational training and L&D that is customized to their specific needs. This thirst for L&D crosses all employment groups from front line workers and middle management to senior and even executive management.

Understanding where we were and what employees want helps to identify how to move forward, to innovatively cultivate employees, quench their thirst and grow your business into the future ahead of competition. Why is this important?

“L&D is no longer a perk, it is a requirement,” says Chandler. “There have been times in the past where employees were sent to development and led to believe this is a reward, that it was geared to high potentials and performers. Millennials have had a lot to do with moving this needle. But now it is a requirement, a necessity. They are expecting and assuming a two-way relationship. [For instance] ‘I’m going to bring my skills and best and in return I expect to be nurtured and have direct access not just to my direct manager but their management above and expect that I would be considered for advancement and other employment benefits.’”

The biggest perceived impediment by small- to medium-sized businesses leaders is budget, but it’s all proportional, all relative, she says.

“Many think that because they are not a large company they cannot afford the Deloitte scope analytics, that because of their size, and only their size, they are losing out to larger companies for top talent. [However], from a recruiting and retention perspective — from exit interviews and [my] experience in these functions — many have been retained by small to medium companies due to ‘access.’ Where people might go to larger companies for vertical advancement, title and large money, others have remained because of the unmatched access that small- and medium-sized companies can provide, such as access to upper management and to more ad hoc learning opportunities,” she adds.

If you hire the right person the right way and if you nurture the new hire, just like your plants, they will grow and flourish. Culture is critical to the success as well. It is the right environment that will facilitate the growth of the plant and the person alike. Feeding the plant means the right light, soil, nutrients and water. Feeding employees means nurturing, coaching, feedback and L&D.

There is an old saying where a CEO asks his head of human resources, “What if we train them and they leave?” To which the head of HR responds, “What if we don’t and they stay?” There is always a risk of employees leaving. Investing in them and providing access in a way they cannot gain elsewhere is at the heart of retaining them.

Author’s note: Claire Chandler, SPHR is a leadership strategist with 25+ years of experience in business leadership and organizational effectiveness. She helps ambitious organizations accelerate performance by building better leaders.

At the heart of the job of managing people is the imperative (and opportunity) to create the environment within which the team does its work. The best managers know that the informal rules around how people should work make a substantial difference to what people do and what they pay attention to, and they seek to shape that in a way that maximizes success.

Here, excerpted from my book The Self-Determined Manager, are eight things the best managers know and consistently do.

Great managers understand that shaping the environment is their job. Great managers are clear about the impact they have on the team environment. They recognize this is not accidental, that team culture is not random. They understand that it’s their job to create the environment for the team, and they can choose the type of environment they create.

They understand the power of amplification—it’s in the structure of the job. By virtue of being a manager, your words and actions are amplified. Every pronouncement you make may be repeated, every action emulated and every expectation reflected in the work of your team.

They deliberately choose the environment they hope to create. This process is active and deliberate. Different managers choose different themes for the environment they create.

My checklist for the best kind of environment to create is as follows:

They create environments that get the best from people. The best managers are gifted at creating for their people a sense of self-confidence and accomplishment that gives them a platform, and from this platform of self-belief and achievement comes more success and greater performance. The trick is that the manager is always looking for the next thing for their people, the next challenge or the new skill, which will move them ahead a little.

They catalyze greater achievement and performance from individuals than they realized they were capable of. They see that their people must be achieving and overachieving on their own in order to create greatness for the team, and they know that the way to get to this state is to build an environment where their people do better and do more than they expected or understood they could.

The self-determined manager offers a simple deal—personal and professional growth in return for great attitude and effort. The greatest managers want their people to achieve and do more because it builds their self-respect and career, ensures their employability, and helps with their sense of satisfaction and mastery. Fundamentally, it is the right thing to offer an employee, the chance to learn more and achieve more as a result of working for you.

They are fueled by a passion to make other people successful (although there are some strings attached). The strings? You must expect individuals to live up to the opportunity that comes with working for a self-determined manager. Your people must be as self-motivated as you are, and must take responsibility to perform, deliver, learn, grow, and to have an impact and make a difference.

They create environments where “right” is clear. In a pressure-filled work environment, the best managers make choices about whether to push their people harder, or adapt the task to make it achievable, or use shortcuts to achieve an all-important endpoint. When making these choices, they are consistent in application of their core values. They never stray from doing the right thing. This means honesty is never compromised, false promises are never made, people are never deliberately harmed, client trust is never abused, and customers are never misled.

When you become a self-determined manager, everyone in the company benefits and the workplace becomes harmonious. Employees feel supported and incentivized to work hard, you feel satisfaction that you’re making a difference, and your higher-ups are delighted by your and your team’s efforts to help the company thrive.