For night owls like Waste Management CEO Jim Fish, waking up at 1 a.m. for safety briefings can make for a long day. But Fish did it because his late father-in-law, a union pipefitter, told him that if he attended these meetings — not just once, but regularly — he would learn a lot and build a rapport with the line workers.
Fish’s father-in-law hit the nail on the head.
“It’s been very valuable to me in terms of learning the business and getting to know people,” Fish said. wealth. “Part of what I’ve learned — and I’ve always been a financial person — is that it’s not always just dollars and cents.”
Waste Management views safety as a cornerstone of its operations and has set a goal of reducing its Total Recordable Injury Rate (TRIR) by 3% annually by 2030, with a TRIR target of 2.0. If companies achieve this goal, it would mean that 2 workers per 100 employees or every 200,000 hours worked would suffer a recordable injury each year. According to its sustainability report, the company saw a 5.8% decrease in overall workplace injuries last year and a 2.4% decrease in lost-time injuries.
“You make investments in safety or people, and they don’t necessarily show up in the bottom line — at least not right away,” Fish said. “Safety tends to show up over the longer term, and if you do have a safe organization, it will eventually show up on your profit and loss statement – but it takes a while.”
Waste Management is the largest provider of waste and recycling transfer and disposal services in the United States and Canada, with revenue expected to reach $22 billion by 2024. The Houston, Texas-based company has a market capitalization of approximately $90 billion and has more than 60,000 employees. Fish, 63, has served as president and CEO since November 2016 and has been with the company for 20 years. Before taking the top job, Fish served as chief financial officer, senior vice president of the Eastern Group and regional vice president of Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
Until he was halfway through his tenure as CFO, Fish would go out about once every four to six weeks to haul trash with his staff—usually whenever he was in a middle-of-the-night safety meeting. Eventually, the board told him they weren’t crazy about the idea of him throwing away trash, but he could still ride in the truck with the workers. Now, Fish said he visits about 20 to 30 locations a year and rides with drivers about five to 10 times. He told them any topic was fair game, including sports, politics, safety or pay, but they had to make sure to chat or Fish might fall asleep.
“Most drivers are a little nervous when I get in the cab, but after about 10 minutes, they relax and tell me what they’re thinking,” Fish said.
That’s why those early-morning meetings were so valuable, he said, and he learned far more than injury statistics and safety briefings.
Fish said he learned why Boston’s productivity plummeted during the winter. He said he didn’t understand why there was such a big difference between winter and summer, but after being out in sub-zero temperatures and freezing his hands and feet, he completely changed his mind. This problem may only arise in the form of fluctuations in data in a corporate office, but becomes clearer and more meaningful after traversing an icy route covered in snow-engulfed trash and recycling cans.
“It makes a big difference if there’s ice and snow on the road or if there’s ice in the can,” Fish said. “It sounds simple, but sitting in a corporate office I didn’t really fully understand it until I was actually out in the field.”
Another important lesson came from witnessing the diversity of Waste Management’s workforce and making small adjustments to ensure employees were clearly informed.
While visiting a region in Rhode Island where about 95 percent of the drivers in the company’s residential line are Puerto Rican or Dominican, Fish attended a 1 a.m. briefing. Fish admits the industry’s safety outcomes are “terrible” and he wants to understand why. He found that most of the workers spoke English, but their first language was Spanish. The manager there didn’t speak Spanish, so he asked another driver to translate for him when conveying safety information.
Fish decided to consider promoting a would-be manager in the area who was bilingual. Company promotion to driver.
“What’s miraculous, or maybe not miraculous, is that their safety outcomes were immediately reversed,” Fish said. “Something was lost in translation.”
He said the change also addresses an unintentional signal sent to employees that they may never have a chance to advance in the company because they are native Spanish speakers. The unintentional message, Fish said, was that the manager there would likely always be “a white guy like Jim,” who also had been studying Spanish regularly.
He said clearly addressing the issue could improve safety outcomes and enable people to apply for roles they previously thought they were not suitable for. The company also hired a person on site to teach Spanish to other workers so they could become familiar with the language.
“Their safety outcomes are definitely better, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence at all,” he said. “Nothing is lost in translation anymore, the driver can’t say, ‘Well, I don’t understand what my manager is saying,’ because the manager is speaking in English and Spanish.”
Fish said the bilingual manager of Waste Management hired on site became one of the company’s best managers. Fish said he sadly passed away from a heart attack but continued to advance from driver to route manager, district manager and then senior district manager. Had he not tragically passed away, he might have continued to rise. Fish noted that the manager was also selected to travel with his wife to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Hawaii for the first 200 employees.
Ultimately, Fish believes, the core of the company and what differentiates Waste Management from its competitors lies at the critical domain level, not the C-suite. Early in his executive career, he worked grueling early mornings every month to better understand the workforce and how to make them more productive and efficient.
“I know my title is important, but I’m no more important than anyone else in this company,” Fish said. “I’m not a better employee or a better father… We just have different levels of positions.”
This story originally appeared on Fortune.com
