Communication is crucial to safety, productivity in tree care businesses
A lot has changed in the 25 years since Tony Valenti founded his business, First Choice Tree Service, in Las Vegas, Nevada. It has expanded into a full-service tree care company that includes residential, commercial and forestry tree work, a transplant and salvage division, landscape design and install, and a plant health care division specializing in organic fertilizers.
The increase in services offered also meant significant growth in Valenti’s workforce. Now, First Choice Tree Service has over 70 employees, roughly half of whom speak Spanish. A diverse workforce brings the benefits of different cultures, but it can also pose some significant challenges, particularly when it comes to communication.
Communication is key
As any tree care professional can attest, communication is one of the most important aspects to safety and efficiency on a jobsite. When half your employees speak English as a second language, finding a way to bridge the communication gap is crucial to ensuring everyone is on the same page.
“Communication is the most important thing with the company, from the top all the way down to the bottom,” Valenti says. “If you are going to hire someone that speaks English as a second language, you need to make sure that they have somebody that speaks Spanish and English perfectly so that there isn’t a communication gap.”
Valenti has taken a variety of steps to ensure all his employees are communicating effectively. The most helpful of those being the hiring of bilingual employees, especially in leadership roles.
Mentoring program attempts to fill in the gaps
Ten years ago, Valenti hired Diego Aguilera, a bilingual scheduling manager for First Choice Tree Care. When Aguilera first started with the company, he and Valenti were facing some tough challenges when it came to communicating ideas and messages across the company — from owner to crew worker, key points were falling through the cracks. Valenti knew Aguilera’s ability to speak both English and Spanish would help overcome the language barrier, especially when it came to training employees on safety issues.
With the help of Aguilera, First Choice Tree Care was able to start a mentoring program that pairs new crew members with a more experienced worker to help the new employee grow and become part of the company culture. Bilingual mentors were vital to the success of this program. Mentors would need to communicate with Valenti on his vision for the program and the overall company and be able to relay that message to Spanish-speaking employees.
Bilingual safety messaging
First Choice Tree Care has been TCIA-accredited for the past nine years, so regular safety training is important to Valenti and his employees. The company holds weekly safety meetings with its crews, where it is crucial bilingual crew leaders are able to effectively communicate safety messaging to the rest of the employees.
“Our main focus is safety, 100 percent,” says Valenti. “It’s something that we really care about. We’re staying on top of having safety talks on a weekly basis, and we expect the crew leaders to be bilingual. We want to make sure that we’re getting the correct information to all crew members.”
With heavy-duty equipment, working near powerlines and spending a lot of time many feet off the ground, caring for trees has inherent safety challenges. When you throw in a language barrier that could cause safety warnings and messages to be misunderstood, it can become more hazardous.
Culture and respect
When it comes down to it, Valenti believes communication begins and ends with a mutual understanding of and respect for different cultures. He knows his company could not have grown to its current state without the help of his Spanish-speaking and bilingual employees. They’ve made it possible to bridge the communication gap in order to create a diverse and thriving business.
“It’s just a real important thing to be able to understand their culture and for them to understand ours,” Valenti says. “The Hispanic culture is an amazing culture. If you treat them with respect, they’ll treat you with respect, and it works both ways.”