![](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Fish-010622.jpg?w=2048\")
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For a night owl like Waste Management CEO Jim Fish, waking up for 1 a.m. safety briefings could make for a brutally long day. But Fish did it because his late father-in-law, a union pipefitter, told him if he showed up to those meetings\u2014not just once, but regularly\u2014he would learn a lot and build a rapport with line workers. <\/p>\n
Fish\u2019s father-in-law hit the nail on the head.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was so valuable to me in terms of learning the business and learning the people,\u201d Fish told Fortune<\/em>. \u201cPart of what I learned\u2014I was always a finance guy\u2014was that it\u2019s not always just dollars and cents.\u201d<\/p>\n Waste Management has named safety as a cornerstone of the company\u2019s operations and has set a goal to reduce its total recordable injury rate (TRIR) by 3% annually with a TRIR target of 2.0 by 2030. If the company hits the target, that means workers would have suffered two recordable injuries per 100 employees per year or per 200,000 hours worked. Last year, the company reduced overall injuries by 5.8%, according to its sustainability report, and lost-time injuries by 2.4%.<\/p>\n \u201cYou make investments in safety or investments in people and they don\u2019t necessarily show up on the bottom line\u2014at least not immediately,\u201d Fish said. \u201cSafety tends to show up in longer terms, and if you do have a safe organization, that will eventually show up on your income statement\u2014but it takes a while.\u201d<\/p>\n Waste Management, with $22 billion in revenue in 2024, is the U.S. and Canada\u2019s largest provider of trash and recycling transfer and disposal services. With a market cap of about $90 billion, the Houston, Tex.-based company counts more than 60,000 employees. Fish, 63, has served as president and CEO since November 2016 but has been with the company for two decades. Prior to taking the top job, Fish held roles including chief financial officer, senior vice president of the eastern group, and area VP for Pennsylvania and West Virginia. <\/p>\n Up until halfway through his time as CFO, Fish would go out about every four to six weeks and haul trash with crews\u2014generally about every time he went to a middle-of-the-night safety meeting. Eventually, the board told him they weren\u2019t crazy about the idea of him throwing trash, but he could still ride along in the trucks with workers. Now, Fish said he visits about 20 to 30 sites a year, and takes about five to 10 trips to ride along with drivers. He tells them any subject is fair game, including sports, politics, safety, or pay, but they have to make sure to chat because Fish might fall asleep otherwise. <\/p>\n \u201cMost drivers are a little nervous when I get in the cab but after about 10 minutes they kind of loosen up and tell me what they\u2019re thinking,\u201d said Fish. <\/p>\n That\u2019s why, he said, those early morning meetings were so valuable, and his learnings went far beyond injury stats and safety briefings. <\/p>\n He picked up on why Boston\u2019s productivity plummeted during winter months, said Fish. He couldn\u2019t see why there would be such a difference between winter and summer but then going out in below-zero temperatures where his hands and feet were freezing changed his mind completely, he said. It\u2019s the kind of issue that might only show up as a data fluctuation in a corporate office but becomes clearer and more meaningful after riding through icy routes covered with snow-engulfed trash and recycling cans. <\/p>\n \u201cIt makes a huge difference if there\u2019s ice and snow on the road or if the can is iced in,\u201d said Fish. \u201cAnd that sounds kind of simple, but it wasn\u2019t something that I really, fully even understood sitting in a corporate office until I actually went out into the field.\u201d<\/p>\n Another key learning came from witnessing the diversity of Waste Management\u2019s workforce and making small tweaks to make sure employees were clearly informed. <\/p>\n While visiting a district in Rhode Island where about 95% of the drivers in the company\u2019s residential business line were either Puerto Rican or Dominican, Fish attended a 1 a.m. briefing. The safety results in that line of business were pretty \u201cterrible,\u201d Fish admitted, and he wanted to understand why. He picked up on the fact that most of the workers spoke English but their first language was Spanish. The manager there didn\u2019t speak any Spanish, so he used another driver to translate for him while he delivered safety information. <\/p>\n Fish decided to look into promoting somebody from the district who wanted to be a manager\u2014and who was bilingual. The company made the promotion to a driver.<\/p>\n \u201cMagically, or probably not magically, their safety results turned around immediately,\u201d said Fish. \u201cThere was something being lost in the translation.\u201d<\/p>\n The change also addressed an inadvertent signal that was being sent to workers, which was that they might never have an opportunity to move up in the company because they were native Spanish speakers, he said. The inadvertent message was that the managers there would likely always be \u201ca white guy like Jim,\u201d said Fish, who has also been working regularly on his Spanish. <\/p>\n Explicitly addressing that narrative improved safety results and empowered people to apply for positions they might not have thought they were qualified for previously, he said. The company also hired someone at the site to teach Spanish to other workers so they could become conversant. <\/p>\n \u201cTheir safety results absolutely turned around and I don\u2019t think that was a coincidence at all,\u201d he said. \u201cNothing was lost in translation anymore and the drivers couldn’t say, \u2018Well, I didn\u2019t understand what my manager was saying\u2019 because the manager was saying it in both English and Spanish.\u201d<\/p>\n The bilingual manager Waste Management hired at the site became one of the company\u2019s best, said Fish. He unfortunately passed away from a heart attack, said Fish, but he continued up the ladder from driver to route manager, district manager, and then senior district manager. He likely would have continued moving up if he hadn\u2019t tragically passed away. Fish noted the manager was also singled out to go on a trip for the top 200 employees to the Ritz Carlton in Hawaii with his wife. <\/p>\n Ultimately, in Fish\u2019s view, the core of the company and where Waste Management differentiates itself from competitors, is at the critical field level\u2014not the C-suite. Better understanding the workforce and how it can be more productive and efficient could best be gleaned by showing up to the grueling early mornings every month early in his executive career.<\/p>\n \u201cI know my title is important, but I\u2019m not more important than anybody else at this company,\u201d said Fish. \u201cI\u2019m not a better employee or better father\u2026 we just have different level positions.\u201d<\/p>\n This story was originally featured on Fortune.com<\/p>\n #CEO #billion #Waste #Management #hauled #trash #a.m #safety #briefingsIts #dollars #cents<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For a night owl like Waste Man… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8947,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[7023,579,7024,2005,7025,529,1030,7021,1055,2010,214,1609,7022,867],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8946"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}