Environmental Leadership Awards 1999: The Davey Tree Institute

Like many landscape contractors today, Martin Davey, Sr., was frustrated with the high employee turnover rate in the green industry in the early 1900s.

"Because employees didn’t work over the winter months, the company spent excess time and money constantly retraining new employees in the spring," explained Doug Cowan, CEO and chairman of the board, The Davey Tree Expert Co., Kent, Ohio. "This also prevented the potential for molding employees for foreman, supervisor and salesmen positions."

The solution was discovered in 1909 when Davey founded the Davey Institute of Tree Surgery, Kent, Ohio. Its purpose was to retain employees by offering them scientific education to complement their technical skills.

"Davey brought the workers into Kent during the winter months and they stayed in a large dormitory," Cowan said. "The employees were taught arboriculture and horticultural courses in a college-type atmosphere. When the employees went back to field work the next spring, they were a well-trained, committed work force – more valuable to the company and its clients."

This extra training through the institute gave the Davey Tree Expert Co. a competitive advantage, while making the employees’ jobs more meaningful and interesting, according to Cowan, and the institute became a permanent addition to Davey Tree.

Expanding & Changing. Today, the main focus of the institute remains to train Davey Tree personnel across the United States and Canada, and to serve as a place for industry research, said Roger Funk, vice president of the Davey Institute. The company has other institutes stationed across the country and in Canada to provide on-site technical support for area insects and diseases because they vary from north to south and east to west.

"Our job is to obtain the information that needs researched, massage it and give it back to Davey Tree personnel in a manner that they can understand and use," Funk explained. "They are the ones out there performing and we support that with scientific background and knowledge."

But serving as just an in-house cooperative extension service with a 27-acre research farm wasn’t enough to keep the institute thriving, Funk declared. In 1992, the company made the decision to provide its customers with an additional service. The company’s selected customers can now pay the Davey Institute to have some personal research done for their specific landscaping needs.

"It became apparent that year as the industry was changing so rapidly that to guarantee the life of the institute, more dollars were needed," Funk said. "So, now if Davey Tree works for a utility company, we can also work for that utility company doing any training and research needed, and bring in our own revenue for support."

The institute also started a Conservation Science Group in charge of wetland litigation consulting and headwaters assessment, Cowan explained. "We believe that if we can assist the people who are developing the land that we are going to take care of eventually, we might as well be there from the very beginning," he said.

Another big change that helped to expand the Davey Institute was the implementation of the Internet into the company, Funk enthused.

"With the Internet, all of our employees are tied into our network and can get all the technical information we have in our electronic database," he pointed out. "Without the advent of email and greater technology, we would have had a terrible time managing the other institutes and getting information to them."

This also helped to expand the institute staff across the United States, Funk explained. What started with 14 scientists has increased to 71 scientists with degrees in different areas of expertise. "We employ 12 people with doctorate degrees in the institute right now," Cowan enthused.

Environmental Passion. To work at Davey Tree, Funk noted, a person has to have a passion for environmentalism.

"John Davey was a conservationist," Funk said. "The Davey culture is based on it. The people here don’t consider it a challenge to be environmental stewards. It’s in our blood."

Cowan sees the only challenge in the Davey Tree culture of growth through education as making all of its customers understand the difference.

"We have to pay more attention to the environment now – it’s the only one we’ve got," Cowan stressed. "If nothing else, being more knowledgeable enhances our reputation. We know having our employees educated in arboriculture is very important to our tree care customers, especially those with 100-year-old trees that they want us to take care of, but I’m not sure if our lawn care customers see the significance of more knowledgeable employees yet."

Keeping the Faith. Because the institute has been around for so long, Funk admitted that it is easy to understand why other companies haven’t followed Davey Tree’s lead and developed their own institutes.

"Back in 1908, our management took it on faith that this would work," Funk explained. "They didn’t think about the cost and they knew it would take a long time before they could quantify the results. Now we have the benchmarks that show us how far we’ve come with the institute.

"If we wanted to establish an institute like ours today, I don’t know if we could," Funk continued. "Once you have the proof that it is helping your company, it’s easy to warrant the cost and the need for an institute. It’s hard to spend money on education that could be used to buy more landscaping equipment. It’s better to tell clients we have research to prove that what we’re going to do to their landscape is going to work than to have to go back later and apologize."

The author is Assistant Editor of Lawn & Landscape magazine.