In early 2022, Roger Dutra, owner of Dutra Landscape, turned to Landscape Ontario’s GROW Program to find new employees. Over the next few months, he and his staff explored the full range of GROW’s free training programs. In this Success Snapshot, Roger describes how a year of GROW benefited the Dutra Landscape team.

Roger first learned about Landscape Ontario’s GROW Program when a colleague referred him to the Hire GROW Graduates. After completing the job bank’s verification process, Dutra Landscape gained priority access to graduates from GROW Training for New Entrants Program.

For Roger, the quality of the GROW graduates set Hire GROW Graduates apart from other hiring programs.

“GROW participants put the time in to get training which takes commitment and an interest in the industry,” Roger said. “As an employer, we then get to hire someone who has committed their time to be trained for a career in landscaping. What more can you ask for?”

While GROW’s Employment Specialists worked to identify candidates that would be the right fit for the Dutra Landscape team, Roger became aware of GROW’s full range of free training programs. He nominated two team members for the GROW Supervisory Training Program and enrolled himself in the GROW Employers of Choice Level 1 Training Program.

“I realized GROW had programs to attract new talent, develop your existing talent, and best of all, they had the program that I needed, GROW Employers of Choice,” Roger added. “As a business owner who learned his craft with work boots on, I knew to GROW I would need to learn more about business.”

As Roger prepared for his training, he received a call from GROW’s Shalini Mehta about a new participant in the Trainin for New Entrants Program that could be a great fit for the team at Dutra Landscape.

Read the article in the 2023 March/April issue of Landscape Ontario Magazine

Tamara Modebadze recently moved to the Hamilton area from Ukraine, where she worked as a project manager in landscaping for nearly eight years. She hoped to leverage her GROW training to transition to a career in landscape construction.

Tamara described that first call with Roger: “As I talked with Roger, I knew it would be a perfect fit! We’ve been on the same page ever since. We collaborate and combine our skills to get the best results. I’m happy to be in a company full of respect, trust and opportunities to grow.”

Following the call, Tamara accepted the position and prepared to start with Dutra Landscape once she completed her GROW training.

Since completing their respective programs, Roger and Tamara have wasted no time applying what they’ve learned to Dutra Landscape.

Each session of GROW’s Employers of Choice training program with instructor Jacki Hart presents strategies that participants can apply to their workplaces immediately. With his training, Roger gained a deeper understanding of the unique needs of his business and discovered new ways to develop his team of dedicated staff.

Background photo courtesy of Dutra Landscaping.

Today, Tamara is a valued member of the team at Dutra. With Roger’s support, she used her skills and experience to develop the company’s job-tracking system. Roger and Tamara hope that with further training and on-the-job learning opportunities, she can adapt her skills to fulfill the role of Project Manager in the near future.

In less than a year, the team at Dutra Landscape made use of the full range of GROW’s free programs. Through the they added Tamara, a graduate of the. Roger enrolled two of his existing staff in the GROW Supervisory Training Program and worked with GROW experts to create individual training plans for each of them. And finally, Roger enrolled in the GROW Employers of Choice, where he has already learned valuable strategies to enhance Dutra Landscape’s ability to recruit and retain the best possible team.

Dutra Landscape knows that even the strongest seeds require healthy soil to reach their full growth potential. Using GROW’s free professional training programs, the team at Dutra provides the fertile soil today’s professionals need to put down roots with a company.

This Employment Ontario program is funded by the Government of Ontario.