Every spring, the same scene plays out across thousands of pest control and lawn care businesses in the United States. The phones start ringing. The work is piling up. And the person running the operation is scrambling to find people, train them from scratch, and get trucks rolling before the season gets away from them.
Sound familiar? You’re not alone, and the problem is bigger than most operators realize.
According to the 2024 State of the Landscape Labor Market report, 86 percent of green industry businesses reported having at least one open position heading into the season, and the majority said the labor market is still worse than it was before the COVID-19 pandemic. That’s not a temporary blip. That’s a structural challenge, and the businesses that are winning are the ones that have stopped treating it like a hiring problem and started treating it like a leadership problem.
Here’s the difference: a hiring problem gets solved every spring with job postings and interviews. A leadership problem gets solved by building a team that actually wants to come back.
Why Good People Leave (and Why They Don’t Have To)
Before you can fix seasonal employee retention, you have to understand why temporary workers walk away in the first place. Most operators assume it’s always about pay. Pay matters, but it’s rarely the whole story.
Research published by Team Engine, a workforce management platform focused on field-based businesses, found that employees in seasonal industries cite lack of career clarity, feeling undervalued, and poor communication from managers as the top reasons they don’t return the following year, often more than wages. Workers who feel like a number, who never get feedback, and who have no idea what their future looks like with a company will leave, even if they were paid fairly.
The good news is that most of those problems are fixable without spending a dollar. They’re culture problems, and culture is something you control.
Start Now – Before the Season Does
The businesses that keep their best people year after year don’t wait until March to reach out to last year’s crew. They stay in contact through the off-season. A quick text in January. A phone call to check in. A heads-up that their spot is available before the job posting goes live.
This sounds small. It isn’t. It signals that you value the person, not just the labor. It gives them a reason to turn down other opportunities when they come up during the winter. And it drastically reduces the time you spend onboarding new faces when the season starts.
Build a short list of your best performers from the previous season. Reach out to them personally before you post anything publicly. Offer returning workers first pick of routes, schedules, or roles where possible. That kind of treatment costs almost nothing, and it creates loyalty that a higher starting wage at a competitor often can’t match.
Train Like You Mean It
One of the fastest ways to lose a new hire is to throw them into the field unprepared. Pest control technicians in particular carry a lot of responsibility. They’re in customers’ homes, handling chemicals, and representing your brand on every single call. If they feel lost, they’ll find somewhere that doesn’t make them feel that way.
Pest Management Professional’s 2025 State of the Industry survey found that 94 percent of pest control businesses expected to retain more than 75 percent of their employees, but the companies hitting those numbers consistently were the ones that invested heavily in onboarding, safety training, and ongoing support for their technical staff. The companies falling short tended to hire fast, train minimally, and wonder why people quit.
A strong onboarding process doesn’t require a full training department. It requires documentation. Write down how you want things done. Create a short checklist for the first week. Pair new seasonal hires with an experienced team member for the first several jobs. Give them a chance to ask questions before they’re solo in the field.
The investment up front pays off every week of the season.
Build a Culture, Not Just a Crew
Culture in a seasonal service business isn’t about ping-pong tables or company retreats. It’s about how people feel when they show up on Monday morning. Do they feel respected? Do they know what’s expected of them? Does someone notice when they do a good job?
The Briostack guide to pest control employee retention puts it plainly: rock star employees thrive in environments where they feel valued, supported, and engaged, and the companies that create those conditions will consistently outperform those that treat technicians as interchangeable. The flip side is equally true. A culture that tolerates mediocrity, inconsistency, or disrespect from management will chase away your best people first, because they have options.
A few things that move the needle on culture without a big budget: hold brief team check-ins at the start of the week so people feel included. Recognize good work publicly, even just in a group text. Set clear expectations so no one feels blindsided by feedback. And when someone is not working out, address it quickly and directly. Letting poor performers linger sends a signal to your high performers that standards don’t matter.
Create a Path Forward
One of the most powerful retention tools available to any seasonal business is also one of the least used: a clear path for growth.
Workers who see no future in a role will eventually leave for something that has one. This doesn’t mean you need a formal promotion track for a team of six people. It means having conversations. Ask your best technicians what they want. Some will want to move into a crew lead role. Some want to learn more about the technical side of the work. Some just want to know they’ll have steady hours next year. All of those are things you can address, and addressing them tells people their future matters to you.
Green Industry Pros notes that extending service offerings across more of the calendar year, whether through pest control programs, winter treatments, or bundled service packages, is one of the most effective ways to keep crews engaged and employed longer, which in turn improves retention dramatically. Seasonal workers who can work eight or nine months a year are far more likely to come back than those who are laid off after five.
This is an area where SpringGreen franchisees have a built-in advantage. Our multi-service model, which combines lawn care, pest control, and tree services under one brand, gives strategic partners more work to offer their crews across more months of the year. That flexibility directly supports retention. SpringGreen has been building that kind of diversified service model since 1977, and today more than 150 franchisees across the United States are using it to grow their businesses and keep their best people season after season. We’re currently seeking franchise prospects in many markets nationwide.
The Bottom Line on Seasonal Employee Retention
Hiring will always be part of running a seasonal business. But the operators who are winning right now have shifted their mindset from “how do I find people every spring” to “how do I build something people want to be part of.”
That shift starts with leadership. It shows up in how you communicate, how you train, how you handle problems, and how you treat the people who show up every day and do the work. None of it is complicated. Most of it is free. And the return, measured in productivity, customer satisfaction, and money saved on recruiting and retraining, is significant.
Build the kind of team culture that makes coming back next year an easy decision. Your business will be stronger for it from the first warm day of spring all the way through the last service call of fall.
