4
THE DAVEY BULLETIN
|
July/August 2020
ASK THE CEO:
Q. HAVE ANY OPERATIONAL IMPROVEMENTS RESULTED
FROM OUR COVID-19 RESPONSE?
send our teammates home injury free.
Several strategies, we believe, have
helped to improve our safety record.
First, we enacted policies to reduce
the distractions the coronavirus caused
in our employees' daily lives. We made
it easier for employees to take leave if
they needed to, established a fund to
support expenses related to COVID-19,
and generally created guidelines that
prioritized doing the right thing by our
employees. Our hope was that by
helping employees cope with these
real-life, outside Davey issues, it would
allow them to be less distracted, and
therefore safer, while on the job.
In addition, we have:
• Emphasized our focus on the value
of our employees' well-being.
• Talked more about concentrating
and focusing attention on the job
at hand.
• Prioritized job observations and
their related follow-ups.
A. COVID-19 has created many
challenges and hardships for so many
that it can be hard to see the light at
the end of the tunnel, but we have
made so many positive adjustments
and, as with any adversity, there are
things we can learn to make us better
and stronger.
For example, we started this spring
working much more safely than we
did last spring. Across the board,
incident rates were down in March and
April of this year compared with March
and April of 2019. In both months in
2020, we had fewer OSHA recordable
incidents, less non-recordable
incidents, fewer preventable and
non-preventable incidents.
Our employees have done an amazing
job. I cannot say enough about what
everyone has done to keep their focus
and maintain situational awareness.
We have truly elevated our efforts
around making sure we're focused on
safety first, and doing all we can to
Pat Covey
Davey Chairman, President and CEO
ASK THE CEO
• Emphasized the importance of the
career development program in
safety skills development.
• Clearly and consistently
communicated performance
expectations among the operations.
• Facilitated a more positive
collaboration with the corporate
safety department companywide.
Despite the challenges we continue
to face, we've come together as
one Davey and built an atmosphere
designed to protect the Davey family.
And it's working. The COVID
environment has been compared to
what happens when we send our
crews to assist during hurricane events.
The urgency of the situation creates a
laser focus on safety, and the mission.
I implore you to keep doing what
you're doing and to stay the course.
Keep building on the momentum
we've gathered this spring, and we
will emerge stronger together.
