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Training doesn't end when learners leave the classroom. Tamara Palmer and Chris Byerly of Flagger Force, a leading short-term traffic control company, discuss how they blend communications, microlearning, and audience-centered messaging to keep critical safety information top of mind for a dispersed frontline workforce.

 

 

Show Notes: Tamara Palmer and Chris Byerly share a practical framework for organizations with dispersed or frontline workforces to make training more effective by treating communication as an extension of learning. Their key takeaways include:

• Reinforcement is where learning becomes performance. People forget up to 80–90% of what they learn within a month. Palmer explains how Flagger Force uses mobile microlearning to reinforce classroom training with short, focused lessons that reach employees wherever they work. 
• Treat training like an internal marketing campaign. Byerly argues that simply publishing training isn't enough. Organizations need healthy communication channels that employees actually value, then market learning through messaging that captures attention and builds engagement.
• Different audiences need different messages. Rather than sending everyone the same communication, Palmer shares her "balanced storytelling framework," tailoring messages for office staff, field leaders, and frontline workers based on each group's responsibilities and information needs.
• Understanding people is a strategic advantage. Drawing on employee research, Byerly explains why understanding the motivations, challenges, and needs of frontline workers leads to stronger communication, better learning, and higher engagement. 
• Measure more than clicks. Open rates matter, but they're only the beginning. Palmer discusses using employee questions, microlearning performance, engagement data, and long-term safety outcomes to determine whether learning and communication efforts are actually changing behavior.

Powered by Learning earned Awards of Distinction in the Podcast/Audio and Business Podcast categories from The Communicator Awards and a Gold and Silver Davey Award. The podcast is also named to Feedspot's Top 40 L&D podcasts and Training Industry’s Ultimate L&D Podcast Guide.

Listen to this Powered by Learning episode featuring Flagger Force:

Microlearning that Drives a Culture of Safety

About Chris Byerly:
Chris Byerly is Associate Vice President of Strategy at Flagger Force, where he leads cross-functional growth and transformation initiatives connecting brand, technology, people, and enterprise strategy. He has supported the company’s growth from approximately $30 million to $170 million in revenue through digital transformation, M&A integration, brand evolution, public affairs, and enterprise-wide strategic initiatives. Chris specializes in translating executive vision into scalable systems, aligned teams, and measurable business outcomes. His diverse background includes previous roles with Ahold, Leap Research, and Neiman, as well as serving as a professor of corporate strategy in Beijing. Chris holds a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from Penn State University and a Master of Science in International Management from SOAS University of London.

About Tamara Palmer, MA
Tamara Palmer, MA, is the Internal Communications Manager at Flagger Force, bringing more than 20 years of experience helping organizations communicate with employees and stakeholders across government, nonprofit, academic, and business sectors. In her current role, she manages the mobile app that connects Flagger Force’s highly dispersed workforce of more than 3,000 employees, maintaining a 98% employee activation rate while providing convenient access to resources and safety-based microlearning. Tamara combines digital technology with human-centered collaboration to connect and engage people, forge inspired insights, recommendations, and strategies.

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Transcript:

[00:00:00]

Susan Cort: To reach a dispersed workforce in the field, short-term traffic company Flagger Force leans on microlearning to give workers what they need to know when they need it.

Tamara Palmer: But if there's an incident that occurs, then what we can do is - we can pull from our microlearning archive and push those specific training lessons so it's just-in-time training.

Susan Cort: That's Tamara Palmer, internal communications manager at Flagger Force. Tamara and AVP of Strategy Chris Byerley join d'Vinci's Angeline Evans and me to talk about the intersection of communications and training and how it's giving clear signals to educate their workforce. Next on Powered by Learning.

Announcer: Powered by Learning is brought to you by d'Vinci Interactive. d'Vinci's approach to learning is grounded in 30 years of innovation and expertise. We use proven strategies and leading technology to develop solutions that empower learners to improve quality and boost performance. [00:01:00] Learn more at dvinci.com.

Susan Cort: Joining me now is d'Vinci Client Solutions Consultant, Angeline Evans, and our guests from Flagger Force, Tamara Palmer, Internal Communications Manager, and Chris Byerly, Associate Vice President of Strategy. Welcome to you both.

Angeline Evans: Thank you both for joining us.

Tamara Palmer: Hi.

Susan Cort: Thanks so much for joining us today. And for people who aren't familiar with Flagger Force, start out by telling us a little bit about your organization and then your roles with the company. Chris, let's start with you.

Chris Byerly: Sure. So we're a short-term traffic control company, so the cones, the stop slow paddles, the things that you see on the road. Um, we don't do the long-term stuff like the cattle chutes and that kind of stuff that you go through. What we work with primarily are utilities, like your gas company and, uh, electric company, and when they're doing work on or near the road, we're working with them. And it's a, you know, infrastructure-based, uh, support. Uh, we're not doing a lot [00:02:00] of like road construction work. Uh, it's, it's a little bit more specialized in that way. And we have, , been around for 20 years and been growing every year. And, you know, we provide a lot of, a lot of jobs, for people in, in an entry-level position. And it's, it's a really fun place to work, actually, and it's really interesting to work with a frontline organization. Um, and, uh, you know it's fun.

Susan Cort: Well, certainly, uh, there's no drive that I go on where I don't see Flagger Force out and about on the roads.

Angeline Evans: Yeah.

Susan Cort: and I would think that, uh, you know, safety and training are paramount at Flagger Force. So talk to me a little bit about your individual roles at the company and how you support training

Chris Byerly: Well, I'll start just by saying that I'm AVP of strategy, which is a pretty broad topic, but it centers on communication and, and basically weaving together the different needs of the company into communications [00:03:00] and, and getting people aligned. And so when safety's there, communication's there, and, and this is really where Tamara, I think, shines and, uh, has great partnerships across the organization

Tamara Palmer: Yeah. Uh, thanks, Chris. The-- my role in support of the company and communications and training is to really just reinforce everything that we have to ensure our field employees know. We have, um, more than three thousand employees at this point.

Angeline Evans: Wow.

Tamara Palmer: Right? Yeah, and we're operating... It's a lot, right? It's a lot for this…

Angeline Evans: Yeah

Tamara Palmer: it's a lot of people.

How do you get training and messaging to that group of people consistently in a timely manner, and especially when we're operating in more than fourteen, fifteen states now?

Susan Cort: And I would think you're onboarding people often as your organization's growing, so the need for training and, and being there at the right moment in time is probably pretty great.

Tamara Palmer: It is. There's, there is a bit of turnover because, you know, let's [00:04:00] face it, flagging is not an easy job. A lot of our folks are in the field every single day, and that's, doesn't matter what the weather looks like, rain or shine, hot or cold. So…

Angeline Evans: Mm-hmm.

Tamara Palmer: …everybody. And because of the nature of the work, safety is so important.

We've gotta make sure that the motorists are protected and the pedestrians, but that our people come home each day the same way they left their, their homes. that's, that's really where I come in. I, I support the company in terms of making sure that there's policy, procedure, communications getting out to our frontline workforce, um, that the field leadership team who is-- oversees them has the sort of execution expectations and accountability set up for them. And then the training team, um, we train our people all the time. There's multiple training touch points, and so anything that they're training, my team in the communications department needs to reinforce or clarify as, um, the frontline is communicating with us on our mobile communication

Susan Cort: the [00:05:00] intersection here of communications and training and how they need to work hand in hand to make sure you're getting the right messages to the right people at the right time. So we're excited to explore that with you today.

Tamara Palmer: Yeah.

Angeline Evans: I completely agree. So just as a refresher, last time we had Flagger Force on the podcast, we talked about that microlearning strategy, and I think it was also the mobile app. can you give us a quick refresher just for listeners that might not have heard that last episode, and just also talk about what might have changed since then?

Tamara Palmer: Yeah, sure. Um, so a lot of your listeners are probably familiar with microlearning.

Angeline Evans: Yeah.

Tamara Palmer: it's, um...

Angeline Evans: Yeah.

Tamara Palmer: hope so, right? Yeah. In the training world. Um, but it's a system to deliver training in three to five-minute lessons. Uh, and what's great about it is each lesson serves one learning objective. then not only are we, like, really keeping that, that messaging tight because it's just one learning objective and we're really reinforcing it, we're, um, leveraging our existing training content.

So anything that our [00:06:00] crews get in the classrooms, we take that and we package it into a customized microlearning lesson. Um, not only is the training content itself custom, we're using all of our branding, we're using photography of our flaggers in the field doing the work that the people need to be trained on through the microlearning.

So it's a really cool system. Um, and it's, it's the actual microlearning that we have is a widget that

Angeline Evans: Mm-hmm.

Tamara Palmer: lives inside of our employee communication app.

Angeline Evans: Mm-hmm.

Tamara Palmer: why that's important is every employee that gets hired at Flagger Force, they voluntarily download our app. And then that way there's one app to contain everything they need, the way to communicate with the company, access to the resources for their job, and then instantly to access these microlearning lessons.

It's all built in, is super cool. And, you know, we, we have a lot of safety and operational compliance and, uh, the reasons that that's important is because [00:07:00] essentially 30 days of having gone through a training class, you will forget anywhere from like 80% to 90% of it.

Angeline Evans: It's insane. Yeah.

It's really... Yes, it's discouraging, but there's ways to combat that, which you are doing.

Tamara Palmer: Which we're doing, yeah. Hence, hence the need for the microlearning. And since it's on the mobile phone, which is already in their pocket, and it's, we're putting the training where they want it, and we're using the colors and the language and the pictures that they're already familiar with. So it's

Angeline Evans: Yes

Tamara Palmer: such a great, tool, and we're really, really satisfied with the

Susan Cort: Yeah, your, your workers are definitely...

Tamara Palmer: terms of what's changed...

Susan Cort: was gonna say your workers are definitely not showing up to the work site with laptops. Like, you need to be, you know, on their mobile devices

Tamara Palmer: Yeah.

Angeline Evans: Yes. Yeah,

Tamara Palmer: that's true

Angeline Evans: found a way to reach them where they are, and I love that you're doing more of a micro-learning approach and reinforcement because that's something we're constantly preaching here at d'Vinci, 'cause it is-- You could build the most magical training, but like you said, after 30 days,

Tamara Palmer: Yeah

Angeline Evans: Even if it was magical. It's, your brain has other things it needs to deal with and, you know, [00:08:00] you don't always remember everything, so it's important to reinforce.

Tamara Palmer: Right? I mean, what if your listeners forget that I was here

Tamara Palmer: 30 days? know, if you, if you, if you remember anything, remember microlearning.

Angeline Evans: Yes.

Susan Cort: Tamara, you were gonna talk about what's changed since then too, how things have evolved?

Tamara Palmer: Well, we've had this app for this, this microlearning widget inside of our app for four years.

Angeline Evans: Yeah

Tamara Palmer: and, you know, systematically and functionally it's stayed largely the same. The technology has had small advancements over time in, in terms of

Angeline Evans: Mm-hmm

Tamara Palmer: we can sort of target and curate by, by specific audience.

Angeline Evans: Mm-hmm.

Tamara Palmer: And large, the content is largely the same. You know, our, our, our flow and our pattern for dripping this microlearning content has really stayed the same. And we, we work super closely with training and safety because we will, we'll roll out a training content calendar for the year, and of course it's gonna have your, your usual things.

So it's [00:09:00] seasonal, you know, it's, it's cold, so we need to talk about cold weather, or it's Mental Health Awareness Month, so we'll put those microlearning lessons out. But if there's an incident that occurs, then what we can do is we can pull from our microlearning archive and push those specific training lessons so it's just-in-time training.

And we've really been, um, kind of leveraging that aspect because now we have such a large volume of content that we can plug and play as we need to. So that's the been the biggest change.

Angeline Evans: So Chris, talk to me, when you're rolling out an important initiative, how do you decide what messages people needed, need to hear, you know, when they need to hear them, where they need to hear them? Like, what all goes into that?

Chris Byerly: Well, that's an interesting question. What's important, right? So what's important to the organization, um, should be, you know, hopefully as important to the employees, but it's not really the same. And what, what I've always focused on and what Tamara's always focused on is, is something that we call channel health. So there needs to be a channel in [00:10:00] which to, to connect to people, and they need to get value out of that channel. It has to be, um, more than just, uh, you know, getting information, uh, when the company really wants to, to tell them things and to help them do things. the employees, and particularly in a frontline organization, necessarily or, or even compelled to respond to things like you would in an office where you get an email and you're expected to read it.

Angeline Evans: Mm-hmm.

Chris Byerly: and so we are trying to engage them with various types of value and micro-learning and other things are part of that. What we tell the organization is that, you know, if, if, if they're not on the channel, there's nobody listening. And a lot of people will just, "I, I sent this message out, so I've exposed it to people, therefore it's been communicated." And in this particular case, that's not true. [00:11:00] Uh, so we need to be continually understanding what's important to them and, and what's accessible to them. And so how we, we put things out there are, in a lot of ways, marketing to our employees. Uh, it's voluntary for them to be on here, and, and they don't, they don't have to engage.

But we do have ninety-eight percent of our employees on here because there is value in the channel, and we're constantly, you know, concerned about that. Like, "Hey, are we getting... What's our engagement level?"

Angeline Evans: Yeah

Chris Byerly: and then when we craft a message, uh, and this is something Tamara's really good at, is the FAQs, the, the thinking through the, the, the message. And so see like good communications has an inspection process by which you are trying to understand what the message is, who are you talking to. And in that inspection process, you're starting to look at the program or whatever, whatever it is you're trying to do through the eyes of your audience, through the eyes of [00:12:00] how we're gonna answer questions and things like that.

And we often will go back to our, to our internal clients or stakeholders and say, "Hey, what do you think about this?" And it's like, "Whoa, I don't... Maybe I didn't really think this thing through. Maybe my program needs a little help." And, and that's kind of how our team gets involved in strategy, thinking through those business problems. So when it's important to, to have a message, we wanna, A, make sure the channel is healthy, which we're doing, and then, B, we're, we're trying to make sure that this inspection of the message, like, um, is connecting to both our, our internal client and that we're gonna have... For instance, we do have a call center that's open twenty-four hours a day where, uh, our employees will call in and ask questions.

And so we wanna make sure that those answers, those resources are available so that people trust these messages, you know? They, they, like, "Okay, um, I wanted to ask a question. People are-- people [00:13:00] know about this, this program that are supposed to help me. Um, they have answers to my questions." So there's some, there's some preparation that goes into this,

Susan Cort: How important is that, Chris, in making sure the training sticks by making sure the message is relevant to the learners, to the, to the team members who are in the field or wherever, whatever role they're filling?

Chris Byerly: Well, there's, there's definitely like how you package something up, right? How you, how you present it, the language that you use, the images that you use. If you try to gamify, you know, something to make it sticky and to make it differentiated. Um, and I think that, you know, Tamara can probably respond to that better in the, in the, in the day-to-day. again, if we're, if we're not, you know, getting their attention, um, then they're, they're not looking any, any, you know, deeper into what we're, we're trying to get them to, to do.

Angeline Evans: Yeah. I love that you brought up the marketing piece. I think so many organizations forget that [00:14:00] marketing is a necessity when it comes to training. Like, it's not, just 'cause you build something doesn't mean that someone's gonna pay attention. Like, even if they're required to take the training, it doesn't mean they're gonna pay attention to it. So they need to know, uh, even before they get in there, why they should listen, right? And, and getting, getting to know the audience.

Chris Byerly: I would say there's a classic one that's let's, let's create 100 PowerPoint slides and expose you to them and then say that you're trained

Tamara Palmer: Mm-hmm.

Angeline Evans: Yes. so, uh, Tamara, can you walk me through the process or framework that your team uses to make them, make those messages stick? So like,

Tamara Palmer: Mm-hmm.

Angeline Evans: kinda what Chris talked about, like walk us through an example if you could.

Tamara Palmer: Sure. Um, well, I use what I like to call a balanced storytelling framework to make those messages stick. Because the reality is, is that the desked versus the deskless employee are two very different communication and operational [00:15:00] environments, and they each have different needs. And to piggyback off what Chris said, It needs to be packaged. in a way that meets both of their needs.

So we look at every single campaign and initiative in that framework, that balanced storytelling framework. So a recent example of this would be our hydration policy update that we rolled out this year. Um, you know, we're, we're a safety company, and there are certain laws that have been put in place recently that determine if there's a certain heat index that relief breaks and quantities of water need to be available to people who work in the environment where ours work in, which makes sense. and we, um, to roll out a policy update about that. We had something in place last year, we needed to make a change. So to some degree, this information will be covered in training, of course, but when there's a key change, we're not gonna pull all 3,000 frontline employees back into the classroom. We need to communicate that through [00:16:00] our, our channels. And luckily, we have channel health. You know, we've done a really good job of being physicians of our, of our tools so that people like them and that they find value. Um, so in this, you know, in this, in this, in this balanced storytelling framework, I like to think of it in kind of a four-step process Uh, this, the first step is really just a simple discovery process.

Angeline Evans: Mm-hmm.

Tamara Palmer: What problem do we need to solve - behaviors do we need to change? Is there any existing confusion happening right now, um, with our, our audience, our frontline and office population? Um, and then, you know, what does each audience need? Are there barriers? And then really, what would happen if our communication fails? That's, you know, that's a pretty straightforward discovery process, right? and so we look at that, and in our example for the, the heat or the hydration policy update, we knew that heat stress is a risk to the company overall. You know, we knew that there would be, um, [00:17:00] probably inconsistent hydration practices in the field.

There's a lot of people who just forget to drink water, right? Um, and because of the policy changing, that there might be some, um, supervisors who are in the field overseeing the frontline, they might not be fully aware of the expectations of them, of the field, of the policy changes. and we knew that some employees just frankly would not understand the full risk, and so the, you know, we needed to bring all of this together in some form of operational consistency. Uh, that's what we learned in our discovery process. So once you've got your... you kinda understand your operational reality, then you go into step two, which is gonna be building very specific audience messaging. Um, usually at Flagger Force, we have three key audience groups that we're, we're messaging for.

It's gonna be our office staff, field leadership and safety, and of course then our frontline employees. Um, so by understanding those three [00:18:00] audiences and what they need, we know that the office staff, they need to understand the policy itself,

Angeline Evans: Mm-hmm

Tamara Palmer: because they're there for administrative support, right?

Um, they might be communicating these changes to our clients in some regards, so they, they needed to understand that. So we give them context, we give them policy explanation and a lot of operational rationale. That's, that's how we package the message for them After that, we tackle the field leadership and safety teams.

What do they need to know? Well, they're, they're basically going to be executing this policy in the field for us. They're gonna make sure that there's compliance happening. So they need talking points to help drive accountability in the field, uh, and they just need overall guidance. Um, they're gonna get a little sprinkling of that rationale as well because they're considered office employee, but specifically, they need to understand what's expected of them, talking points, and how to m- hold people accountable. So we make it a [00:19:00] very clear and direct message. It's very action-oriented and it's, um... we're reinforcing the policy itself our language in the form of talking points and FAQs 'cause they're gonna have to answer the questions, uh, directly, right?

Angeline Evans: Right, right, right

Tamara Palmer: You know, face-to-face conversations with the field employees and, and we want them to have an answer when someone asks them a specific question. And then lastly, our, third primary audience is our frontline.

Angeline Evans: Mm-hmm.

Tamara Palmer: So, you know, these are the people who are actually doing the flagging, so they need very immediate practical messaging that is fast, very relevant to safety, and of course, it's mobile friendly. Uh, so we make it short and visual, human.

Sometimes that means we use emojis and, you know, different types of, um, friendly, friendly language, if you will, and something that's very memorable 'cause we want the, the, the, the nuts and bolts to stick with them. So that's kind of, um, that's kinda how we go from there. Now, after we've laid out our, our-- we've built our [00:20:00] audience-specific messaging, that's when we know we need to choose the right channel to reach each of these audiences. Where I work now at Flagger Force, we have a broadcast channel, which is gonna be primarily email for the office. We have our mobile app communication, which is primarily for the frontline. Um, sometimes we use video in terms of making a rich context or rich media, uh, to, to help convey the messaging, and we can put that out on either the mobile app or the email channel. Um, we of course, we will use the microlearning, right? We can take and we can create a, a training segment on the hydration policy for the reinforcement. Uh, sometimes we use digital signage in the office. That's just another reinforcement layer. Um, then we have a supervisor toolkit. So all of that information that the, the field leadership and the safety team need to access, whether it's been put out in email or on our mobile app or [00:21:00] anywhere, it gets repackaged all in one location that becomes a toolkit that they access in our corporate wiki. So we're, we're hitting these people... Hitting is a bad word. communicating to our people, um, multiple times on multiple channels. Sometimes we're bringing it all together and putting it in a brand new location that's successful for them. Um, and then that is the way that we layer everything so that we have really balanced the storytelling we've given it to the people in the way that is best suited for them to be successful with

Susan Cort: I love that you've got this communications mindset to approach your training. It makes so much sense.

Tamara Palmer: Yeah. Right, right. It has to because the training team, they, you know, they need to work hand in hand with us. Uh, eventually our folks are gonna cycle back through the classroom so everybody's using the same consistent languaging. Everybody should be up [00:22:00] to date on what the policy is or what the changes were

Angeline Evans: Yeah. It's-- Like, hearing both of you talk, it's so clear how closely connected communications and learning are, and I'm just curious if other organizations are working in such a

Susan Cort: Yeah. It feels like there's probably a lot of silos,

Angeline Evans: like, really... Yeah, you

guys really have it locked together. Um, how do you know when a message has actually landed? Like, when do you know it's really worked?

Tamara Palmer: Well, I think we can rest assured when a message lands just by checking our metrics to start with, right? Um, our communication tools have various, uh, data analytics touchpoints. We can see the open rate. Um, we can see that by, by role, by region, um, even by person in some instances. We can see if at least they've read it, and that's pretty important to us. If, you know, depending on how long they've reviewed the communication too, if it was a, a glance of five seconds versus a full several minute read, I think that gives you an indication of [00:23:00] if it's landed or not. Um, but more importantly, we have other ways of gathering employee insights besides those engagement and vanity metrics, as I call them. You, um, can get a good idea of how well a message has landed if you see first and foremost what kind of questions is the field employee population, the frontline, asking of their area supervisors directly or even on our mobile communication app, because that's, that's part of what that tool allows. When you put a message out, you can have conversation with them. Uh, and you know, how much, how many questions are those questions the same? That gives you a really good sense of if that message has landed. We can also measure it with our microlearning. If we've created a learning course about it and people are, you know, passing it with flying colors, that's a pretty ind- a good, good indication that the message has landed. but then, you know, a little bit longer down the road, if we have fewer heat stress [00:24:00] injury reports or incidents or other, um, maybe longer term OSHA metrics in terms of measuring our safety performance, uh, if, if they're low in that particular area, like in the way we, uh, have our hydration policy set up, then that's a good indicator that the, the message has, has really landed and stuck.

Angeline Evans: Yeah, it's just a little, you need a, to see, have time to see

Tamara Palmer: Sometimes.

Angeline Evans: Yeah.

Tamara Palmer: you do need to, to check the trend as well. You know, you can have the immediate, but then you have to check the long-term trends as well

Angeline Evans: Chris, what's something organizations often misunderstand about commuting, communicating with a dispersed workforce? What words of wisdom do you have to offer?

Chris Byerly: Well, well back in 2017, we did focus groups. I have a human insights background, and people were wondering like, who are the employees that stick around for a while, our long-term employees? And so what we did was we recruited them and brought them into a focus group facility with the, you know, the, the, the one-way glass and the two-way glass. And, um [00:25:00] We talked to them. What are you guys... you know, what keeps you here? What, what makes you stick around? Um, what's going on in your lives? And, and what we found, uh, and, I mean, we, we recruited people who had been here a while, obviously, um, was w- we came up with a persona called the hustler cowboy, or in some cases cowgirl. Um, and what that means is that, uh, a, a cow-cowboy, for lack of a better term, is someone who's tough, uh, doesn't mind the weather, uh, independent, has a sense of, of quality and pride. Um, you know, they're out there, and a lot of things don't, don't bother them a whole lot that, uh, maybe other people might. And hustlers are those that, that are looking for work, that are, you know, "I'll take that weekend job.

I'll, I'm, always looking to, to do something." Now, when you have too much cowboy or too much hustler, you got a problem because you have someone that's way too, you know, uh, independent or someone who's really trying to, you know, uh, be a little too self-serving. And then you have everyone [00:26:00] else, uh, who's, who's got different levels.

So, so hustler cowboy, uh, really can equate to self-sufficiency. So how self-sufficient is somebody? Do they have, you know, support at home? Do they... Are they good with their, their finances? Are they a, a lifelong learner? Um, and then you have people with varying degrees of self-sufficiency. And so I think that understanding that, um, and understanding that there, there are people that are gonna need a little bit more help, um, a little bit of a different message, and not looking at everybody all the same. And I think that when you're in a frontline company, a lot of people are, um, you know, you're doing turnover and you're just saying like, "We'll get somebody new," and a lot of people end up having the, the same issue. So I think what is important when you're in a, a human, organ- like a, a human-driven organization, right, is to be really good about understanding [00:27:00] humans.

Angeline Evans: Yeah

Tamara Palmer: Mm-hmm.

Chris Byerly: You know, that you know, this is not a, uh, a, a charity company. We are a for-profit organization, and our business is in people, and so we should be really good at assessing people's needs, um, where their, where their self-sufficiency has, is, is dropped, and how we can, you know, help, maybe help them, give them a little grace or a little targeted support.

And also for the people that are just really in such a way that, you know, we'll do our best, but, um, probably is, is a good time for them to, you know, to move on, right? Um, because we are trying to, to, to help everybody. And I think that that's... those middle folks are, are folks that often get lumped into everybody else and, and they... Understanding those needs and understanding

Angeline Evans: Mm-hmm.

Chris Byerly: being curious, um, is, is really important.

Susan Cort: I'm sure our listeners about now are thinking, "This makes such perfect sense. Why am I [00:28:00] not doing this?" What, what advice would you give to people listening who, uh, maybe have not yet aligned their training initiatives with their communications team? And for those that maybe don't have the luxury of, of working team, uh, s- teams side by side, how can you kind of, uh, transition into adapting that communications mindset if you're in charge of training for your organization?

Tamara Palmer: Well, I guess I would say that best way to align different departments and to work towards a common goal is to make sure that everyone is working toward the same mission. Uh, and that's, that's something that we rally around in the different departments. So training has a-- training has their own specific mission. They have their own specific metrics that they need to meet as a department, same with the communications team. But where we intersect is the fact that we need to train and reinforce our policies, practices, and procedures for everyone who is [00:29:00] operating in a work zone to keep them safe and to keep everyone else safe, and that's a, that's a pretty impressive goal.

So if you can work towards something that is outside of your own internal metrics and work together towards something, I don't know, maybe a higher goal, if you will, then I think that's a great rallying point, and then all the rest of it becomes easier to discuss. It's not such a big deal to talk about how, you know, the, the communications team needs to support the training and, and provide you with the very branded slides so that, you know, we meet the brand strategy.

It just becomes, "Oh, yeah. Well, I'm gonna work with, uh, the communications team to update this slide or to update this whole slide deck with the new policy information." You know, they're the subject matter experts. We understand the, the employee, and we bring all of that together toward that kind of like higher goal, if you will.

Susan Cort: That's great advice. Thank you both for joining us today. This was a really interesting conversation and, uh, this was our second Flagger Force interview, and I think it will not be the last. You are really leading the [00:30:00] way with so much of what you do from a training and communication standpoint, so thank you.

Angeline Evans: Yes. Thank you both. This was incredibly insightful. I really appreciate your time

Chris Byerly: you

Tamara Palmer: thank you. I hope everyone has a great day. It was

Susan Cort: Thank you.

My thanks to d'Vinci's Angeline Evans and our guests, Tamara Palmer and Chris Byerly from Flagger Force. If you have an idea for a topic or guest, please reach out to us at poweredbylearning@dvinci.com. And don't forget that you can subscribe to Powered by Learning wherever you listen to your podcasts