There are three L-words no property manager wants to hear: liable, lawsuit and lawyer.
Keeping your commercial property safe, clean, secure and free of issues are things you work on everyday. You know there’s a lot at stake if you don’t.
But are these also top concerns for your landscaping company?
If they aren't making these tasks a priority, the landscaper could be putting you at risk. You can’t watch them constantly — nor should you have to — so you need to find a landscaper you can trust not to put you at risk.
Check out the Top 10 major violations your landscaper could be making and how they can be avoided.
Having illegal workers on the jobsite is a problem industries face across the board, and the landscaping industry is no different. It’s especially widespread in sectors that involve manual labor.
There are an estimated 11.3 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, according to Pew Research Center, and they make up 5.1 percent of the U.S. labor force.
To avoid having illegal workers on your commercial property, your landscaping company should use E-Verify to confirm their employees are all authorized to work in the country.
E-Verify is an online system that businesses can use to determine the eligibility of their employees to work in the United States. This tool is free, so there’s really no excuse for companies not to use it.
Consequences: This violation can affect everyone involved. Penalties to companies who have undocumented workers can range from a few hundred to thousands per violation, depending on the severity of the problem. There’s also a possibility of jail time, although that’s not as common. If you knowingly work with someone who hires undocumented workers, you could also face penalties.
How It Can Be Avoided: The best way to prevent undocumented workers from being on your site is to ask the company if they are enrolled in E-verify. You can also ask for the company to provide proof that the employees are legally authorized to work in the United States. If they don’t agree to do that, there’s a good chance they are turning a blind eye to fraudulent identification, and that’s a big red flag.
Landscaping equipment has to pass pretty strenuous safety tests before a manufacturer can put it out to the market. But if the equipment operator doesn’t take advantage of the safety features and tries to bypass them, that could result in serious injuries on your property — not just for the worker, but also for your employees and site visitors.
Here are some examples of the most common unsafe equipment practices:
Any of these actions is a clear sign your landscaping company is not practicing safety on your property. It also shows you they are trying to cut corners, putting efficiency and profits above the health and well-being of people and don’t care about what the possible results could be.
Consequences: You could end up dealing with anything from damaged structures and visitor injuries to a fatality if the workers aren’t using the equipment properly. If one of the landscaping workers is injured — and the company doesn’t have full insurance coverage — you better be prepared for a costly settlement. It could be even more if a site visitor is injured because of the landscaper’s unsafe practices. You can try to take the landscaping company to court if that happens, but you’re still racking up a legal bill however you look at it.
How It Can Be Avoided: There are a few different ways to see how safety-minded a company really is, without having to watch them perform services every week. You can search online to see if they have any OSHA violations and what the severity is of those violations. Ask the company what safety precautions and practices they expect from employees and how they are trained to use equipment. You can also see if they perform onsite audits to make sure their workers are operating the equipment correctly.
You don’t have to be a landscaping expert to spot this major violation. All it takes is one glance at the workers, and you’ll be able to see if they are wearing the proper personal protective equipment (PPE).
The type of PPE required depends on the task at hand, but here are the most basic things they should be wearing when working on your landscape:
Consequences: Similar to the workers not using the equipment safely, having them not wear the right PPE for the job can also result in personal injury liability issues for you and the company. You’re opening yourself up to full list of problems, especially if the company doesn’t have coverage. It increases the chance of an injury occurring on your commercial landscape when they don’t wear the right PPE.
How It Can Be Avoided: Wearing the proper PPE should be one of the top instructions in any good safety manual. Ask the company if all of the employees undergo safety training, receive safety instructions and wear PPE. Are they provided with PPE, and what happens if an employee doesn’t wear it? Those are just a few questions you can pose. You can also just look at a worker when they are on a site and see if they have the right gear on.
Any time crewmembers are around traffic — whether in a parking lot or near a road — they need to know how to stay safe and visible. The company should create and stick to an on-street parking procedure that helps ensure a safe work zone for their employees.
Some components of that procedure can include using cones around the truck and loading area to keep other vehicles from coming near where the crew might be standing. Parking the vehicle in a low-traffic area with high visibility will also reduce the chance of a problem.
Consequences: Beyond having possibly injured landscaping employees on your site, you also run the risk of other drivers or pedestrians being injured if the company doesn’t follow a parking procedure. And if that’s the case, get ready for a liability suit.
How It Can Be Avoided: Have the company explain their parking procedures and what steps they take to prevent injuries or wrecks. You can also visit some of their current jobsites and see if they actually do what they say they are going to do on yours.
Landscapers have trucks and other vehicles in their fleet, which will be on your site. Most of these vehicles and their drivers must comply with the Department of Transportation (DOT). However, many landscapers don’t even realize their vehicles are regulated by the DOT.
Here are things required by the DOT that landscaping companies must comply with to follow the law:
Vehicle operators must carry a DOT medical card provided by a physician
Also, many vehicles and truck/trailer combinations require Class A commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs).
Consequences: The company can face fines if they don’t follow the state’s DOT rules and regulations, and you could have unauthorized, overweight vehicles on your site being operated by unqualified drivers.
How It Can Be Avoided: Talk with the company about how they comply with DOT regulations and what types of inspections they do on their fleet. That will help you ensure they are aware of the rules, as well.
Equipment accidents on jobsites happen all too often, and the degree of possible injury increases with the size of the machine. So, it’s especially important for mower operators to pay close attention to the terrain, such as holes, debris and steep slopes.
If parts of your landscape has slopes with a 15-percent incline or greater, the landscaping company shouldn’t be using large mowers to maintain it. If they do, they risk rolling over and being crushed by the equipment — which can cause injuries, death or them to lose control and have the machine careening into vehicles or your property.
Just last year, three Kentucky landscapers died when their riding mower rolled over. This is a real concern that needs to be taken seriously.
Consequences: Rollovers can be deadly, so the operator and his company need to be proactive about preventing this type of accident. The company will face OSHA penalties and fines, and you can also face responsibility depending the circumstances.
How It Can Be Avoided: Not mowing steep slopes with a large mower is the best way to prevent rollovers. Avoiding slick areas will help keep the mower from sliding, as well. Also, mower operators should make sure the ROPS is engaged at all times, no matter the slope. All of these safety techniques should be discussed with the employees during regular meetings. As for what you can do, point out steep slopes on the property and see how the landscaping company plans to address them. Push mowers or weed eaters (for smaller spaces) can all be viable options to maintain the turf in these spots.
Imagine spending the entire day outside working in the middle of summer: You’d be hot, to say the least. So it’s no surprise that every year, workers suffer from heat-related illnesses and even death.
Landscaping companies should be mindful of the heat and have policies in place to prevent injuries. Here are some steps the company should be taking:
You need well-hydrated, healthy people working to maintain your landscape.
Consequences: If employees are left in the heat too long without any breaks and drinks, they can suffer from heat illnesses or heat strokes, which can be deadly. Again, the responsibility (which can be costly) could land on you if an employee falls ill on your property. Even if there are no serious injuries, they could still fall behind in their work because they aren’t taking the right heat precautions.
How It Can Be Avoided: Make sure the company covers how employees should protect themselves from heat illnesses during safety talks. You can just ask for a copy of their safety materials if you want to look at it yourself.
Applying chemicals such as pesticides and fertilizers can make a big difference on your landscape. They can help lessen the amounts of insects and weeds on your turf and plants, while also improving the look.
But who’s applying those chemicals is just as important as what they’re using. Only licensed individuals are allowed to apply pesticides and fertilizers in the state of Kentucky.
(It’s interesting to note the Kentucky Division of Pesticides only offers licensing exams in English, so the applicator must be able to read English.)
Consequences: Not only are they out of compliance if they have a non-licensed applicator, but they also won’t be using the best application practices. And you don’t want someone on your landscape who doesn’t know what they’re doing. If they spray pesticides incorrectly, for example, the chemicals could get blown to an unintended area or even into a water source. Then, you’ll be faced with fines and penalties because of the runoff issue.
How It Can Be Avoided: Have the company provide you with their licenses to ensure they have the required certifications for the work.
Your landscaping company should have a drug-free workplace, and that includes performing drug tests. If employees don’t pass, they should be suspended, have permission revoked or be terminated. It’s that simple. The company should hold all of its employees to a high standard.
Consequences: A worker who is on drugs can be disoriented, or at best, just not performing at a high level, which can lead to them making costly mistakes. If the employee has illegal substances on your site, that would violate your property’s no-drug policy, as well.
How It Can Be Avoided: The solution for this violation is pretty straightforward: Ask the company if they have a drug-free workplace. If they don’t, they aren’t the right company to manage your commercial landscape.
You’ve probably caught on to a theme with the violations list: Safety is important. Accidents are a major cause of liabilities and costly penalties, so make sure the company takes steps to avoid those.
Putting safety first takes time and money, and many landscapers choose to cut costs by overlooking their employees’ failures to meet safety standards. A good landscaper will have a safety program that outlines best practices, including what PPE to wear, how to safely operate equipment, what not to do and examples of dangerous situations. They should keep safety at the top of their employees’ minds with regularly safety meetings and the occasional site inspection.
Basically, the landscaping company should make safety a priority in everything they do — and their safety record should reflect that. Find out what their incident rate is and if they’ve had major accidents recently.
Consequences: You’re basically playing with fire if you choose a landscaper who isn’t dedicated to safety in everything they do. You risk facing liability issues if they are injured while working on your property.
How It Can Be Avoided: Ask the company for their workers’ compensation experience modification rate (EMR). It represents the company’s claims history and safety record as it compares to other companies in the same industry. The lower the company’s EMR is, the better. Don’t go with a company that has an EMR that is higher than 1.0. An EMR is calculated by the three previous year’s losses, so unsafe practices affect a company’s rating for three years, helping you to get a good idea about their long-term safety record. (Klausing Group’s EMR is 0.8).
The easiest way to avoid all of these violations is to work with a commercial landscaping company that is proactive about preventing them.
You can get a good idea about how a company will manage your property by how they handle their own business. Here are some questions to ask when hiring a commercial landscaping company (in addition to addressing the 10 risks above):
Don’t settle for a landscaping company that doesn’t meet all of these requirements. They might offer a cheaper bid, but in the long run, you could be stuck paying thousands more if there’s ever an issue.
You'll have a difficult time finding another commercial landscaping company with the same level of professionalism, safety-minded practices, certifications and quality of work in Kentucky that we provide at Klausing Group.
We have more landscape industry certified staff members than any other company in Kentucky. Our drive to be the best has resulted in accolades like the Safety Recognition Award from the National Association of Landscape Professionals (NALP) and Small Business of the Year from Commerce Lexington.
We provide commercial landscaping services like maintenance, construction and snow/ice control in Lexington and Louisville, Ky. Our mission is to help you meet your safety, environmental, health and sustainability goals.
Ready to ask more of your landscape?
Contact us in Lexington at 859-254-0762, Louisville at 502-264-0127 or online, and rest easy knowing you won't have to worry about landscape violations.
