Doug Muth, owner of the newly established DJM Tree, LLC, based in Media, Pennsylvania, says he took valuable lessons away from his Certified Treecare Safety Professional (CTSP) training.

“The main benefit for me was learning how the information is absorbed – through auditory, visual or hands-on training – and identifying how individual tree workers are picking up that information. It was something I had never thought of before,” says Muth.

TCIA’s CTSP credentialing program trains tree workers in how to train other workers, with the aim of them going back and helping promote a culture of safety at their workplaces.

A former crew leader for Giroud Tree & Lawn – an accredited, 34-year TCIA member company based in Huntington Valley, Pa., and now a SavATree company – Muth says Giroud always had a good safety culture. Muth worked 16 years with Lou Giroud, founder of the company, and his sons, including as Giroud’s safety trainer for about 18 employees making up four or five crews. This past August, Giroud sold the business to Sav-ATree, and Muth decided it was a good time to transition into his own business.

After earning his CTSP credential at TCI EXPO in Baltimore in 2013, Muth returned to Giroud to implement what he’d learned. He started what he calls a “tell, show, do” routine, providing verbal instruction, demonstrating the lesson once, then having crew members do it under the trainer’s observation once, then a second time for safety and again at a later date to re-check proficiency.

Did that method work?

“Yes, we had a good group of staff. You always have a difficult trainee, and crew members filter in and out, but we had a great response, and that came through repetition,” Muth notes. These sessions ranged from scheduled “Tailgate Tuesday” training to his routine visits to half-a-dozen work sites a week. “Following up and being present really had a good effect on the crews.

“What we learned right away was that we were lacking documentation,” says Muth. “We had done gear checks, sign-in sheets and on-site training, but quite simply, it was not all getting documented and put into the employee files. That was my responsibility, to go back at the end of the day, jot down five to 10 bullet points for that employee to work on and put it into their file for the annual review.”

It was rewarding both for the company and worker to see that a worker had become proficient in, say, handling crane work at some level, in eight months. It was quantitative proof that the worker had advanced, notes Muth.

One area of training he would like to see tweaked is to have more material added to TCIA’s Tailgate Safety training manual, to cater not just to the new hires but to the advancement of the veteran workers, some of whom take to Google and YouTube to supplement training.

“We got to the point where we worked through the manual three or four times and started to repeat topics. I had to come up with topics that weren’t in the manual,” Muth says.

He notes, “Having a map for yourself as a trainer and sharing those lists with the trainees, so they can actually see where they need to be going, helps drive their advancement.”

Meanwhile, he is working on his CEUs for renewing his CTSP – and his own advancement.

Click here to learn more about the CTSP credential.