What is Your Safety Story?

by | Aug 27, 2018 | Safety | 0 comments

What Is Your Safety Story?

In April of 2018, we hosted a TCIA Safety Round-table in our office. The round-table was facilitated by Scott Jamieson of Bartlett Tree Experts and began with a simple question to all of us in the room; what is your safety story? Scott asked us all to think about that for a moment and write it down before sharing in small groups. It was amazing to see everyone writing almost immediately. We all had one or more defining moments on why safety mattered to us.

For me, my safety story came from when I worked with Milwaukee County Parks as an arborist. I was fresh out of college and didn’t have much experience, but knew enough to perform a proper pruning job. I was pruning a small honey locust and used my hand saw to cut about a 2” diameter branch. I made my under cut, supported the branch with my left hand, then made my top cut and took the cut branch away from me by dropping it off to my side. I never looked below me or called for an all clear and because I was just using my handsaw the ground guy beneath me didn’t know what was coming for him. By the time I heard the thud and a few choice words, it was way too late. I had dropped the branch right on top of my co-worker.

Fortunately, it was a glancing blow off of his hard hat onto his shoulder, but in that moment I was struck with the indescribable feeling of guilt and shame for foolishly working aloft. My co-worker sustained a large bruise on his shoulder and healed fairly quickly, however, this careless act by myself caused him to have to change plans for his daughter’s birthday party that coming weekend.

As each of us shared our personal stories in the roundtable, I realized that while my mistake was a small one compared to others, the impact that my incident had on me was the same as everyone else’s. I could see the pain in their eyes and hear the sorrow in their voices as they shared their stories. We all were saying the same thing; I never want to be responsible for someone else’s injury ever again.

Scott then asked us to dig deeper and create our own personal Safety Vision Statement. Again, we all started writing right away. I began by stating that my responsibility above all else is to promote and provide the safest workplace possible. Refining my statement more I came up with:

Every injury is my fault and no injury is acceptable.

As a leader within your company, your personal safety vision is critical to creating the safety culture that you want. And while this was a simple exercise to do, it was a very powerful way to get each of us to take ownership in safety. Scott challenged each of us to go back to our companies and use this exercise as part of a safety meeting. When everyone ties safety to a personal experience, it becomes very real and very serious. Now it’s my turn to challenge you to use this exercise in your next safety meeting. Thanks Scott for continuing to help every arborist make it home safe each night!

Since ArboRisk’s mission is to get every arborist home safe each night, we’ve designed a specific consulting package to work one-on-one with your organization. Visit our webpage for the Thrive Safety Package to learn more. In addition to the Thrive Safety Package, all ArboRisk clients receive a Safety Culture Assessment that allows you to peer into your safety culture and find areas that need improvement.

Written by: Eric Petersen

4 Tips for Effective Employee Evaluations

by | Aug 27, 2018 | Employee Management | 0 comments

4 Tips for Effective Employee Evaluations

Written By: Eric Petersen, CIC

Why are employee evaluations met with such anxiety for the employee and the manager performing them? I believe it’s because of the way that they traditionally were performed. The manager would have a laundry list of items that the employee can improve upon and felt required to discuss just those items and create goals on how to change their behavior. An evaluation set up like this is doomed to fail from the beginning. In today’s society and especially in the tree care industry, it is imperative to support your employees and help them develop as a person, to truly gain their trust and loyalty to the company. Below are my 4 tips to restructuring your employee evaluations to help maximize the relationship with your team members.

Plan for & Prepare Ahead of Time – Evaluations should never be done spur of the moment. The employees will always feel a little bit of fear before an evaluation, however, scheduling it in advance and letting them know what you will be discussing goes a long way towards having a productive meeting. Make sure that you take notes on their performance throughout the year to supplement the conversation that pops up. Do this by keeping a list of positive and negative behavior that you or the crew leader have noticed throughout the year. The more concrete examples you can use to reinforce the right attitude you are looking for the more accepting the employee will be of the process.

Don’t Call it a Review – Unfortunately, the word ‘review’ carries a negative connotation with it. When an employee hears that they will be having an employee review, a wave a panic almost always will sweep through their body. This puts them into a defensive position and mindset that will be counterproductive to the goals of the meeting. At my agency, we call it a check point. For us, a checkpoint is a time for both the manager and the employee to formally check in with each other. We ask the employee to grade themselves on their proficiency or comfortability levels within their technical skills/knowledge, their customer interaction skills and overall company goals. We then ask how we can help them improve within these categories.

Engage the Employee – This should be a discussion between both parties, not a lecture by the manager. Give the employee a series of questions before the meeting to give them the chance to participate in the conversation. Be as specific as you can for their position. For instance questions for a climber could include:

What is your comfort level with different climbing techniques (SRT vs. DRT)?
What additional skill or piece of equipment would you like to develop competency in?
What is the largest challenge that you face each day and how can we make that better for you?
If you were CEO for a day, what would you do different?

Once a Year is NOT Enough – While performing multiple employee evaluations throughout the year may seem like overkill, just doing one of them is not nearly enough. In this industry where turnover is such a huge issue, consistent feedback from the employee is vital to their happiness and success. Make employee evaluations a quarterly priority for both sides. It will open up communication even greater within your company and gives you a pulse of how that employee is doing so they don’t take another job without you having some indication.

Additionally, a few things you definitely want to avoid in an employee evaluation are:

Making promises that you can’t keep regarding employee development or pay.
Making comparisons between employees.
Pretending to have all of the answers and not being open to suggestions for improvement.

Lastly, think back to when you were an employee, I’m sure you wanted to know how you were doing and what you can improve upon. More importantly, you wanted to know that your employer was truly interested in your individual success. If you succeed in promoting each employee’s individual success, you will see these employee evaluations transform your business in a short time.

If you need additional help with hiring and recruiting quality employees, or developing the leaders within your tree care company, contact our Thrive team today to learn more about our Hiring and Recruiting Thrive Package or our Leadership Development Package!

Work ON Your Business – Not IN It

by | Aug 27, 2018 | Business Strategy | 0 comments

Work On Your Business – Not IN it

Ever feel like you are constantly spinning your wheels with your business, always busy, but not making much progress? Of course you have. Every business owner feels this way, especially in the tree care industry. With all of the responsibilities of owning a business, a successful owner must be able to take a step back and work ON their business not IN it. Because this is extremely hard to do, I want to give you my 6 tips for beginning to work on your business and not in it.

Desire to work ON your business – If you want to achieve large goals for your company, you must have a desire to work on your business. This is an internal motivation that only you can provide and requires daily discipline and energy to stay focused on what is truly important to your organization.

Establishing the vision and core values – After you’ve committed to working on your business, you must get serious about creating a vision and a set of core values for your company. There are a lot of ways to write vision statements and create core values, but don’t get hung up on the exact words or way to do it right now. Start brainstorming what you want your company to look like in the future and what do you want it to stand for. This is a vital exercise that should be done at least once a year to properly evolve as a business. Over time, you will see a crystal clear picture of who your company is and where it is going.

Hire the right people – The only way you can successfully work on your business is to have the right team members to do the tasks that you used to do. I have always been a large proponent of hiring for attitude and culture fit and then training for the job. Sure the employee must have a base level of competency in the position before I hire them, however, it is much easier to teach the right employee than it is to manage an employee that doesn’t fit in. Now, hiring the right employee isn’t that easy. One of your responsibilities as the business owner is to develop a hiring and recruiting process that will eventually create a pipeline of new talent to your organization for years to come.

Delegation and Empowerment – What tasks do you do every day that could be handed off to someone else? Why do you still do these tasks? Are you afraid that they won’t get done the same way that you would do them? Most owners have a difficult time delegating anything to their employees, however time never stands still and the lack of delegation is the surest way to a stale business. Once you have identified what tasks and responsibilities you can delegate, give your employees the power to make decisions for these. It will only be natural to check on them and question their decisions, but resist this urge. If you have communicated your vision and core values well enough to your team, they will earn your trust by being allowed to carry out that vision. No one likes a micro-managing boss, so allow your employees to take ownership in projects and reward them with encouraging feedback when they do a good job. If an employee’s decision or actions do not result in a positive outcome, work with the employee to help them come up with a different solution for the future. Of all of your efforts to work on your business, this is the most important, your team must know that you trust them to make decisions on your behalf and that their job will be secure if they make a mistake.

Training on Standards and Procedures – The best companies build systems that are standardized and allow for employees to enter in and out of the system with minimal interruption. Developing the way your company operates around a process versus a person may seem foreign and a bit intimidating, but is the surest way to building a rock solid organization. Dissect every aspect of your business from the customer experience to the pruning standards to your equipment maintenance schedule. Create standards for each area so that a new employee can come into the company and know what is expected of them. Please don’t try to do this on your own. Part of the delegation and empowerment is getting your team members to help out with this. You will be surprised how much better your standards and procedures are when you involve your team to develop them.

Block out Time – This is my last tip, but really could be listed first. As the owner, you have to block out time to work on your business. This means uninterrupted time where you focus on the most important aspects of your company. Blocking out time is really hard to do if you work out of your home or if you have a busy office, so what works best for me is to schedule time away from my normal desk. This allows me to work on the proactive tasks that I need to do without feeling like I’m ignoring the needs of my team. Find a physical location that you can do some deep work for your business and regularly schedule time to go there.
Starting to work on your business is hard to do, however, by slowly implementing these tips into your work life, you will start to see a transformation within your company.

Written by: Eric Petersen

How Effective is Your Safety Program?

by | Aug 27, 2018 | Safety | 0 comments

How Effective Is Your Safety Program?

I’m sure you are like most tree care companies and attempt to provide a safe workplace for your employees by having a written safety program, creating a safety committee and performing regular tailgate safety talks. But how do you know if you are really achieving an effective level of safety awareness within your organization? Use the following to measure how well your safety program is doing.

Define Benchmarks and Goals – OSHA suggests to look at both Lagging and Leading Indicators to determine effectiveness of your safety program. Have your safety committee create a list of these indicators to set the baseline for your safety program. Have these indicators be measurable or quantitative rather than subjective or qualitative. Then as a committee, form realistic goals to improve upon these indicators.

A Lagging Indicator is a statistic from a previous accident or injury. Look at your OSHA 300 log or your insurance policy loss runs to show what has happened in the past. Examples can be simply, the number of work comp claims, the number of auto accidents or number of sick/injured days away from work. These indicators are typically negative events that an effective safety program will look to reduce or eliminate.

A Leading Indicator is a measure of how well your program has been implemented by focusing on preventative actions or behaviors. Examples of Leading Indicators can include, the number of attendees to your safety meetings, number of in-field safety audits, number of employee safety suggestions, or the number of near misses reported. These indicators are typically positive events that your safety program should encourage to grow. A quick word on near misses. You may be thinking why would you want an increase in near misses? You’re right you don’t want more close calls, but you do want to encourage and support the discussion of more near misses in your safety meetings to help others prevent making a similar mistake. Open communication is a pillar of a solid safety culture.

Track Indicators – Appoint someone on your safety committee to be in charge of compiling the data. Using Microsoft Excel is a simple way to store the data and compare it over time. These indicators should be looked at on a monthly basis to actively monitor trends both positive and negative so swift action or rewards can be addressed as soon as possible.

Audit your Program – Verify that the main elements of your safety program have been implemented by:
Asking employees from all departments to explain the procedure for reporting injuries?
Reviewing injury report forms for completeness and verifying that the suggestions to prevent future injuries have been performed.

Requesting to see the documentation from each safety meeting.
Consistently monitoring the indicator data for changes.

Of course a strong safety program will evolve and adapt over time. Use the information gathered from your audits and conversations with your team members to continually improve your program. Rotate the members of your safety committee over time as well so that everyone within your organization feels that they have some ownership in the safe workplace that you are creating. Remember everyone wins with safety!

Written by: Eric Petersen

Mentorships: Can They Work for Me?

by | Aug 21, 2018 | Employee Management | 0 comments

Mentorships: Can They Work For Me?

Training new employees can be a difficult task, no matter what industry you’re in. In our office, much like many tree care companies, we’ve utilized a mentorship strategy to bring new employees up to speed as soon as possible. A mentorship program typically includes more individual attention than group training or orientation programs. Often times, situations arise that can’t be learned from a text book. The mentor is there to provide real life experience to fast track the learning process. Below is a conversation from when we had Ryan interview Malcolm and I on how we’ve used the mentorship process within our agency.

Ryan: Why did you choose to implement a mentorship strategy?

Eric: With any new hire, we feel it is critical to establish a solid working partnership that benefits everyone. We utilize a one on one approach to help ensure the employee’s career development within our culture. To us, development goes beyond the professional setting to include the creation of a healthy work/life balance.

Ryan: Malcolm, what have the major advantages been for you with your mentor?

Malcolm: The most obvious benefit is being able to find quick solutions as I gain knowledge important to my role. On top of that, it helps to have someone like Eric who is invested in my success that will ultimately push me in the right direction. When I come up with ideas or pain points in my career, Eric is there to give me support, or play a devil’s advocate role.

Eric: From an employer’s perspective, being able to spend time directly with the new hire has helped our organization in a number of ways. As Malcolm mentioned, it allows the new hire to become better at their position in a much shorter amount of time. Outside of boosting efficiency, we are also able to connect on a personal level which ultimately helps build a culture of employee retention and satisfaction.

Ryan: What challenges have you noticed using this process?

Eric: A critical piece to a successful mentorship program is time management. The mentor needs to hold themselves accountable by ensuring that they are available to the new hire, while also staying on top of their own work. Even though I have had a number of new hires under me over the years, this has remained the largest challenge for me.

Malcolm: For me, a big challenge was determining which tasks I needed to take to Eric and which tasks I should have figured out on my own. I felt the mentor should always be there to answer questions, however, sometimes I was nervous to even ask.

Ryan: How can your mentorship experience translate to the tree care world?

Malcolm: When I see my clients using these programs, I get excited because I know what it will do for their business. I had insurance experience prior to joining Eric’s team, and while the mentorship certainly helped with my insurance knowledge, it also gave me a more personal feel for ArboRisk’s values and overall operations. Because company values are so important in the tree care industry, I think this program is a great way to ensure new hires operate under those values.

Eric: There is no comparison to the individualized attention a mentor can give for the safe and productive development of a great team member. With all of the dangers in the tree care world, learning from your own mistakes may not offer a second chance. A mentor can take a new employee under their wing and help them avoid close calls by sharing their personal stories.

The most successful mentorship programs that I’ve seen in the tree care industry, involve upper management that is dedicated to developing their workforce despite the understanding that not all employees will be with their business forever. These employers are satisfied by helping individuals reach their own goals and developing their professionalism.

Lastly, I’ve witnessed firsthand that if no formal mentorship program is in place, unofficial mentors will become the internal voice of the company, ultimately creating the culture they want rather than the one you want to achieve.

Ryan: What steps should a tree care company take to build a mentorship program?

Eric: I feel there are 4 simple steps that can be followed to develop a mentorship program.

Talk to front line managers and crew leaders to see if they would be willing to serve as a mentor to your new employees.

Ask a recent new hire how their training was and what could be improved upon to help them become proficient in their job faster. Also ask directly if an individual mentor would have been helpful for them.

Start small. Pair the mentors up with the new employees and give them both flexibility in developing the program for your company. This means to allow for time, away from production or other tasks, to ask specific questions or get specific equipment training.

Review with both parties every 30 days to ensure that the additional attention is having a positive impact on the employee’s development.

Written by: Eric Petersen