To Change Company Culture, Show Them Your Best ‘Why’

When I first started working for Waste Management, I discovered that we (and the entire industry) were one of the most dangerous to work for in the U.S. Throughout my time there, we were able to reverse the company culture that existed when I first arrived from, “We work a dangerous job in a dangerous industry—it’s just part of doing business?” to, “Safety is our top priority.” But helping the company mindset make this dramatic change took more convincing than you might think. 

It seems like a no brainer to put on safety glasses when sorting trash in a recycling operation and to keep one’s cell phone tucked away while driving, but our employees and fellow leadership nearly went ballistic when we asked them to start doing these things.

No matter the job any of us are in, it’s easy to get in the mentality of “cutting corners in the name of efficiency.” Usually this entails circumventing rules that were made for a reason, because we have done the same job hundreds of times before without incident or want to save a few seconds of our time. This isn’t a healthy mindset in any work environment, but it was especially harmful at Waste Management, where the nonchalant approach to safety became a matter of life and death with the large equipment we operated.

So when we started the campaign Mission-To-Zero, created to reduce the number of work fatalities and injuries to zero, We started by reaching out to the kids of our frontline employees.

That’s right. we asked the kids to write their mommy or daddy notes describing how much they loved them and couldn’t wait to see them when they got home from work, finishing with a plea for mom or dad to be safe while on the job. This small yet powerful reminder started to re-define the meaning of safety for our workers, who had come to see it as a setback to their productivity. Realizing that an on-the-job mistake could mean leaving their child without a parent quickly started to re-orient attitudes.

Safety didn’t sound so silly anymore.

People are always surprised when I tell them about the small changes that helped make Mission-To-Zero a reality.

For example, in one location that was in a huge retirement community, our garbage trucks were being run into from behind every day by other cars driven by retired people who should have given up their driver’s licenses years ago. Our trucks had reflective tape and flashing lights on the back, yet they were being routinely run into from the back. When I confronted the team about this issue, they explained that they were just victims given that they were operating in a retirement community, and they felt totally powerless to fix the problem.

I told them that I was positive that if we just kept operating the same way, we could not expect to see a different result. I told them that they were empowered to “just do something different.”  I told them to think about the possible changes that might lead to a different outcome and pick the best one and try it. I told them I would be back in four weeks to see what they had come up with to bring about a better outcome.

Sure enough, next time I came around, they had done something different. They painted the back of five trucks bright yellow.

“It’s the craziest thing,” they told me. “Other trucks have continued to get hit, but not a single person has hit the trucks that are yellow on the back.”

That’s truly brilliant, I thought. I told them to paint the rest of their fleet the same way, and we saw the same improved result. We announced to the entire company that we were going to paint all 25,000 of our trucks the same way, and gave all the credit to the local team that had come up with the solution to save lives and prevent injuries. Now, even other trucking fleets have done the same thing.

That helped change the company culture as others started to get on board. The company culture changed so much that they even started looking out for each other. If another person reminded you to put on your safety glasses or safety vest, the person being told actually thanked the other person for reminding them instead of snapping back with a remark that it is none of your business.  There is nothing I am more proud about of all the changes we implemented to turn around Waste Management than the number of lives we saved through the change in our safety culture. Although I’m incredibly proud of the team for shifting their mindset to be more safety-oriented, for me, the lesson was much more over-arching.

It showed me that, to revolutionize a company that is stuck in their ways, you have to show them the importance behind the why. You may not even have to get their kids to write them notes to make that happen, but I can attest that it helps.

Our workers didn’t think about safety because they had forgotten about the importance of it. But once they all started realize what a difference it could make in their lives, attitudes changed.

Whatever the new rule, update or protocol it is that you’re wanting to implement to make your company better, know that your team’s enthusiasm about the change will only be as strong as their understanding of your why.