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-not just onc, but regularly-he would learn a lot and build a rapport with line workers.
Fish’s father-in-law hit the nail on the head.
“It was so valuable to me in terms of learning the business and learning the people,” Fish told Fortune. “Part of what I learned-I was always a finance guy-was that it’s not always just dollars and cents.”
waste Management has named safety as a cornerstone of the company’s 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%.
“you make investments in safety or investments in people and they don’t necessarily show up on the bottom line-at least not instantly,” Fish said. “Safety tends to show up in longer terms, and if you do have a safe association, that will eventually show up on your income statement-but it takes a while.”
Waste Management, with $22 billion in revenue in 2024, is the U.S. and Canada’s 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 then 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.
Up until halfway through his time as CFO, Fish would go out about every four to six weeks and haul trash with crews-generally about every time he went to a middle-of-the-night safety meeting. Eventually,the board told him they weren’t 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.
“Most 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’re thinking,” said Fish.
That’s why, he said, those early morning meetings were so valuable, and his learnings went far beyond.
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