Equipment World Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/521868
EquipmentWorld.com | June 2015 91 have families and they depend on our leadership to keep this place going," Wylie adds. Pettiecord and Wylie take note of promising people, taking them under their wings. One example is Patricia, or Trish, Hood. The 23-year-old mother of two didn't have a driver's license or any construction experience when the company hired her. Within a few months of doing general labor work, she had her Class B com- mercial driver's license and started driving a dump truck. A few more months and she had her Class A CDL, driving the firm's heavy-haul tractor trailers. While driving a dump truck at a jobsite in Winthrop, Iowa, Patricia's curiosity got the best of her. Pet- tiecord was using a Cat 973 track loader to load Patricia's truck, but then was called away from the site. She used the opportunity to climb into the 973 cab. "I thought, 'well I'll either get fired or he'll tell me to keep on going'," she recalls. Working the controls, she figured out how to fill a bucket. "By my second bucket, Jeff came back, and told me to keep on going, and that was my start," Hood says. She was hooked on equipment operation. She started in the company's equipment yard, moving salt with a compact excavator. Next, Patri- cia found herself on a job using a Cat 325 with a Morbark tree shear head to process cut trees to put in the company's Peterson grinder. Now she's advanced to the point that she's running her own crew. "She's running more jobsites now," says Wylie, "and the degree of difficulty keeps on increasing. In such a male-dominated industry, Trish has earned respect in and outside the company." Putting "real meat" in a safety program Although still in its early days, a program implemented by J. Pettiecord last year is already having a positive effect, and is one reason why the company received this year's Contractor of the Year safety award. Called the SAAP Monthly Bonus – which stands for Safety, Availability, Attitude and Production – the program rewards employees that meet a few requirements at the end of each month with a bonus check equal to $2 per hour for each hour an employee works that month. For example, if an employee averages 50 hours a week, then his or her bonus check would be around $450 that month. The goal of the bonus program is multifaceted for the company. "Employee retention is a big part of this program," says Pettiecord. "We also wanted to put some real meat into our safety program." (The company currently has a .77 experience modification rate; its safety program is headed by Laramie Ogden, estimator and project manager.) Adds Wylie: "There's such a shortage of people, we wanted an extra way to lure new employees." To qualify for the extra $2 bonus – which has no impact on an employee's base pay – an employee must: Not break anything. Any quibbles about who's at fault are resolved by the company's safety committee, which does not include Jeff and Nick, although they can serve as tie breakers. And if an employee breaks some- thing and doesn't fess up, they lose their chance at a bonus for six months. • Wear proper PPE for all work tasks and al- ways work in a safe manner. Employees cannot have any safety complaints from supervisors or clients, nor have any accident of "any kind," reads the SAAP document. • No traffic violations or DOT citations that could have been found during a morning walk through. Appeals go through the safety committee. • Answer their phones at all times for emergencies. Emergency response is a key market for J. Pettiecord, so employees must answer their phones, although they may not have to come in. If an employee is called three or more times in a month and doesn't come in, he or she will lose their bonus. Other aspects of the bonus include not missing a call for snow removal, not having any supervisor or customer com- plains and coming to work with a positive attitude. "We want this bonus to be portrayed as something they earned," Wylie says. Adds Pettiecord: "I'd much rather reward them for being productive than pay for a broken part." Pettiecord reports the response so far has been what the two envisioned. "We've only had one person who didn't get their bonus for a month," he reports. "We're ecstatic if everyone gets it." J. Pettiecord's heavy haul division delivers the company's new grinder.