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In this special World Mental Health Day episode of Extending the Ladder, host Nancy Novak, Compass’ Chief Innovation Officer, and Rachel Neal, VP of Global Safety, explore the transformative impact of the Frontliner Program. Together, they discuss how this groundbreaking initiative is redefining leadership in the construction industry by promoting a culture of inclusion, prioritizing safety, and addressing mental health challenges head-on.
With a rich background in psychology, human environmental sciences, and over 14 years working in safety, Rachel brings a unique perspective to this discussion.
Key Topics:
💬 Empathy in Leadership: How Compass is creating safe spaces for frontline supervisors, or « Frontliners, » to engage with their teams and break down stigmas.
🧠 Mental Health in Construction: Addressing the alarming statistic that construction workers are up to 5 times more likely to die by suicide.
👷♂️ Frontliner Program: how it helps lift the « veil of silence » surrounding mental health challenges.
🤖 AI and Safety Innovations: How artificial intelligence is transforming construction safety by identifying risks in real-time and enhancing decision-making on-site.
🚧 Future of the Trades: Attracting new talent by aligning industry culture with the values of the next generation.
This episode is packed with insights for anyone passionate about leadership, mental health, and the future of the construction industry.
Read the full transcript below:
Nancy Novak: Hi everybody. Welcome to the next episode of Extending The Ladder from Compass Datacenters. I’m Nancy Novak. I’m our chief of innovation, and we are extremely fortunate to have Rachel Neal with us today. Rachel is leading up our global safety program and she has some exciting things to share with our audience.
But to start us out, I’d like for Rachel to kind of introduce herself, let us know how she got here on her journey, and just a little bit about the new program we’ve launched here at Compass and what inspired her to put this initiative forward for us.
Rachel Neal: That’s a lot. Hi, Nancy. Thank you for having me on here. Yeah, that’s a lot. But my name is Rachel. I’m the vice president of Global Safety for Compass Datacenters. I’ve been with Compass for two years now, been a wonderful two years. I’ve got a background really in social science. I’ve got degree in psychology and another degree in human environmental sciences, and I’ve got multiple degrees, it gets kind of silly. But most of that is in a social science background, which is very related to psychology and human behavior. So it’s really interesting. I like talking about that because I look at where I’m at now, and I decided to change careers about 14 years ago and decided to follow my heart. And it’s just so neat how it kind of all came back around and there’s so much of what I did previously that lines up with we’re doing and with safety in general.
But with this new program that we have, it’s especially exciting that I can kind of tap into that previous life of mine. It’d be focusing on people.
Nancy Novak: That’s what it’s all about, right?
Rachel Neal: Yeah. So of course, safety has always been about people. But this particular program that we have, we’re pretty proud of where it’s going, and it’s very new, so we still have a lot to explore and how we’re going to actually measure impact from it.
Nancy Novak: I do want to point out that it was awesome for you to start out with your background in different industries, industry sectors basically, because I think that human element is so important and critical to the culture we have here at Compass, and I think it’s really important for the industry to understand how impactful that can be. And I also like the idea around our audience seeing that transferable skills are a real thing, and the skills that you have have 100% enhanced what we can do innovatively with our global safety program. So thanks for starting out with that. And I do think that maybe doing a little bit of a deep dive on how you came up with the idea around frontliners is a great way to start our episode out here.
Rachel Neal: I always chuckle when it’s time for me to talk about that because I have very vivid dreams when I dream at night. A lot of people don’t have dreams, but I do, and they’re very vivid. And I will wake up in the middle of the night from having something very vivid and the weirdest things come to mind. And in this particular case, I woke up, it was around 2:30 in the morning, and I had this idea of us needing to do something more special for our frontline supervisors in the construction industry. There’s just not enough being done. And I wasn’t really sure what that looked like, but the motivation was there to create something, create something formal and special.
It’s not any secret that our frontline supervisors in the construction industry are the most crucial people, it’s the most crucial role out there in the field for safety, for setting their crews up to be able to do their job safely and to be able to go home at the end of the day. Nobody should get hurt at work. People should get to go make a living and be able to go home safely at the end of the day. We know that frontline supervisors, that’s where the rubber meets the road when it comes to setting people up to do their job safely.
So having said that, with us knowing that those folks are the most important, we need to be doing more for them. There’s lots of construction companies, there’s lots of subcontractors, there’s lots of general contractors, and they’ve all got safety programs. Some are more sophisticated than others, but I think for the most part, most companies are trying, they’re trying and they’re doing their best. We hear a lot about training. Oh, we’re training on this and we’re training on that. But what I really thought and found was that there’s just not enough being done to empower and to lift up and to create a special place for frontline supervisors. So I just brought this subject up to Compass, to you, to the ELT. It just took off. It just took off.
And I’ll tell you, as a safety professional, I’ve worked for and with a lot of other companies that maybe they don’t put safety in the same lights as Compass does, it’s been very refreshing to work for a company that does that. And as an owner, man, we’re in such a great position, all the way to this field to be able to drive down this effort.
Nancy Novak: Well, the hope is to change the whole industry, at least to get, I suppose, some momentum going in that direction, I would hope. I picked up on the fact that you said the frontliners, the frontline supervision is the number one most important role when it comes to safety, which is totally true. And they have a huge impact on their crew because we also rely on them for production, and we rely on them for quality and all of these other things.
As you know, I mean, a safe project can definitely be or will be a more productive and a better quality, higher quality job. So I think it just really all ties together. I love the fact that this focus on the frontline of defense, basically in the field where these folks have a deep relationship with the skilled trades and are driving the behavior in the field, can make a difference in the overall industry and in the livelihoods of these individuals. And I think that focus is important.
I do want us to dig in a little bit about some of the tactical things that we’re doing, so people understand what it is we’re talking about and how that relates back to our culture. And also a little bit about, let’s bring in a little bit diversity. And now when I say a diversity I’m not just talking gender diversity, but also experience diversity and different viewpoints from the trades, and what we’ve learned so far after launching this.
Rachel Neal: As far as tactical approach, the first thing that we’re doing is that we’ve done over the last several months is have kickoffs on our active sites that have been ongoing for quite some time. And a couple of those are pretty large campuses with 100 frontliners that we have on these sites. So it was a big seat, a big task to get this kicked-off, to get our general contractors to be on board, but also understanding the intent behind the program.
So at this kickoff, we really talked to all of the frontliners and the general contractors about this notion of looking inward and asking, what could we do differently? In multiple ways, what could we do differently? So it doesn’t have to mean that something bad happened, that there was an accident or an incident or someone got hurt. It’s about anything. What could we do differently to have a different outcome? So that’s really what it all rests on.
But to be able to ask yourself that, you have to have humility. You have to have a certain level of humility. And that ties directly into our Compass culture, our corporate culture. It’s our number one conviction, humility in, pride out. It takes a lot. It takes a lot to be able to do that. And we’re talking about the construction industry. We’re asking folks who are in the construction industry to out loud ask themselves what could I do differently, to talk about those things in front of others, it’s a little crazy
Nancy Novak: To be vulnerable. To show that there’s power in that and that that’s how you change hearts and minds. And I do think that if I’m the audience, I’m still wondering, how are you doing this? And I think maybe some of the testimonials around the way we launched it and some of the recent experiences you had would be helpful.
Rachel Neal: Okay, great. Yeah, I love talking about these. I love it. I’ve got multiple, now that we’ve done this, the very first kickoff we had at the end, we asked the question to, there were about 150 frontliners in the room, that’s a lot. And I opened the question up and asked, is there any chance anyone here has something that they have reflected on that they think that they might be able to do differently with their crews? And it took a minute, but pretty quickly, one gentleman raised his hand and he got up in front of the whole group and he said, « One thing I could do differently is I can show more appreciation to my crew. I can make sure they understand how much I appreciate their hard work. »
Nancy Novak: Wow.
Rachel Neal: It was so impactful. I think the whole room was pretty surprised that this person was able to get up with humility and admit that there was something that he could do differently. And we recognized him big time, we rewarded him for getting up, and it was a really, really big deal.
I can talk about what happened just this past weekend. We had a frontliner huddle with, it was about 25 folks, it was a pretty big huddle. But they were all in. They were focused. They were paying attention. We gave them a couple of examples of things that had happened on the other sites that we can learn from, what we could have done differently in those situations. And then at the end opened it up, does anyone have anything that they could share personally that they think maybe they could do differently to have a different outcome? And two gentlemen raise their hands. One said, « You know what? I could be more empathetic. »
Nancy Novak: That’s amazing.
Rachel Neal: Yeah. Empathy, to talk about empathy in construction-
Nancy Novak: In construction. It’s like, wow.
Rachel Neal: Yeah. Right. So I was taken back a little, but that was awesome. And he actually reflected a little bit about what that means and to try to teach the others. And then another gentleman raised his hand and he said, « I could be better at time management, » which was also huge for him to admit that. And those kinds of things, the subject matter that they bring up is the important stuff for us to focus on. What are they talking about? Because are these things that we can help with?
Maybe our frontliners need some kind of support when it comes to time management. And maybe it’s not necessarily for us to take care of, but it induces a conversation with our general contractors and our subcontractors about, look, if our frontline supervisors, the most important people in regard to safety on our jobs, are saying that they could do better at these things. Well, maybe they need support being better at those things.
Nancy Novak: Yeah. How can you facilitate that? I mean, those are two amazing examples. Because I guarantee you the audience is thinking, you’re talking about incidents or things that happen on the project when really what you’re talking about is that behavior. And I just think also when these frontliners tell you things like empathy or time management or so forth, and then they give you more of the why behind it, it helps us stay curious. Which aligns again with our culture to stay curious, to ask more questions, to say, give me some examples of that. Is there something that we could do on our side? Is there something that the general contractor might be able to do on their side? Is there a way that we can tackle this together? And I think that, like you said, that’s that human element of bringing that conversation alive and having a very safe environment to be able to hold those conversations.
Rachel Neal: Exactly. And it’s not that it doesn’t relate to injuries or incidents, because it absolutely can. If we’re able to drill down, a root cause analysis for why an incident occurred and a frontline supervisor or frontliner was able to acknowledge that there was something that he or she could have done differently to prevented that, that’s huge. That’s huge. And that ties back into our Compass culture too, because failure on the path to success is one of our guiding principles, right?
Nancy Novak: Yes, it is.
Rachel Neal: And we celebrate those things. Compass does. When we have failures, we celebrate them because we know that we’ve learned something from them, and those things probably won’t happen again. So that’s a reason to celebrate, and we should be doing that in the field when our folks acknowledge, « You know what? I messed up. I messed up, and this is what happened because I messed up. » And for them to get up and say that out loud, we should celebrate that. We should recognize them.
Nancy Novak: That is an important differentiator. The celebration, the word celebration. And the reason I know this is because I’ve had people say this to me in other venues where they’re like, « Well, a lot of companies will do lessons learned. They’ll share the mistakes that they made. They’ll talk about the root causes of these mistakes, but they don’t celebrate the mistake when they hit a ditch. » Which is what we do because we know that we’re on the path to success now. We know that this is just any tuition that we pay, we’re going to take advantage of it and we’re going to share, and we need that vulnerability and the humility from our frontliners to be able to feel comfortable and safe in sharing these things. So that we can celebrate that and then expand the lessons learned to other projects.
And then also, I think one of the examples that you were telling me about the other day was the conversations that happened between the different foremen in the field and the disciplines just organically, not in a formal huddle or a launch. Right?
Rachel Neal: Yeah. Right.
Nancy Novak: That’s really cool. I think you might have some examples of that happening. And if you’ve heard it happen once or twice, imagine the way that can spread. Like the ripple in the pond, right?
Rachel Neal: Yeah, absolutely. It happened last week. It happened last week on the sites. We had done this kickoff, and later in the day, field leadership from the general contractor came in and told me that they just overheard a frontliner having a conversation with their crew about, « Well, what could we do differently here that would make this safer? »
Nancy Novak: That’s fantastic.
Rachel Neal: That’s right. And it wasn’t induced. It came natural. It was just organic. And it takes practice. It really does take practice. Anything does.
Nancy Novak: Yes, it does.
Rachel Neal: So as long as we can keep our general contractors moving this forward, using the language, just using the word frontliner. We make it very clear that any frontline supervisor on a Compass Datacenters sites is called a frontliner. And I think it’s a great time to mention part of the diversity is that we know that there are a lot more women that are stepping up into these leadership roles in construction, foreman, superintendent, project managers, and sometimes there’s a struggle on what to call them, this word formal and has been around for a really long time, and there’s been lots of debate on what do we call women who are foremen? I’ve heard the word forewoman. I don’t know, it’s different, and maybe it’s just because it’s new and different. But it doesn’t even matter for us because they’re all frontlines.
Nancy Novak: To give a general neutral term is really lovely.
Rachel Neal: That’s exactly right.
Nancy Novak: I think that’s the way to go. And I think it’s very catchy, and I think it’s also something people can relate to. Because they are the frontline of our defense when it comes to all sorts of things, like I said, quality, safety, production. And I do think that the construction industry does have a certain stigma. We face the stigma when it comes to the macho-ism that we experienced in many ways, and also the mental health aspect of construction and some of the challenges that the industry has that other industries don’t share. Due to the fact that you’re located on sites and in environments that are ever-changing. So maybe we should dig in a little bit to some of that stigma or how the frontliner program might be able to address some of those things.
Rachel Neal: Yeah. Well, you mentioned it a moment ago a long list of things that these frontliners have to deal with, schedules, production, quality, those are added stressors to anyone’s job lives. A statistic came out several years ago that indicated that workers in the construction industry have between a four and five times higher rate of death by suicide than any other industry. So the accuracy of that’s not really that important. It’s huge. Regardless of what it actually is, that’s huge. And we should be drilling down to understand the why behind that.
Now, one thing we do know is that construction is stressful for everyone, and we can list out those stressors for the workers. Stability in a job. When this job’s over, where am I going to go? I need another dollar an hour, and can I find another company that could pay me a little bit more? The weather, having to face the heat or-
Nancy Novak: The element.
Rachel Neal: … or the weather. That’s right. We could list a very long list of work stressors.
Nancy Novak: The commutes, the moving, the [inaudible 00:18:36] continue.
Rachel Neal: Yeah. And even just the macho-ness that you mentioned is a stressor as well on the job. So there’s a lot-
Nancy Novak: That’s why it was so surprising when I heard you say someone mentioned empathy. I mean, that’s shocking and fantastic. But yes, I didn’t mean to interrupt, but I’m like, yes, the macho-ism is there and there’s systemic reasons why it’s there. But this is one of those ways I think frontliners can conquer that.
Rachel Neal: Yeah, I think so too. And what we’re really trying to do, again, it’s providing a safe space for us to talk about these very sensitive subjects that by suicide is not a easy subject. Depression, anxiety, these are real things that a lot of people experience, and there’s this expression that I like to use called lifting the veil of silence. And that’s what we’re really trying to do here with this program, is provide a platform and a safe space to talk about those things. It’s not in an effort to try to help treat people. That’s not the goal here. The goal is to allow the communication to happen so that we can talk about these things, and so that frontline supervisors can be encouraged to connect a little more with their crew members, understand them a little better if they do know that there’s something, a personal challenge that they might be experiencing too, to be able to be a resource. And by resource, I mean know how to provide resources.
Nancy Novak: Right, right. Yeah. And just an ear or shoulder to be able to bounce things off of, I suppose, is something that I think our industry has discouraged in the past. My husband, he was a frontliner for many years, he’s retired now. But to this day, he stays in touch with his crew. I mean, there is a special relationship there. I think it’s really endearing, but at the same time, it’s something that we need to encourage more of and to show that appreciation. And I do think that it’ll help change our industry in a lot of positive ways, because I love this industry and our industry is short of skilled trades right now.
So I wanted to throw that back out to, Rachel. I mean, as far as being able to attract more talent into the industry, what’s future look like? What does good look like there?
Rachel Neal: Well, I think it’s so interesting because we’ve got this big push now. Obviously, there’s a labor shortage, and we need more folks. But the push towards the trades for the young people who are getting out into the workforce to encourage them to look at the trades. But what we’re also looking at is a different generation of young people who find more value in this, making personal connections. There’s more value there for those young people. So being able to adapt this industry to match what the young population coming into the trades, they’re kind of expecting it.
Nancy Novak: Yeah, it’s what they’re looking for. It’s the purpose of having something that does give you, I suppose, a positive way of contributing.
Rachel Neal: Right. And positive feedback, meeting positive feedback, meeting that guidance that we’re trying to encourage our… Which our frontliners right now, a lot of them have been in their trade for a long time. We’ve had two come up to us and tell us, « Look, I’ve been doing this for 25 years, » one said 30, « I’ve been doing this a long time, and I’ve never had these kinds of conversations at work. » So, it’s really encouraging.
Nancy Novak: It is. And I do believe that it’s going to attract more talent into our industry, which I would just love to see that if it can catch on. So I guess on that note, advice wise, if you were to talk to somebody who said, « Hey, I want to do something similar to this, » or, « I’d like to at least be able to talk about it so that we can encourage others to do something similar, whether it’s a specialty contractor, a general contractor, an owner like Compass, » whoever, what would your advice be in order to get this sold? I guess, because as you said, the Compass leadership is all in, and we were all in the minute we heard about it. How do you communicate that so that others can follow suit?
Rachel Neal: Well, that’s the key right there. We use that expression a lot, it’s top down. Safety, it’s got to come from the top down. This program is also going to have to have that support from the top down. That can be a challenge. Absolutely, 100% challenge. So regardless of what people’s intents are, if you don’t have that support, that’s going to be a real challenge. Now, if the executive leadership is on board, it becomes much easier to prescribe how your program’s going to roll out.
So realize, when I came up with this idea, I didn’t have all the details, but after we started having role play wheels where we got a group of people together and threw the idea out, then all of these wonderful suggestions started coming out about, « Oh, we should use our corporate culture. » Our Compass culture is we look at the failures on the path to success. We should incorporate that into this. Humility, our core conviction is humility. So having that role play wheel and getting everyone else’s ideas through their lens was really what drove this forward. It might look differently in other companies depending on what they do or what their specialty is or what their position is. Because as an owner, we’re in a different position than say, a general contractor or a subcontractor.
Nancy Novak: Sure.
Rachel Neal: So that would be the first piece of advice.
Nancy Novak: So, Rachel, I love the thoughts that you had around how to communicate this for others, because we do want this to be some momentum that picks up in the industry. Compass does like to be first to market with things. We love having innovative ideas. We do not want to be last to market because what’s the point in that, right? So if you want change, you want change, tide lift all boats, right?
So I was wondering as far as industry trends and innovations that are shaping the way we talk about safety, and the frontliners being one example of the shift, what are you seeing out there from our clients, from our contractors, from our trades people? What other trends or innovations can you talk about? Because like I said, frontliners is a great component that we have here, but there might be some other things that we’re seeing that we can also share.
Rachel Neal: Yeah, I see AI is going to have a huge impact, and hopefully just the next few years that we’ll be able to really have some hands-on things that we can use that will help safety in the construction industry. We have right now, we’ve got awesome camera systems that are starting to be able to pick up when there’s a higher risk activity going on and is able to send out alerts to say, « Hey, somebody might want to pay attention over here and make sure that proper risk assessments have been done. » So that’s really exciting to think that we’re on the edge of being able to have a little more awareness around what, what’s going on to then ensure that the proper planning has gone into place, that management has made the right decisions on prepping for those particular activities. I can’t even imagine, I can’t even guess at all the ways that AI is going to be able to help us keep people safe. I mean, isn’t that just amazing to think that the benefit of AI is that we’ll keep people from getting hurt or even killed?
Nancy Novak: That’s a great point. I do look at AI as a multiplier, and it optimizes what we already do from a people and processes. So I love the thought around AI bringing that human element back in to where, like you said, the awareness is there, the conversations can take place, the behavior can be driven by these positive observations or observations that are just generating a deeper conversation.
Rachel Neal: Absolutely.
Nancy Novak: And when you say that, I was just thinking having this safe environment, like a frontliners program, when you’re using things like AI to do photo capture and to identify potential risk, it really is going to amplify the ability for AI to do what it wants to do, because you wouldn’t want the trades to think that AI was there to catch them doing something wrong. You really want it to be an enhancement that says AI is there to learn from and to get better and to support the frontliners and the trades that work with them. So I think that’s an important conversation. I think having the safe environment like a frontliners program allows that to occur.
Rachel Neal: Oh, for sure. Yeah, I mean, think about whatever AI could bring to the table and that we could use that information in our frontliner huddles to teach, to educate, to show them ways that we could do things differently, more innovative ways that we could do things and plan things out. Yeah, it’s exciting.
Nancy Novak: I was wondering if, because sports analogies always work so well, and we use AI and other things in sports, especially photo capture and replays and stuff like that, that could be a way to explain to others the benefits of being able to analyze how to do something better from a performance standpoint or just from a thought process around being more organized, more efficient, more safe, those types of things. So I don’t know. I’ll have to think about that a little bit. But I think in our industry, sports analogies seem to work really well.
Rachel Neal: Yeah, they do. But listen, you think about the analytics that are happening in sports right now that are actually potentially predicting what the next play is going to be, what’s the next result going to be. Imagine being able to do that in the construction industry based off of what we’re seeing. Analytics say, there’s a 48% chance that that’s going to fall over based off of everything that it’s already learned.
Nancy Novak: It becomes very predictive and also, again, thought-provoking and encourages conversation. So I love it. So Rachel, give us some closing thoughts that excite you about where we’re headed, and then we will bid adieu to our audience until the next episode of Extending The Ladder.
Rachel Neal: Well, I appreciate you having me on here, and it’s exciting just the feedback that we’re getting so far from the industry on our program. And it just took off fast that we’ve already been asked to speak in multiple locations about what we’re doing. And we want folks to walk away with an idea on how they can make an impact. We’re just one company, but we’re doing our best, we’re doing our best to try to have an impact on this industry, and we think we can do it. We think we can do it with the folks that are on our sites, that they can then take this to their other sites and apply it there, and in the end that we’ll have a real positive change.
Nancy Novak: That’s so exciting. So to the audience, thank you so much for listening. Please share and amplify. And if you hear of other programs that are similar, we would love to hear about it. Thanks again.