In the tree care industry, safety is everything. From the moment a chain saw roars to life or a climber ascends into the canopy, risk is ever present. For decades, safety programs have focused on controlling that risk through policies, checklists and training modules. These approaches often are driven by compliance with standards like ANSI Z133, OSHA regulations and internal policies. They work – but only up to a point.

Across high-risk industries, including utility vegetation management and residential tree care, a shift is occurring. It’s called “Safety Differently,” and it challenges many of our long-held assumptions. More important, it offers a practical, respectful and empowering way to support the people who face risk every day – our field employees.

So what does Safety Differently mean, and how does it change the experience of work for the trimmer in the bucket, the climber in the tree or the ground worker watching the drop zone?

Let’s climb into it.

“Safety Differently” urges leaders to close the gap between “work-as-imagined” and “work-as-done” by listening to those who do the work. All photos courtesy of The Davey Tree Expert Company.

From controlling behavior to understanding work
Traditional safety programs tend to assume that errors come from broken rules or poor choices. As a result, field employees are trained to follow the “right way,” and if something goes wrong, the investigation often centers on what someone failed to do.

But this approach can feel like it blames the very people it’s meant to protect. In contrast, Safety Differently starts from a different premise; people are not the problem, they are the solution. The fieldworker isn’t seen as the last line of defense, but as the one adapting, responding and recovering in the face of uncertainty.

Work-as-imagined vs. work-as-done
This is a cornerstone of Safety Differently. In an office or boardroom, work is imagined as a series of steps that follow a logical order. But anyone who has spent time on a job site knows that real work is messy, fluid and filled with tradeoffs. Weather, customer demands, terrain, equipment condition, crew composition – these all shape how the work gets done.

Safety Differently urges leaders to close the gap between “work-as-
imagined” and “work-as-done” by listening to those who do the work. This isn’t about ignoring rules or relaxing standards. It’s about designing systems and processes that reflect reality and support crews in making good decisions in the moment.

What field employees really need
Let’s be honest: the average arborist doesn’t want to sit through another slide deck about PPE. What they want is to go home safely, earn a living and be respected for their knowledge and contribution. Safety Differently respects that desire and focuses on what matters most at the crew level.

Here are three ways it changes the experience of safety in the field.

1. It starts with trust, not control
When safety is framed as a matter of following rules, the response to incidents often defaults to retraining, punishment or tightening controls. That’s a form of distrust. It sends a message that, “We don’t believe you’re trying to do the right thing.”

Safety Differently flips the script. It assumes that field employees are doing their best to succeed under difficult conditions. The question becomes: What made sense to the person at the time? This isn’t about excusing mistakes – it’s about understanding context.

When field employees know that management seeks to understand, not just punish, they’re more likely to speak up. They’ll report near misses, admit when something feels off and share ideas that improve the system for everyone.

2. It emphasizes learning over blame
Imagine this scenario: A ground worker sets a drop zone, but a limb swings wide and clips a fence. No one is hurt, but the property owner is upset. Traditionally, the investigation might focus on whether the drop zone was marked correctly, whether the ground worker followed procedure and if disciplinary action is needed.

In the Safety Differently model, the focus shifts to learning. How was the decision made? What information was available? Were the procedures practical in this situation? And critically: What can we improve to reduce the chance of this happening again – not just for this worker, but for everyone?

This turns incidents into opportunities for learning, not just enforcement. It also includes field employees in the conversation. After all, they are the ones who best understand the pressures and tradeoffs in the moment.

3. It makes safety a shared responsibility
In many safety cultures, safety feels like a separate domain, owned by the safety department or enforced by the foreperson. That can unintentionally send the message that safety is someone else’s job.

Safety Differently encourages a culture where safety is integrated into how people talk, plan and solve problems. It becomes something we do with people, not to them. Field employees aren’t just rule followers – they’re co-creators of safe work environments.

In practice, this might mean holding learning teams (a special type of analysis) after high-risk jobs, inviting crews to help write or revise procedures or encouraging daily debriefs that ask, “What surprised us today?” or “What could we do better next time?”

Safety Differently might mean climbers and bucket operators help rewrite policies for aerial rescue, chain-saw use or electrical hazards. The goal isn’t to lower the bar – it’s to raise relevance and usability.

What this looks like in the field
You might be wondering, “What does all this look like on a job site?”

Here are a few examples from organizations applying Safety Differently principles.

• Job briefings as conversations: Instead of a foreperson reading from a form, crews discuss the job plan together. They highlight what’s tricky, what’s unclear and where backup plans are needed. This builds shared understanding and surfaces risks that a checklist alone might miss.
• “Good catch” as valuable data: When someone reports a close call or a hazard, it’s celebrated as a learning opportunity. Leaders follow up not with, “Why didn’t you…?” but with, “What helped you catch this?” and “How can we make it easier for others to catch it, too?”
• Supporting the front line after incidents: After an injury or a near miss, instead of asking “Who screwed up?” leaders ask, “What did we miss in our system?” and “What do you need from us now?” This protects psychological safety and encourages honest reflection.
• Crew involvement in procedure development: Climbers and bucket operators help rewrite policies for aerial rescue, chain-saw use or electrical hazards. The goal isn’t to lower the bar – it’s to raise relevance and usability.

What safety professionals can do differently
If you’re in a leadership or safety role, you might be wondering, “What’s my part in this?” Start with these shifts.

• Go to the work: Get out into the field and ask people how they really do the job. Be curious, not corrective.
• Be a translator: Help leadership understand the reality of field work. Bring stories and examples, not just data.
• Create spaces to talk about work: Use tailgates, stand downs or post-job reviews to ask open-ended questions. Listen more than you speak.
• Redefine success: Instead of just counting injuries or inspections, track how many improvements come from field feedback. Celebrate or at least recognize what goes right, not just what goes wrong.
• Use a learning team model: Instead of investigating to find blame, seek to understand why something happened, not just what happened. Let micro-experiments lead you to
  system-wide improvements.

Challenges and pushback
This shift isn’t always easy. Some may see it as “soft” or worry that it relaxes discipline. Others may struggle with the idea of loosening control or not assigning blame.

But Safety Differently isn’t about removing accountability, it’s about expanding it. It asks all of us – workers, supervisors, executives – to take responsibility for understanding how work really gets done, and for making that work safer, smarter and more resilient.

A culture that respects – and relies on – the worker
The heart of Safety Differently is respect. Not in the abstract, but in the day-to-day reality of how we treat the people doing the work. It says, “We see you. We value your expertise. We know you care. And we’re here to support you.”

When that respect is felt – not just talked about – something changes. Crews stop hiding problems. Supervisors stop covering mistakes. People start speaking up, looking out for each other and building a culture that truly protects what matters most – our people.

But let’s be clear, this isn’t just about changing tone or messaging. It’s about fundamentally rethinking how we manage risk and create safety in dynamic, high-risk environments like tree care. In traditional models, safety is often pursued through control: more rules, more oversight, more compliance. These efforts come from a good place, but they often miss the mark in the field, where success and failure hinge on human adaptability.

Safety Differently acknowledges that safety emerges not from strict adherence to ideal conditions, but from the real-time adjustments workers make every day. It’s the ground worker who spots the change in wind direction and pauses the worker aloft before they make the cut. It’s the climber who chooses to use an alternate tie-in because the primary one feels suspect. These aren’t exceptions, they’re the norm. And they represent the expertise we should be studying, honoring and learning from.

This approach also invites a shift in leadership. We move from a top-down model, where safety is something handed down from corporate, to a partnership model, where safety is co-created. Executives and safety managers become facilitators of dialogue, not just enforcers of rules. Supervisors become coaches, not cops. And field employees become trusted agents of insight and resilience.

Conclusion
Ultimately, Safety Differently doesn’t lower the bar. It raises it – but in a way that is more sustainable, more human and more aligned with how work really happens. It challenges us to stop asking, “Who failed to follow the rule?” and start asking, “What made it hard to do the right thing – and how can we make it easier next time?”

For the tree care industry, this is a powerful opportunity. We work in a world of dynamic risks, shifting conditions and complex decisions. We cannot script our way to safety. But we can listen better. We can design better. And we can lead in ways that elevate the judgment, skill and humanity of the people on the front lines.

When we do that, safety becomes more than a program or policy. It becomes the natural outcome of a system that trusts, supports and learns from its workers. That’s how we build a culture of safety – not by tightening the reins, but by lifting people up.

That’s Safety Differently. And it starts with us.

Timothy M. Walsh, CTSP, is vice president, safety & training, with The Townsend Company LLC, a dual-accredited, 48-year TCIA member company based in Muncie, Indiana. He holds two master’s degrees and is working on his doctorate. He has served as a voting member of the ASC Z133 and serves on the Utility Arborist Association as past president, and on the National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA) safety workgroup.

This article is based on his presentation on the same topic at TCI EXPO ’24 in Baltimore, Maryland.