by Beth Lay, Director of Safety & Human Performance, Lewis Tree Service
Think about the many times when your organization has been under stress. In the utility vegetation management industry, we don’t have to look far. Over the past two years, we have faced a global pandemic, back-to-back active storm seasons, labor shortages, and supply chain interruptions to name a few stressors. When stretched, the goal for all of us is to recover quickly and emerge stronger. One key to success is proactively monitoring and acting on early warning signals that we are approaching an overload situation or safety boundaries and have a plan to adapt.
Lewis Teams are first responders after major storms. Convoys of bucket trucks move into storm ravaged areas to remove trees from downed power lines. In this article, I’ll share strategies to increase resilience during storm response.
What is pinging?
We use the term “pinging”, which borrows from the echo location of a submarine, to refer to actively sending out our sonar and probing for signals of organizational stress.
A few years ago, when I first joined Lewis, I went out on storm with a seasoned division manager. We were at a large fairgrounds parking lot where Lewis trucks were staged awaiting tickets to perform work. What was immediately noticeable was that the Lewis teams, deployed from different regions nationwide, were not talking to one another. Fast forward: we now create structure and practices to build teamwork, collaboration, and engagement when on storm. We are one team with one mission.
During Hurricane Ida, our operations leadership formed a new, cohesive team and assigned field leadership from the diverse teams who mobilized to lead the new team together. This allowed our boots on the ground, some of whom were deployed for weeks, to maintain stronger coordination and a high level of consistency during a situation of extreme variability.
Our mission was to “destress the frontline”. To accomplish this, we proactively looked for signs of stress. For example, leaders actively “pinged” for signs of fatigue: Quieter. Chatter goes down. | Mood changes. Upset easily, grumpy. | Tradeoffs to get more sleep: skip breakfast, eat quick lunch to take a nap | Drink energy drinks, increasing caffeine intake. | Begin making mistakes, taking shortcuts. | Lose focus. General forgetfulness increases. | Delayed reaction time. | Nod off (micro-sleep). | Muscle cramps. | Pace is slower.
We implemented teammate-to-teammate peer checks. Leaders asked, “how did you sleep?” (a better question than “are you tired?”) We did everything within our power to support our teams with a clean place to sleep in situations where lodging was scarce. We set the pace for our safety.
Signals of increased stress
We analyzed the After Action Reviews that the teams working storm submitted daily for trends and risks. This enabled us to figure out where and what type of help was needed in real-time. We were able to increase attention across the team and act to manage areas of high risk (e.g., large piles of debris stacked beside roads, long commutes, roads that were ok yesterday are not ok today, etc.)
We pinged frontline leaders and crews, asking “what are you most concerned about right now?” “How are teams being pressured?” “How are moods?” “How are things at home?” We listened for weak signals. Are people who have never worked storm too quiet?
As risk increased (as we got closer to safety boundaries), we lowered our risk tolerance, lowering our number to 2 on our “uncertainty gauge” for raising stuff up (uncertainty = 1 means 100% certain and controllable, a 10 means we are highly uncertain and we have little control). We increased leadership touch points. We brought in extra safety and logistics support with goals of unloading the frontlines and bringing a fresh set of eyes.
Building reciprocity
Reciprocity is when a team is willing to sacrifice their individual goals to help a larger group achieve theirs. We see this clearly with utilities who are willing to provide mutual aid to others facing widescale outages and infrastructure devastation. We also witness it closer to home.
Years ago on storm calls, we would hear stories of trucks rolling into a hotel parking lot only to discover the rooms had been given away or already heavily loaded operations leaders trying to find rooms on the way to storm. Sometimes teams would sleep in their trucks. At our corporate office, we embraced our mission during storm is to destress the frontline. Fast forward: People from our corporate office now actively take on new support roles including travel planning, providing meals, and sourcing hotels during storm response, putting some normal job duties on hold. We added flexibility and adaptability to reduce the pressure where we can—knowing that a good night’s sleep is critical to keeping our craftworkers safe. And we never say, “not my job.”
Build it and they will come
Reciprocity is present when teams anticipate another’s needs and offer help without being asked. We are now beginning to experiment more deliberately with corporate and operations spending a “day in the life” together to build knowledge of codependent roles. What’s it like for our general forepersons to work out of their trucks all day long? Conversely, what’s it like to respond to a multitude of varying IT requests all day long? These days are designed to give each team a better idea of what the other does and their challenges so they can codesign better solutions and offer each other help.
Four Strategies for Managing Overload
Overload is the relationship between demand and a system’s inability to meet that demand. Since systems differ among organizations, there may be things that larger companies handle easily but overwhelm smaller companies. Storm work provides many concrete examples. When managing one storm, an organization may be okay; however, two or three simultaneously may lead to overload. As an industry, we need to build flexibility to respond effectively.
Add more resources
During storm, utilities are willing to make significant financial investments outside of established budgets to restore power as quickly as possible. Mutual aid kicks in to rapidly deploy line and tree trimming crews from other areas. Craftworkers work 80-hour weeks to meet demand. We send in extra leaders and logistic support.
Shift load
When deployed on storm, managing expense receipts by traveling crews is difficult; however, the urgency remains. We shift the resource load to another team who can reprioritize their work and assist. Loads can be shifted in time, too. If a storm is coming, schedule preventative maintenance sooner to ensure vehicles are road worthy.
Create slack
When all hands are on deck, loosen policies or extend due dates to give team members more leeway. Proactively raise credit card limits to avoid inconveniencing traveling crews. In the office, instead of auditing every report, spot-check for accuracy.
Shed load
When capacity is strained, review your list of priorities, and decide what can be skipped or postponed. As corporate teams shift to new roles during storm response, take something off their plates.
In closing
Most organizations have unofficial early warning signals of a system under strain but few well-defined strategies for noticing and managing these effectively. The key is to define your organizational pings and have strategies and capacities in place before they are needed.