Professional Liability for Professional Arborists

by | Jul 9, 2019 | Risk Management | 0 comments

Professional Liability for Professional Arborists

On August 15th, 2017 a woman was walking through New York’s Central Park with her three sons when an Elm tree suddenly uprooted and fell on top of them. The woman, who was knocked unconscious, was holding an infant with her two sons in a stroller. Fortunately, the entire family was taken to the hospital and treated with non-life threatening injuries. Story over right? Well, almost a year and a half later the mother filed a two hundred million dollar ($200,000,000) lawsuit against New York City, Central Park Conservatory, and all private contractors that had done work on the tree in the past.

Two hundred million is certainly an extreme case, however in 2012 a lawsuit settled for four million dollars ($4,000,000) after a single branch fell and killed someone in New York City. Can you imagine being brought into a suit for a tree you worked on years ago? Oh, by the way, you better hope you have the right insurance coverage for defense costs and damages!

We all know insurance coverage is needed for bodily injury or property damage caused while you’re on the jobsite. This comes from your General Liability policy. However, with any tree job, there come exposures that are not going to be covered under the General Liability and will require Professional Liability specific to tree care operations. Here are a few common reasons every tree service should have Professional Liability.

Work On The Tree Itself

Think about the scenario discussed above. Wherever your crews are working they are responsible for the work being performed. Everything from working on the correct tree, using proper pruning techniques, and assessing any future tree issues are all things every tree crew does every day. If your crew fails at addressing any of these concerns, you may be exposed to a faulty workmanship claim which is usually excluded under your General Liability policy. That’s right excluded! For these exposures you must purchase Professional Liability specific to tree care operations.

Work In Area/On Nearby Trees

Believe it or not, you can be held liable for damage caused by a failed tree that you weren’t even asked to do work on. Professional tree care companies, especially those that employ Certified Arborists and TRAQ arborists, have a responsibility as soon as they step on the jobsite to give notice of any trees that could be potentially harmful. Simply put, the property owner hires an arborist because they have a higher level of understanding and awareness about trees, than the property owner. If an arborist misses something the tree care company could be held liable. Your General Liability policy certainly will not afford you protection for any lawsuit where you did not touch a tree. Professional liability is the only way to find coverage for this.

Consulting

For the arborists that only perform consulting operations, you obviously have the highest need for Professional Liability coverage as your work is all verbal/written. General Liability is for physical work done to trees, not for advice given. Whether it is consulting on one tree with a homeowner, or developing a tree management plan for an entire municipality, or acting as an expert witness in court, you’ll want to make sure you have Professional Liability policy to cover any mistakes. Also, many insurance policies are very specific to what operations they cover so please make sure everything you do is listed to avoid any potential gaps in your protection.

Training

Similar to the expert witness operations, training is often not included under a standard Professional Liability policy. Many of our clients will teach other arborists at either conferences or on-site with entire companies. From OSHA compliance training, to any of the ISA or TCIA workshops, as well as custom climbing/rigging course, there is an additional coverage you must have to protect yourself; Educator’s Errors and Omissions. This would provide coverage if you were named in a lawsuit for poor advice that led to injury or property damage.

To conclude, everybody in the arboriculture world needs some form of Professional Liability coverage either added onto their General Liability coverage or as a separate policy. Talk about this with your insurance agent to make sure you know what potential gaps in coverage exist for your business today.

If you are concerned about some of your operations not being covered under your current policy, contact ArboRisk for a free coverage review. For more in depth help, check out ArboRisk’s New Heights Thrive Package – the ArboRisk team will help you take a deep dive on not only your insurance but also your business operations, safety culture, sales and marketing techniques, and more! Stay safe!

Increase Your Engagement on Social Media

by | Jul 2, 2019 | Marketing | 0 comments

Increase YoUr Engagement on Social Media

Have you ever been texting someone and you want to keep talking and asking them questions and they consistently find ways to end the conversation? Many businesses do this exact same thing to potential clients on social media while others still don’t even give people the opportunity to respond.

If you are looking to generate leads and form relationships online, why would you cut off the conversation before it even gets started? I see too many tree services who are active on social media miss opportunities to engage with their followers. To cultivate true online relationships, you must intentionally integrate a strategy to get your followers to interact with you.

Below are a few tips for branching out of your comfort zone and encouraging your followers to engage with you on social media.

Ask Them Questions: Yes, this seems like a no-brainer. But do you know how easy it is to spew content at someone and never bother to ask them how they feel about something? I once unfollowed a shall-not-be-named-brand because they were constantly pushing their own product and not once did they reach out to their followers. #SeeYa Write a post about the fun activity you are doing that night, and ask them to respond with their activity for the night. Post photos of two or three different trees and ask them which tree they would rather have in their backyard. Play “Would you rather” or “Spot the difference” in two photos. All of these options allow your followers to feel included in your business and help them feel more comfortable with you!

Conduct a Contest: One of the easiest ways to get people commenting and engaging with your posts is to hold a contest and provide free items. Everyone loves free stuff. Ask them to identify a tree or piece of equipment you use to win a gift card. Partner up with another business or company and ask your followers to like both of your accounts, your post, and tag three friends on your post to be entered to win a free tree pruning!

Use Trends to Your Advantage: Everyone loves memes, trends, and viral videos. Use these to your advantage! Remember a couple of years ago, there was a dress photo trending online and everyone was arguing about whether it was blue and black or white and gold? Posting a copy of that photo and asking your followers what they think is a great way to get people talking! Everyone loves sharing their opinion, especially on the internet, and viral trends are a great way to show followers that you are engaged in the world and you are willing to give them a platform to share their opinions.

Share photos or @ Them: Include your followers in your posts! One of the best ways to get involved on social media is to engage with others yourself! The more opportunities you have to include other individuals and businesses, the farther reach your posts will have. Also, people are much more likely to comment on posts when they know a person that’s in them!

Share Your Stories: If you don’t share anything personal on your social media, why should your followers? By keeping yourself private, you’re creating distance between you and your followers on an already distant medium! The more personal items you are able to share – why you started your business, what is a weakness of yours, who inspires you – the more likely people are to open up and share with you. And when you’re done sharing, ask them to share their stories! You will find that people are easily persuaded to open up when they feel safe doing so – so give them that opportunity!

The most important thing to remember, is that people follow you for a reason! They want to get to know you and they want to feel like you are in this together. Reaching out to include them in your social media will only strengthen your relationship in the long-run.

Written by: Katie Petersen

What to Look for in a Contract

by | Jun 18, 2019 | Business Strategy | 0 comments

What to Look For In a Contract

Written by Eric Petersen, CIC

As I was sitting at my desk sipping my coffee this morning, I couldn’t help but be thankful that I didn’t have any contracts to review this morning for our agency. Seriously, REALLY thankful!

Unfortunately, many tree service owners wake up with the exact opposite feeling, staring blankly at the six page contract that their local municipality just sent over for them to agree to before they even give a bid! And worse yet, once you do start to read them, the language that they use often leaves you scratching your head.

I wrote this article to highlight a few general provisions within common legal contracts that you will see within the tree care industry. Paying close attention to these provisions will give you the basic understanding of what the other party is asking of you within the contract and the amount of risk you are exposing your company to by agreeing to the terms. This simple analysis will give you the edge over other tree services who just sign it without reading, as you will understand where you can negotiate as well as when to walk away from an unreasonable situation.

And of course, please don’t take this article to be actual legal advice. Talk to your attorney with any specific questions that you have regarding contracts that you are contemplating entering into.

There are many different types of contracts that you will run into as a tree service owner, from lease agreements for your building and equipment, to subcontractor or work order contracts to purchase orders, the list goes on and on. Each of them will outline who is responsible for what. If you are ever unclear about what you are asked to do within a contract, make sure to clarify with the other party BEFORE signing it.

General Provisions

Who, What, Where, When and How Much? – Every contract must specifically address these five questions. If there is any confusion on any of these basics, they must be figured out before any work is done. These set up the terms for the entire project so be clear on the verbiage.

Cancellation – How does your responsibility change if you need to cancel the contract? Is there written notice that must be given in advance? What about if the other part cancels? Gain an understanding of how this contract will dissolve so you do not get caught doing tree work for free.
Insurance/Risk Transfer Provisions

Additional Insured – Many contracts ask to have one party be named as Additional Insured. If you are required to list another entity as Additional Insured, you must contact your insurance agent/company and physically change the policy to meet this requirement. Many times there are specific insurance forms that are necessary to fulfill this requirement. Listing another entity as Additional Insured gives the other entity coverage on your policy, so your insurance company is taking on another defendant in a lawsuit if something happens at that particular job/project. Send a copy of the contract to your insurance agent before you sign it to gain an understanding of the type of Additional Insured status they are asking for and to get an idea of how much this will cost you.

Loss Payee – If you are borrowing money for an equipment purchase, the lender will want to be listed as Loss Payee on your insurance policy. This guarantees that they will be paid first if the equipment is damaged or stolen.

Hold Harmless Agreements – Simply put, Hold Harmless Agreements are used to transfer the risk of something happening from one party to another. If a contract states that you will indemnify and hold harmless the other party, you are assuming to pay for anything that happens on that job site without help from that other party. This can be a very large exposure to your company that many tree service owners are unaware they agreed to. Again, send a copy of the contract to your insurance agent or attorney for review before agreeing to something that you do not understand.

Waivers of Subrogation – Similar to the Hold Harmless Agreement, a Waiver of Subrogation will remove the right for your insurance company to seek reimbursement for an accident/injury from the other party. Typically, the Waiver of Subrogation will be placed onto the Work Comp policy for a charge from your insurance company. With the already high work comp cost for arborists, losing the ability to get reimbursed for a workplace injury can cause an injury to financially affect your company more than it should.

Unfortunately, there is a lot that goes into a legal contract, however, paying attention to these contract provisions will help you quickly understand what you are being asked to agree to and can save your company from entering into a fatal contract. Remember to utilize your team; attorney, insurance agent, business coach and possibly your CPA to help you understand what the contract says before you sign it.

Still want help reviewing contract provisions? Contact the ArboRisk team today to learn more or check out our Thrive New Heights Package!

Frequency vs. Severity of Insurance Claims

by | Jun 11, 2019 | Risk Management | 0 comments

Frequency Vs. Severity of Insurance Claims

“I have insurance, I’ll just file a claim.”

Have you heard yourself saying that before? I’m sure you have at least thought it in the past. Unfortunately, a common misconception people have about insurance is that small claims will not affect them since the insurance company is still taking in more money from the premiums that are paid than the amount they are paying out in claims.

In reality, when comparing two businesses against each other, one that has multiple small claims versus one that has had only one large claim, every insurance company will look more favorably upon the business with only one claim. Why is that?

When assessing the risk of a business, insurance companies look at three factors when it comes to their claims; the cause(s) of loss, the frequency of similar incidents and the severity of each. Claims are typically categorize them into these four classifications:

1. Low Frequency – Low Severity
2. High Frequency – Low Severity
3. High Frequency – High Severity
4. Low Frequency – High Severity

With these four classifications in mind, the business owner can decide how to best handle losses to be viewed as a better insurance risk to the insurance companies.

Obviously, we know, the more favorable you look to an insurance company, the lower the premiums you will pay. So the business owner has four different ways to respond. Pssst, this is called Risk Management.

1. Accept the risk and budget for the impact of it
2. Prevent the risk by using loss control or safety measures
3. Avoid the risk all together
4. Transfer the risk to someone else

As you have probably figured out, insurance is for risks that have Low Frequency – High Severity and the reason we need to transfer the financial burden to someone else is because the risks are not predictable.

They can be things like a tornado taking out your shop, or an employee that is struck by a tree while on the jobsite. These risks would lead to claims that could have a huge financial impact on your business and potentially even lead you to close up shop. Insurance companies are comfortable covering these risks due to the law of large numbers, an insurance term meaning that as they add more policyholders, the probability of each one having a severe claim goes down.

What worries the insurance companies the most, is when there are a high frequency of low severity claims. This is simply because the more small claims you have the likelihood of a large claim happening is much greater.

For example, if a tree service has a large number of small fender benders, it likely means safe driving practices aren’t in place, their vehicles are not well maintained or they are employing reckless drivers. Over time, it is inevitable that a larger auto claim will occur.

Consider workers’ comp as well. Does your business have more than a couple laceration claims in the last couple years? Often times we’ll see laceration claims close for around $3,000, but it doesn’t take much more for a small laceration to turn into a permanent partial disability claim where a great employee loses a finger or even hand. And if chainsaws are causing issues, might there be other body parts with some exposure as well?

Telling your team you’ve seen an uptick in claims and explaining the repercussions is a great place to start. Also consider areas like your on-boarding process, safety meetings, and post-accident discussions. Get creative with this as each company likely has different experiences but you should be able to narrow down your problem areas based on previous claims or close calls. Refer to a previous article that I wrote titled “How To Get The Most Out of Your Safety Committee”, as this could be a job for your safety committee to take a deeper look at.

Now you know that when insurance companies asks for loss runs and sees a high frequency of claims, they are not only assuming you will continue to have more claims, they are also assuming that you are likely to have a much larger claim in the near future.

Work with your insurance agent to review your claim history and see if you notice any trends. It helps to write out which type of risks you want to pay attention to with loss control and safety training, which risks you’ll cover by paying out of pocket, and which risks you want to transfer to insurance. Look at that, you just created a Risk Management Plan!

And as always, feel free to reach out to an ArboRisk team member if you have any questions on how to best minimize your exposures to loss and ultimately secure the most competitive insurance rates!

Written by: Malcolm Jeffris, CTSP

On Boarding New Employees

by | Jun 4, 2019 | Employee Management | 0 comments

On Boarding New Employees

The Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) estimates that 33% of new hires begin looking for new positions within six months of hire! That is a huge percentage!

As you know, bringing on a new team member takes a considerable amount of time and energy. However, what often happens next is the effort that went into finding the right talent creates a temporary sense of relief, and the energy level of your management team drops. The on-boarding of the new employee is typically limited to filling out all the paperwork and sending the recruit out to fit into the work environment to learn the job and company culture. Magically they become a member of the team. You know they have the skills and experience to succeed so integration should just happen right? Not quite.

SHRM research also finds that it costs up to 9 months of an employee’s salary to find and replace an employee and that a proper on-boarding process lowers recruitment costs, increases employee retention rate by 50%, as well as increasing productivity by as much as 54%.

One of the main reasons employees leave is because they are not engaged with their new role and don’t feel like part of the team. Why? Because no one took the time to teach them the duties of the job, culture and ground rules.

Top performing tree care companies, the ones you’re competing with for talent, look at on-boarding as the process of integrating a new employee into the company culture, as well as getting a new hire the tools and information needed to become a productive member of the team. It starts during the interview process and continues, step by step, until the employee is actively engaged and productive. The development of a thorough and repeatable on-boarding experience is an investment every company should make.

How to Develop an On-boarding Process

To start, let’s not confuse on-boarding with orientation. Orientation is the start of the process and typically lasts a week or so. It consists of filling out all the paperwork, going over the employee handbook, work rules, job duties, introduction to other team members and other routine tasks. On-boarding is a comprehensive process involving management and other employees that can last up to 12 months.

Here’s some key questions for the company leadership to answer while developing an on-boarding process:

What impression do you want new hires to walk away with at the end of the first day?
What do new employees need to know about the culture and work environment?
What role will HR play in the process? What about direct managers? Co-workers?
What kind of goals do you want to set for new employees?
How will you gather feedback on the program and measure its success?
Once these questions have been answered, devise an action plan to help new employees quickly assimilate company policies and workflow, while getting fully acquainted with the organization’s culture. We know tree care is a high-risk occupation. It is vital the on-boarding process includes regular and consistent briefings on the risks and hazards associated with daily operations. This is typically where the injuries occur, clear communication is required to operate as a team on the job site, and we all know each crew has its own language and set of expectations.

Something often overlooked, is the impact of on-boarding on the existing team members. Psychologist, Bruce Tuckman first described a path that teams follow during on-boarding of a new employee. Understanding this impact will be beneficial when establishing your on-boarding process.

Forming – “Welcome to the team”. Initially this stage can be very positive, however, formal processes and frameworks have not yet been established and the ground rules are not known by all team members. The strengths and weakness of other all team members may also not be known yet.

Storming– At this stage the team members begin to understand their role and what is expected. When new members are added, new skills and expectations are added to the mix, which can be a source of frustration. In this stage, the team leader needs to be aware of the stress put on the team associated with the integration and training of the new employee, and the challenges it presents to keep the work completed on time.

Norming– If integration is successful, the team will begin to hit its stride by working productively as a team. Each member understands their strengths as well as the strengths of others.

Performing– The final stage of the on-boarding process is when the team is functioning at a high level. Adding and removing team members at this point will have minimal impact, as it will allow the team to communicate team expectations quickly and effectively to new members.

Creating a solid on-boarding process is as simple as knowing what questions to ask your leadership team and considering each of the four stages above.

If you struggle with finding and keeping great employees, contact an ArboRisk team member today! Our Thrive Risk Management Hiring & Recruiting Package and team of experts will help you one-on-one to create a hiring and recruiting plan that works for your organization.

Written by: Jim Skiera