Safety: Echoing Trust, Training and Performance

Jon Schmidt from Davey's safety team shares how he is emphasizing the importance of new, innovative safety measures throughout all of Davey's service lines. 

In this episode we cover:  

• What does Jon do in his role as program manager for human and organizational performance? (:36) (4:57)
• How did Jon's research influence safety practices at Davey? (2:30) (11:26) 
• Who does Jon work closely with in his role? (4:27) 
• Satisfying work (5:27)
• Getting people to share thoughts on safety? (6:00)
• How does Jon build trust with crewmembers about safety measures? (6:55) (7:41)
• How Jon got to his current role (8:53)
• What is human performance training? (12:08)
• What does Jon get out of his job? (14:20)

To find your local Davey office, check out our find a local office page to search by zip code.

To learn more about Davey's culture of safety, visit this webpage, Safety Culture | Davey Tree.

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LinkedIn: The Davey Tree Expert Company 

Connect with Doug Oster at www.dougoster.com. 

Have topics you'd like us to cover on the podcast? Email us at podcasts@davey.com. We want to hear from you!

Transcript

Doug Oster: Welcome to the Davey Tree Expert Company's podcast, Talking Trees. I'm your host, Doug Oster. Each week, our expert arborists share advice on seasonal tree care, how to make your trees thrive, arborists' favorite trees, and much, much more. Tune in every Thursday to learn more because here at the Talking Trees podcast, we know trees are the answer.

I'm joined this week by Jon Schmidt. He is a program manager for human and organizational performance at the Davey Tree Expert Company. Jon, welcome to the show. My first question is, what does that job title mean?

Jon Schmidt: Thank you so much for having me. My job title means, or the function that I do, is I'm trying to promote a new way of doing safety. To get into that a little bit deeper, we used to think that there was one way, right? Just follow the rules, and everything should be fine. That really wasn't connecting the dots. Every once in a while, we would have an incident where we would look back and they were following the rules, but we still had a bad thing happen. It was interesting. A couple of years ago, we were really curious and really curious about how industries that have really major consequences if something goes wrong, how they were managing safety.

For instance, the airlines. How do they keep those things up in the air with all these strangers going to all these different places around the world? How did they earn that designation of safest way to travel? We were really curious about that. We made some connections over there and in other industries like nuclear power, our national laboratories that deal with high-consequence stuff. We wanted to know what it was they were doing to be so successful around this dangerous, high-hazardous work environment.

What they told us, at least from the airlines, was, "We don't compete on safety. Meaning all of our competitors are extremely careful when it comes to safety. That is one place that we try to lift everybody up on."

Doug: How has it changed when you went outside and did that research? How has it changed what's going on with what you're doing?

Jon: Airlines, nuclear power, very different work environment compared to tree work. Our work is also variable, and high-consequence, and there's loads of hazards. It matched up very well. When we were talking with the people in the other industries, they were really curious about our work once we started telling them about it. The major difference is our job sites are all over the place. We're moving around. We might have three, four different job sites throughout the day. We don't have a whole lot of control over what happens out there.

One of the major things that we learned, one of the most important things, is communication, or rather information, is the currency of safety. The people that do the work out in the field are the world's leading experts on how work gets done in their little corner of Davey Tree. They know where the close calls happen. They know what it takes to be successful. They know what pieces of equipment are clunky and don't work. They know what they need to do to get through every single day.

The safety department is a support group. I feel like our most important role is to create an environment where employees can share that information with us. It's not always pretty. It's not always good news. What we do with that information to support them from that point forward is, in my opinion, doing really good safety work.

Doug: For your job specifically, who are you reaching out to and working with?

Jon: I'm mainly reaching out to other members in the safety department and managers. Managers who are in charge of a bunch of employees who are more like the frontline supervisor of these people. They're closer to where the work happens and a better point of contact for folks.

Doug: Is this about evolving a safety culture?

Jon: Definitely. Moving from a safety culture of going out there and finding things that are wrong and correcting them, we would call that catch and correct, to going out there and actually taking a research approach to our job. What is actually happening out here? How is work getting done? What can we learn from these folks to make improvements?

Doug: It has to be very satisfying to make those improvements because when we're talking about safety, there's nothing more important.

Jon: It's been endlessly satisfying for me, especially when we started learning from our partners in other industries. Again, safety should not be proprietary. If somebody has a good idea, that good idea could save lives. We share them. Then it's really cool to see them actually work and get good results.

Doug: Is it hard to get people on the ground level to share, or are they very open to sharing what's going on out there?

Jon: They love sharing. The thing I hear a lot is, how come nobody asked me before? The major barrier to sharing is trust. When you talk about changing the safety culture, a big component of that is trust. If they feel like the information they bring to us is going to be used to hurt them, then they're not going to share. If we can prove and show that we're serious about this, serious about safety, and we're going to use that information to make things better for them, then that creates trust.

Doug: Can you discuss a little bit on things you do to get them to build that trust?

Jon: Yes. A couple of things here. One, when they share something with us, we do something with that. Either we use that information for awareness in other parts of the company, or we're able to make a change, make an improvement, or both. You lose trust if people share stuff with you and you don't do anything with it, or God forbid, like I mentioned before, if they get punished for whatever it is they shared. That's how you lose trust.

Doug: Let's talk about the people that are on the ground that are doing this, that need this safety information, and what you want them to get out of this when your information is going to the manager and working their way down to them.

Jon: The people in the field are-- first of all, we should really take a moment and think about how amazing those men and women are who do this work. They're pretty close to being superheroes, in my opinion. It takes a lot of bravery, a lot of courage, a ton of skill, and a lot of grit to do this day after day after day. Not to mention to do it successfully, which they normally do. We're pretty successful in spite of all of the different hazards, all of the different challenges that we face out there. They are consistently able to put it together and make it through with satisfied clients, and they come back better themselves. It's pretty amazing if you think about it like that.

Doug: Tell me a little bit about how you got into this. Why is this job right for you?

Jon: My background is in forestry. I spent time in the field, spent a little time with Davey Resource Group as well, and transitioned into safety. It's been about eight years at this point, and it goes really, really fast. When I first got in, I felt like there was a better way to do safety. I just felt like there had to be a better way. Catching and correct. I know what it's like to be in the field. I know how ineffective that is because when that happens, it just causes people to get better at hiding things. That's not safety. We're not providing any value with that. I didn't know what to do. I really am excited about our other partners, who are generous enough to lend me information and insight. It's been really cool to see that work.

I am endlessly optimistic about watching these contemporary safety strategies, we'll call them, work for us. I love that I can bring value to the Davy Tree Expert Company through this approach.

Doug: Were you surprised at just basically how transparent these other companies were and how thrilled they were to share their safety protocols?

Jon: I'm surprised how excited they were to share. They were excited to see us move in this direction. They were excited to see us get curious about this. The more we move forward with it, the more they wanted to help. Then they're curious about how it's working over here. It's a really nice cycle. We're able to give back at this point, too, with a lot of stuff, through conferences, through little groups and associations. We've really come out the other end as one of the leaders in NewView Safety.

Doug: How does that move forward? Talk a little bit about that. What's next?

Jon: What's next? We need to bring this to more parts of the company. We need to bring this into more service lines and provide people with more tools for learning and more support in that area. I got to give a shout-out to the residential service line as being the number one early adopter of this. I couldn't be luckier to have the support of those managers over there.

Doug: Let's talk about human performance training. You had mentioned that to me before we got started. What exactly is that? How do you implement that?

Jon: Human performance training, we call it the human and organizational performance, the HOP acronym, workshop. Basically, what it is, it's a one-day introduction to these new safety concepts. We talk about the principles behind them, the concepts, and then a couple of different ways how we can integrate them into the work that we're doing right away. Literally the next day after they're done with the training and they go back to work. We set them up with some really great tools, some really good methods to, again, get information using inquiry, using a respectful inquiry approach to get that information from the field, build trust, and ensure things go right more often.

Doug: Can you tell me some of the methods that you do use in these safety protocols?

Jon: Absolutely. The methods that we use are geared towards building trust. They're geared towards asking better questions. Usually, if we don't like the answer, it's because we're asking the wrong question. We spend time focusing on that. A couple of tools that people walk away with are one that's been really popular, learning teams in a box, which is 100 really good questions to ask people to pull out that really critical information about how work is getting done out in the field. They're great questions.

You have to have trust to be able to ask these questions because they could reveal things that might not be the best news to hear, but you can't fix a secret. You can't fix a secret, and it's better business for that stuff to come out so we can handle it.

Doug: Before I let you go, just tell me what you get out of doing this job.

Jon: What I get out of this job is loads of personal satisfaction. One, just watching safety improve, and two, watching the Davey Tree Expert Company evolve in the right direction in a really important way. I really like it.

Doug: Jon, I want to thank you so much for all the information. It was really fascinating to look at what you're doing and how you're making a positive change in regards to safety. Thanks for your time.

Jon: Thank you so much.

[music]

Doug: One of the things I love about hosting this show is the diversity of topics that we're able to cover. This was a great example. I thought, really getting a deep dive into a different way to deal with safety. That's why you need to tune in every Thursday to the Talking Trees podcast. I'm your host, Doug Oster, for the Davey Tree Expert Company.

I want you to do me a favor. Subscribe to the podcast so you'll never miss a show. If you've got an idea for an episode, maybe a comment, there's two ways to reach us. You can send an email to podcasts@davey.com. That's P-O-D-C-A-S-T-S-@-D-A-V-E-Y.com. You can also click the link at the end of our show notes to text us a fan mail message. Your ideas might be on a future podcast, and we would love to hear from you. As always, we'd like to remind you on the Talking Trees podcast, trees are the answer.

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