In this Longshore Insider Podcast, AEU's Mike Jernigan and Matt Hockman speak with Pacific Pile and Marine's Director of HSE, Matt Rolf, about his strategies to manage remote workforces. The conversation also addresses important aspects of mental health that all safety experts should recognize within their teams.
Transcript
Announcer:
Welcome to the Longshore Insider Podcast from The American Equity Underwriters. At AEU, we are passionate about helping waterfront employers protect their workers and their businesses. Join us as we explore practical strategies for improving workplace safety, effective claims management, and much more. So let's dive in. Welcome to the Longshore Insider Podcast.
Mike Jernigan:
Hello, and thank you for listening to the AEU Longshore Insider Podcast. In this series, our focus is safety. Specifically, we're speaking with health and safety experts from across the maritime industry to find out what they do to cultivate a culture of safety among their teams and throughout their organizations. I'm joined today by Matt Hockman, loss control manager for AEU. He has given us his perspective on safety, and I'm also joined by Matt Rolf, Director of HSC at Pacific Pile & Marine. Matt and Matt, it's a pleasure to have you both here with me.
Matt Hockman:
Thanks for having us.
Matt Rolf:
Thank you.
Mike Jernigan:
Absolutely. So, Matt Rolf, let's get started by just telling me a little bit about yourself, and what it is that you do?
Matt Rolf:
So I've been in safety for about 14 and change years. I started in the commercial world and then got into maritime about five years ago with another company, and then started with Pacific Pile & Marine a little over four years ago now. We're a marine contractor, but we do kind of a multitude of things. Really docks, piers, wharves, that type of stuff. But we also do environmental dredging with hydraulic excavators.
It's really environmental cleanup work. And I currently have a team of five safety managers working for me for operations in the United States and in Canada. We work from California to Alaska, including British Columbia. So covering the entire West Coast.
Mike Jernigan:
So it sounds like you've got some employees who are spread out there, you've got some-
Matt Rolf:
Yeah.
Mike Jernigan:
Yeah. Some distributed teams. Let's talk about that a little bit. Tell me what it's like to manage those distributed teams? And also can you talk a little bit about that remote management style, what it takes to pull that off?
Matt Rolf:
It's tough sometimes trying to manage. It's easy to manage my team because there's just five of them. I'm going to say, "Them," but because I have a great team to work with. I actually need to hire a sixth this year. Another one to work in Seattle for a project, but getting information out to people, work teams in remote... I don't even have to say remote locations.
Getting a consistent information out to projects, all projects at different locations at the same time. But getting a consistent message out is important, it's helpful, but making sure I'm sharing the same message to everyone. The hardest part actually is just sharing the same message across the border. So between US and Canada, that's really the hardest part for us.
And the reason that it's important that we're sharing the same message is it's to help develop a culture, not just a safety culture, but a company culture as well. Is that we want people to feel like they're part of the same company that they're not... Even though our Canada is a separate division, we want them to still feel like they're working for PPM. It's Pacific Pile & Marine, but they're all working for PPM.
Mike Jernigan:
Sounds like communication-
Matt Rolf (04:02):
Absolutely.
Mike Jernigan:
... is key?
Matt Rolf:
Yeah.
Matt Hockman:
And it is got to be hard. I can't even imagine working with that many people across different divisions and different areas. But it sounds like you've kind of figured out some things that work. And I mean there's going to be headaches, there's going to be challenges every day. But what are some of the effective methods you've found to communicating across those teams and also building that team mentality as well?
Matt Rolf:
Luckily enough, we're small, we're family run. We joke that we swing way above our weight limit. We swing way above the belt. We're 200 employees competing against the Kiewit's of the world where they're 20,000 employees all across the globe. We compete against Kiewit and we win because we're not afraid of these complex projects that are a little more difficult than we probably should get into. And we're like, "What are we doing now?" But then we finish the project and we learn something out of it, and we kind of move on and we okay, okay, we've done this before, we can do it again. And then we have bigger equipment than people expect us to have. We own the West Coast's largest, fuller revolving Derrick. We own some big excavators to be able to do some of the dredging work that we do that people don't expect us to have.
So we're outfitted that way and for strategically. But then, yeah, we use Teams. We're now that the internet is more efficient and there's more online capabilities, we've gotten away from using a shared drive that you have to get on a VPN. And now we have SharePoint. We use the Microsoft Suites, we're using Teams and we're using, we don't use video on Teams, but I can think of six teams meetings that we hold a week.
I hold a meeting with my team every two weeks so that we get together. It's supposed to be tomorrow, but I'm here, so I'm canceling it. But I tell them, "Just because I'm not there, it doesn't mean you guys can't hold this meeting together." But we have a meeting regularly to talk about departmental things, whether it's training needs or like safety week is next week. Because we're so dispersed we don't have a lot of people working in our yard or working locally in May. And that's based on the type of work that we do. But we have a lot of people working in the yard in June. So we actually do the Wednesdays in June, ending the month with a barbecue.
But we spread that information out, push that information on a regular basis and then get people into the yard. But we're constantly sharing that information. And then for our Canada projects, it's like, okay, you guys do your own thing. Here's some ideas, here's some topics, get vendors in whatever. And then they're doing a consistent thing that we're doing in Seattle, so we're sharing a consistent message.
Matt Hockman:
So technology's kind of opened a lot of doors-
Matt Rolf:
Yes.
Matt Hockman:
... for communication?
Matt Rolf:
It's made it, yeah, when COVID hit nine days after I started this job, technology helped a lot.
Matt Hockman:
Yeah. I mean, I don't know where we'd be if we didn't have Teams and other avenues to have conversations whenever we need to. And I think that we're moving forward and clear communication's going to be the way of the future just because we have the tools to do that. So with that though, and having different employees on different projects and complex projects like you said, how do you train them properly on those projects?
Matt Rolf:
It depends. So we had a project, I'm going to go back a couple of years to 2021, we had a project in Anchorage. Alaska. We paid a trainer to go to Anchorage, did a first aid class, did a rigging class. I did an orientation for the whole group and then did a confined space class and did a couple other things three full days of training ahead before the project even started. And then part of the reason we did that is because part of that group was going to go do a project in Antarctica, which they did successfully. We did that training in March and then in December they left for Antarctica for four months.
Mike Jernigan:
You mentioned that you're a smaller company, and you mentioned that you've got employees in Canada, and you've got employees at other locations and they're going to Antarctica, right? So you use that technology to your advantage to make sure that you keep everybody on the same page and you provide a consistent message across the board at all times. Can you speak to company culture? How does that help, or does it help also create a sense of community within your teams?
Matt Rolf:
It does. So we had a supervisor meeting last week. Well, we don't fly everybody down from Alaska, we don't fly everybody down from Canada, so we have to have a Teams meeting, but we had 25 people in the room locally. And then we have everybody else on Teams. It's video, at least those that are in the room are presented as video, so those that are remote.
And then last Thursday we had a town hall, that's everybody that's local, everybody, all the craft, all the office staff, everybody comes to our shop in Seattle. And then it's basically an all hands. And then we present that video to everyone that's remote. So everybody that's working in Skagway, everybody that's working in Canada sees what's going on, seeing the same information on video, sharing the information out. We're sharing data analytics, we're sharing injury trending, all that information, the use of Power BI and data analytics is also helping our culture.
People are seeing how we're doing or whether it's good or bad. We had a very bad downward trend at the beginning of this year. So we had an emergency town hall a month ago, and then just last Thursday we had another follow-up meeting to help try to steer ourselves in another direction. That does shift that culture. I will say, "That we've had culture for the 15 years that we've been in business, whether it's positive or negative." When I started, we had safety culture, it wasn't good. It's getting better, but it's not been phenomenal the whole time.
Mike Jernigan:
Can I ask a follow-up question? You speak to that saying that it hasn't always been necessarily good. Could you point to specific examples where things have improved and maybe morale has been boosted as a result of the practices that you have implemented?
Matt Rolf:
Consistency, updating policy, getting the right people in the right spots. It's not me, but it's a lot of it's consistency. We've been through a slew of safety directors like every three to four years. I'm at the four-year mark. I think I actually might be the longest tenured safety director we've had, which is unfortunate, but it's because you get up to a certain point and you're like, "Nothing's changed."
I knew my predecessor before he even worked for this company, and when I talked to him about coming on, he's like, "These are the three main reasons why I left." And so I knew what I was getting into before I even took it on. I mean, yeah, it's tough, but there's days I'm like, "I give up. I want to go, I'm going home. I'm taking my ball and I'm going home." But there's other days it's kind of rewarding and getting out of it what I put into it.
Matt Hockman:
Well, I think you put in so much as a safety professional, I think we kind of pour our hearts into what we do because if we don't, somebody could be injured. Somebody's life could change drastically. So I think focusing on that success and making sure we're moving forward and moving the ball forward and just continuously keeping our focus on improving culture one day at a time. Yeah, we may take some steps backwards, but we're going to take two steps forward the next day. So with that, can you share any success stories about connecting and training and across the different groups that's worked?
Matt Rolf:
We have a huge gap, and I think it's an industry issue in our pile driving side, not necessarily in the operator side. So that's our work is pile driving, and I'm going to say, "Operators," but not necessarily from a crane operators perspective, but a hydraulic excavator dredging side of operators. And I say, "Gap in experience."
So we have young pile drivers coming in up to 40 years old, and then we have retiring, retiring in the next five to 10 years. So we have this 10 to 15 year gap, age gap. And so trying to get that shift, that knowledge transfer is really difficult, but we're now finally getting that knowledge transfer. And that is what's important to our culture because it's getting somebody that's got, they might have 15 years of experience, 20 years of experience at 40, but they might also only have one or two years of experience because they're coming in as an apprentice at 40.
We're seeing that a lot. They might be transferring books from another trade and coming in as a journeyman, but they're not really a journeyman because we're union so, but they might be transferring books from a plumber or a pipe fitter or-
Matt Hockman:
Whatever it is.
Matt Rolf:
... lath and plaster or something. So they've got 4,000 hours of experience. So they're halfway to their journeyman level, but they're still an apprentice, and they don't have any marine experience. They don't know how to work on a barge. They don't know to keep their hands out of the spudwell or they don't know all these things. So it's getting knowledge transfer is important and that drives, that's where our culture is impacted the most is knowledge transfer.
Matt Hockman:
So you're fighting that out.
Matt Rolf:
It's nothing to do with me.
Matt Hockman:
It's that knowledge gap.
Matt Rolf:
Yeah, absolutely.
Matt Hockman:
And you don't know what you don't know.
Matt Rolf:
Correct.
Matt Hockman:
And you hope that they get what they know and that they understand more and more each day, but there's also a communication gap. And it sounds like you guys are finally starting to see that communication gap be bridged-
Matt Rolf:
It's getting better.
Matt Hockman:
And it just takes time. And we're going to have more and more people entering the workforce that have never had it before. So hopefully more people can learn from these types of conversations, and we can help the industry move forward in that knowledge gap arena. So there's a lot to unpack when it comes to communication, but just having those lines that can go both ways I think is the number one thing. You need to be able to be heard and you need to hear people.
Matt Rolf:
For sure.
Mike Jernigan:
And you mentioned something earlier, some days you feel like picking up your ball and going home. And I know that that knowledge gap certainly contributes to that and all these different challenges. And all of us here would be liars if we said, "That we didn't have those days." And that's why I think it's really important to talk about that because it's not always rainbows and butterflies and sunshine, right? And when it is, it's really easy to be good at what we do. It's really easy when things are perfect.
When those issues float to the top of the surface and really start to overwhelm us that we really have to do our best and to be most diligent. And can you speak to those rough days when you do feel like that, how do you push through and make it across the other side? What do you do to keep that consistency going even when you feel at your worst?
Matt Rolf:
I mean, we're in construction, it's marine construction. So falls is what always talk about, right? For the number one leading cause of death in construction. Suicide is the number two leading cause of death for male construction workers. So we talk about at work, we talk about mental health and depression, suicide prevention, sharing resources. And in every one of our safety meetings that I send out, I share 988 for the US. In Canada, it's 800-321-CARE, C-A-R-E. So it's the same resource for Canadian workforce. It's basically a suicide prevention hotline. There's a lot of other things in our lives beyond work, obviously but...
Mike Jernigan:
And we can't lead our teams if we don't show that care. I mean-
Matt Rolf:
Correct.
Mike Jernigan:
... you have to have that empathy, you have to relate to what they're going through.
Matt Rolf:
Correct.
Mike Jernigan:
And it is not important to just tell them what to do. They have to know and feel that you mean what you say.
Matt Rolf:
Correct.
Mike Jernigan:
And so you bring up a great point, and I know that we're here to talk about safety and managing remote teams and things like that, but you bring up a greater point, and that is making sure that everybody is in the right mental state to perform their job because there's nothing really more dangerous for themselves and for others than to step onto that job site in the wrong space and potentially have a safety incident.
It's so important to help them, guide them through that and to get the care that they need. Because it's not that you are worried about company assets or anything like that. You're really worried about that person as an individual. And I think that's really what you're saying is we need to get to the point where they know we actually do care.
Matt Rolf:
I'm more worried about them going home every day at the end of the day with all the bits and pieces they came to work with than anything else. That's my number one goal is to make sure that they go home at the end of the day.
Matt Hockman:
When you never know what somebody's carrying with them to work-
Matt Rolf:
No.
Matt Hockman:
... as well.
Matt Rolf:
Ever.
Matt Hockman:
And I think that's why it's so important to know your employees and know what motivates them, know what's going on in their life because if you know what's going on in their life, then when something's off. And to me, mental health's not an easy conversation to have with anybody, but it's an important one, and it's one that we have to focus on now. And unfortunately in our younger generation, it's something that's more prevalent. But on the upside, they're more in tune with what's going on with their mental health and their happiness in general. So they're not going to stick around somewhere that doesn't work for them in the long run.
Matt Rolf:
It's important to find everyone's why, and the why is why they're at work. It could be that they want to go, that they want to raise a family. It could be that they want to go hunting. It could be that they want to buy the newest truck on the market. It could be that they want to retire someday. It could be that they're raising their grandkids. It could be be any number of things. But finding that why.
I don't know where we're at on time, but I had a worker years ago, it was when I was in the commercial world, I walked up to him and his supervisor had gotten to him first. He'd been dry cutting concrete, no respirator, didn't have a face shield on, no earplugs. He had safety glasses on. Supervisor got him to get a face shield and a dust mask. And so we were good to go, and grabbed some earplugs and he just laid them in his ear, he didn't actually put them in.
And I was like, "Hey, do you know how to put those in?" He just kind of laid them in his ear, and I was like, "No, no, no. Actually put them in." I was like, "Do you understand why it's important to protect your hearing?" He was probably 60, he was close to retirement. I was like, "Are you married?" No. You have any kids? No. You got a dog at home? No. Cat? No.
I was like, "Well, then you got to be the richest man in the world. Never been married, don't have any kids, don't have any pets, what do you do with your money. No offense." But he's like, "Well, I like to call my mom every couple of weeks back in New Orleans and I send her money." I was like, "How would you like to not be able to hear your mom on the phone when you call her?" And he was devastated. And I showed him how to put a pair of earplugs in. And then every time I saw him on the job after that, he'd be like, "Hey, look." And his earplugs were in correctly. His mom was his why, and I use that story still to this day. And that was 2015. It was almost a decade ago. That was his why. That was his important reason to be at work.
Matt Hockman:
And had you not opened up that line of communication with him?
Matt Rolf:
Correct.
Matt Hockman:
You would've never known.
Matt Rolf:
Subcontractor too. Not even one of my own employees.
Matt Hockman:
Yeah, same difference at the end of-
Matt Rolf:
But finding-
Matt Hockman:
... the day though.
Matt Rolf:
... someone's why the reason they're at work is important and then figuring out the... I mean, it was a little complicated, but it was simple. But it's like figuring out why people come to work and that builds culture. I know people's significant other's names. I know some of their kids' names. I know what kind of pets they have. I know what they like to do in their spare time because that's important to them. It's what they're willing to tell me.
I'm on social media with some of the guys at work, because they reach out to me. A few of them I've reached out to them, become friends on Facebook or whatever. And because of that, they know where I'm at. They know when I go on vacation, I know when they go on vacation kind of thing. And we joke about it at work. And it's important because it's important to everybody. That's the culture. That's how you keep that culture going.
Matt Hockman:
I feel like you may have already answered this question in your own way of finding people's why, but if you could tell your younger self one thing about safety, what would that be?
Matt Rolf:
I know I cheated and saw this already, right, I have a different thing. I did a presentation earlier, and it's not something I would tell a younger version of myself. It's something that I live by. So I was injured at work before I got into safety, and I had an employer that didn't care about me. They basically wrote my claim off, turned down all offers of light duty, turned down return to work, turned down basically everything. And then during the process of the claim, they were bought out by a larger company. And in the process, they basically bought off my claim, and I was basically left behind.
I will do my absolute best to make sure that an employee never feels left behind or forgotten in the process of an injury. No matter how minor. I do my absolute best to check in with workers regularly, whether it's myself or one of my employees is making sure that they do have regular communication with an injured worker.
Matt Hockman:
It doesn't take much, a quick phone call.
Matt Rolf:
I get text messages or I text them, they text me. That's easier. And then I got one that he lives in Utah, and he did a surgery in Seattle, and we fly him back and forth when he needs to see the doctor. The last text I had from him, he's like, "Thanks, appreciate you checking in on me." Absolutely. No problem. That's easy.
Matt Hockman:
He'll never forget that.
Matt Rolf:
Absolutely, 100%.
Mike Jernigan:
It all ties back in to what you had mentioned earlier about that connectivity, that consistency, it's staying connected to people. And connection is more than just the text, right? More than just the social media. It is paying attention to what is said in those texts and what is communicated over that social media. And so I think that's the greater point. It's not enough to just check the boxes. You've really got to dive in and commit yourself to these employees and these workers and let them know that you're not separate from them. You are them.
Matt Rolf:
And I've learned recently a better way, instead of asking, "Is there any way I can help you," to is there any way I can support you? Is there a way that I can better support you? Support versus help is a big change in word. I think they appreciate that better.
Mike Jernigan:
I think that this has been a great conversation, and I feel like we ended up speaking about more than just the safety, right? The aspects that we went into it thinking we were going to discuss, and I'm absolutely grateful for that. And I thank both of you guys for being here and being so candid about how you approach safety, because I think it's an important reminder for everyone.
Matt Rolf:
Thanks for having us.
Matt Hockman:
Absolutely. And thanks for giving us the platform to talk about these types of things.
Matt Rolf:
Yeah. Much appreciated.
