|
 Never miss an important safety article, subscribe to this feed!
  
Creating a Safety Culture
Two Tree Care Companies Setting a Good Example for Others
By David Rattigan
The achievements of two tree care companies, one big and one small and both heavily into utility line-clearance work, are truly impressive - and a good example for others.
One company is national, the other is family run. But what both have in common is a long winning streak. Both are celebrating an important feat - long stretches with no losses.
Kappen Tree Service, LLC, a 112-person company in Cass City, Michigan, trumpeted going through its first 16 years without a single lost-time accident. That's an impressive achievement, as was one trumpeted by a larger company, Trees Inc. of Houston, Texas.
Trees Inc., which has 1,600 employees doing utility line clearance, went through a full year without a lost-time accident.
 Both are enviable milestones with real benefits for tree care companies, and somewhat equitable given the proportionate sizes of the companies. Both share something else in common. The achievement is the end result of the creation of an on-the-ground "safety culture" that other companies would be wise to emulate.
"We're very blessed," says Crystal Kappen, co-owner and de-facto safety officer of Kappen, acknowledging that the achievement is the result of a company-wide effort. "All of the employees buy into it. We have respect for each other, and it really helps out. When we hold safety meetings to try and educate them, they really take an interest in it."
Last year, Kappen invited Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration (MIOSHA) to conduct a complete evaluation of its company - including crews, paperwork, records, etc. - and the result was that in December 2007 the company received the MIOSHA Consultation Education and Training's (CET) Gold Award, recognizing its impressive record.
"We are honored to present the CET Gold Award to Kappen Tree Service and to recognize your exemplary achievement of reaching 16 years without a lost time accident," said Michigan Department of Labor & Economic Growth Director Keith W. Cooley in a prepared statement. "Your outstanding safety and health record is a testament that protecting your workers is a core company value."
Trees, Inc., meanwhile finished 2007 with no lost employee time due to accidents.
"We have implemented several new training programs, policies, procedures, new types of equipment and work methods that either make us safer or more productive, and in many cases, both," says David Fleischner, Trees Inc. president.
From a tree care perspective, creating a better safety culture makes sense for a number of reasons, beyond the very obvious and very human reason that no employer ever wants a fatality on his/her watch, and tree care can be a dangerous profession.
A company with a gleaming safety record can reap the benefits, however, including realizing greater favoritism with would-be clients by virtue of that record. It is likely no accident that two companies such with a strong focus on safety both specialize in clearing utility lines. Nor is it unusual that they would trumpet their respective achievements.
"Safety is really the first and largest issue in the industry," stresses Peter Gerstenberger, senior advisor for safety, compliance & standards for the Tree Care Industry Association. "The tree care industry is among the most dangerous professions in the United States. The research that we've been able to tap from some independent sources indicates that tree care may be, depending on the year, the fourth or fifth most dangerous industry there is, in terms of fatal occupational accidents. So many things hinge on safety or the lack thereof. In a smaller company, the loss surrounding an accident goes much deeper than just the loss of the employee for a period of time. Lower employee morale, resulting in higher turnover, is certainly a very significant factor."
Another benefit favoring a company with a safety record that good is that it can buck the industry-wide trend of paying huge insurance costs overall, specifically for workers' compensation.
"In a marketplace where some companies can't even get comp insurance, when a company, because of its safety record, can pay 61 cents on the dollar compared to its competitors, that's a huge competitive advantage," Gerstenberger says. "Especially when considering that, after payroll, insurance is probably the biggest cost in the company."
Gerstenberger notes that utilities are particularly sensitive to safety both because of the obvious dangers and shared liability risks, and also because of concern relating to outages, and potentially large federal fines.
"If a company doing line clearance is less than safe in what it does," he says, "it may result in outages, which is a major customer inconvenience and sometimes even a critical issue. Utilities can't afford that sort of thing."
He also added that employee turnover is generally high for utility line-clearance companies, and a company that can tout a stellar safety record can both retain its own employees but also use it as a recruiting tool.
"If you can promote that, and point to valid reasons why you have a safe environment, that becomes a huge recruiting and retention tool," Gerstenberger says.
All of those have been beneficial for Kappen, which has enjoyed great growth –particularly over the past three years. The recent notoriety has brought greater respect in their community, as well, Kappen notes, but the important part of the bottom line is the respect for employees and their safety.
 "As my husband, Warren, has indicated, they're more than a number out there," she says. "We truly care and want them to go back to their families at night. We realize it's a dangerous occupation. Anything can happen on any given day. We don't want it to, but the bottom line is that we need to follow through and maintain this safety culture that we do have, and respect each other."
So, how does a company create a culture of safety in the field? Not surprisingly, it starts with training and is reinforced through company actions on a day-to-day basis. As Gerstenberger says of Kappen and Trees Inc., "Their efforts in the safety area are pretty generous. They have robust overall safety programs."
Both companies have reached what Gerstenberger calls "the pinnacle" of TCIA's safety training, in that both have certified tree care safety professionals, or CTSPs, on staff. In the case of Kappen, both Crystal and her brother-in-law, Jason Kappen, have achieved the CTSP designation. Trees, Inc. has several employees currently in the CTSP program, and one credentialed CTSP, Wallace Carranza.
Fleischner lists some of the changes that the company made in 2007 that helped lead to the improved safety record, including implementing "a new and improved defensive driver training program," and adding "some of the newest innovations in equipment to our fleet that help get the job done quicker and safer."
The company "initiated a new truck and fully equipped mobile training facility, along with certified instructors, to help take training to our employees," Fleischner says. "We implemented new job site set up procedures (in 2007), along with a better way to communicate our job briefings. The Job Behavior Observation (JBO) process was revised and improved (in 2007), and we went through the implementation and first evaluation of our own Safety Management Process (SMP). We are currently in the middle of a new tree felling program as well."
Programs and education are important components of Kappen's long string of success as well. Crystal Kappen says the key to that success has been the company's team approach.
She and Jason have sat with other tree care executives at conferences and compared stories and methods from the field. While they have had some accidents, they have dodged those that have caused major damage.
"It made us sit back and think, too, ‘we hope it never happens,'" she says. "You do all you can to prevent it and to teach what you want, but things can happen. We've been very fortunate to this point."
In addition to her, Kappen has a safety manager who goes out into the field and inspects crews and does tailgate training, presenting workers with safety scenarios and asking how they would deal with different situations - from dealing with a chain saw-injured arm to bee stings or frostbite. It's not just having the trainer in the field, Crystal Kappen says, but delivering the message in a way that encourages active learning that is key.
"It gets them more involved, rather than having them sitting there reading the ‘Tailgate Safety' lessons day after day," Crystal Kappen says. "It gets them to think a little more, rather than just rolling their eyes saying, ‘Yeah, yeah, we've heard this before.'"
Different people have different learning styles, she notes, and it's important to deliver that message in a way that employees can learn best.
The short tailgate trainings are held once a week, and the safety manager goes out to sites also at least once a week. In addition, the company holds longer training sessions once a month to reinforce the needs and the fundamentals of tree care - wearing protective gear, feeding the chipper from the correct side, etc.
"It can get costly," she acknowledges. "We have 100 employees, and we give them half the day off (for training) and obviously pay them. It does add up to quite a lot, but we look at the overall picture and say, ‘What we spend here, if it can save one, even a minor injury, it's going to help our company and maybe even save a life in the end.'"
Four years ago, Kappen says, the company employed about 45-50 workers. With that number now more than doubled, she says it's actually become easier to deliver the safety trainings. Whereas the safety trainings used to involve all of the workers in the field, the lessons are now split up. General foremen conduct some of the training. For other lessons, the company safety director meets with groups as small as two or three.
"I think the guys are more eager to talk about their close calls in a smaller group, as opposed to a group of 40 or 50," she says. "When he goes out on a smaller scale, it seems he gets more feedback. The general foremen do the tailgate safeties with about 20 guys, (a group that) is somewhat large, but at least we know they're getting more attention than with the whole group of 100."
Kappen's top-to-bottom commitment is consistent with other strong safety cultures, says Gerstenberger.
"The term I've heard people use is ‘active caring,'" Gerstenberger says. "Every employee in the business has to take upon himself or herself the personal responsibility of their own  safety and the safety of those around them, and to demonstrate active caring - going above and beyond just noting that some condition or some action might be unsafe, and actually acting to intervene to prevent somebody from being injured by that unsafe condition or action.
"In order for that to exist, there has to be an environment within a business that is permissive of that," he adds. "That it won't be construed that this employee stepped out of line, or went above rank, or ‘who's this new employee to tell this older employee what to do; why isn't he working?' All of those attitudes certainly challenge the idea of instilling a culture of safety. Where it starts is management's leadership in creating an atmosphere that permits that culture of safety to start to flourish.
"When I think of safety, the word holistic always comes to mind. Safety is more than just using the right equipment, it's more than hiring experienced personnel, and it's more than the safety programs you might purchase or put in place. It's more than the policies you have on a piece of paper. It's a combination of all of those things working synergistically to create this environment.
"At the end of the day, it comes down to people's attitude," Gerstenberger says. "The employees ultimately are the ones with the real power when it comes to creating a safe work environment, because 90 percent or more of all accidents can be attributed to at-risk behavior."
Companies trying to find ways to discourage at risk behavior would be well off following the fine, and even award-worthy, examples set by Trees, Inc. and Kappen Tree Service.
Never miss an important safety article, subscribe to this feed!
|
