Amber Nelson Taps Communications, Connection and Teamwork to Get the Job Done

Amber, right, and Tracy Ollivant, Lumber human resources business partner, prepare for a local job recruitment fair. From recruiting to helping current employees improve reliability, Amber has volunteered for various roles during her time with the mill.

Among her colleagues at our sawmill in Cottage Grove, Oregon, Amber Nelson is known for being adaptable, innovative and committed to safety. It's a reputation earned over 23 years with the mill in many different roles, starting with the clean-up crew right out of high school.

"I was always looking for new challenges and was eager to learn more about different parts of the mill," she says. "Wherever the team needed a hand, I'd step up."

Her various roles and challenges included driving forklifts, operating heavy machinery, and working in the shipping and finishing departments. She left the company briefly in mid-2018 to start her own business but came back in early 2020 to help lead Cottage Grove's operator-driven reliability initiative. ODR leverages the experience and knowledge of equipment operators to enhance reliability by conducting interviews with numerous operators to develop standard checklists and improve communication and collaboration between operations and maintenance.

"I love this work," Amber says. "The passion our operators have about their equipment and pride they take in their jobs makes ODR nothing but rewarding. I feel like this is the job I've been preparing for since I joined the mill in 2000."

But in early 2023, Cottage Grove needed a safety manager - fast - especially as a multi-year capital upgrade posed a significant upset condition. While the search for a permanent hire was underway, Brent Czaban, mill manager, told Amber she had the core skillset and support to be successful in the safety role - even though it would mean setting aside her ODR role temporarily.

After giving it some thought, she agreed.

In 2009, you could find Amber participating in the local roller derby. 'I've been retired from the sport for a long time, but I still skate every chance I get,' she says. 'Before COVID, I was able to bring roller skating back to our small town with the city's support in the old Armory. It was super cool.'

STEPPING UP FOR THE TEAM

"I've always been willing to step in wherever the team needs help," Amber says. "So I embraced the interim role wholeheartedly. After all, safety is the cornerstone of everything we do - and we needed someone to fill the gap so everyone went home safe at the end of the day."

For more than a year, from March 2023 to May 2024, Amber dedicated her full attention and efforts to safety.

"During my first week in the interim safety role, Cottage Grove underwent an internal safety audit that identified several improvement opportunities," she says. "There was a lot to do, quickly and correctly."

Over the next several months, the capital project cycled through a couple safety managers, and a project contractor suffered a serious injury after a fall.

While safety performance is everyone's responsibility, Amber couldn't help but take the challenges personally.

"The hardest part of the safety manager role is that I can only do what I can do - people also have to choose to work safely," she says. "If someone doesn't choose safety every single time, with every single decision, something terrible can happen. That puts a lot of worry in me."

Amber worked closely with the mill team to develop critical safety focus areas, using our detailed safety standards to create routine checklists and working with IT to build power apps to reduce paperwork and streamline and standardize safety processes and reporting.

The changes helped. Even so, Cottage Grove remained a Wood Products safety focus site after being designated earlier this year.

"Everyone wants to be perfect in safety, and we all welcome the extra attention," Amber says. "One thing I quickly learned in the safety manager role is that no one person can make safety work. It's a team effort, from the folks at the mill to everyone across the company."

Whether thinking about safety or reliability, Amber has learned to channel this deep sense of teamwork into creating productive shifts, often with guidance from supervisors, mentors and teammates.

Amber teaches her niece to skate. The helmets demonstrate Amber's deep commitment to safety for herself and those around her. 'Rina Bethany's mantra is, "Everyone is a safety leader even if they're not a safety manager," and I've adapted it as my own, too,' Amber says.

A PEOPLE-FIRST PROCESS

"In both safety and reliability, every system and process involves people," she says. "You can't improve any system if you don't invest time in understanding the roles and motivations of the people who operate the system, getting to know them as individuals and finding a way to tap their experiences."

She believes every successful leader must know how to connect and communicate effectively, a lesson she learned early in her career while working as a wood chip house operator.

"We had a conveyor that would come off the sprocket, but I didn't know the proper terms for the machine components," she says. "When I called maintenance, they didn't always understand what I was referring to. It made me realize I needed to learn the right terms to communicate effectively."

She quickly recognized that mastering the specific language and terminology in each role was essential for communication and operational success. It enabled her to collaborate more effectively with other teams and helped her excel in new positions, including management.

"A lot of what a safety manager does is mandatory documentation and data tracking," Amber says. "It can be all-consuming due to regulatory requirements and reporting deadlines, but that's not the most important part of the job. The most important part of the job is talking about safety with the team to prevent injury."

Amber and her boyfriend Brian take a selfie at a Portland Trailblazers basketball game.

UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLES FOR SUCCESS

"The same principles that make us successful in safety - attention to detail, adherence to standards, proactive problem-solving, effective training and a focus on continuous improvement and engaging with people - also drive reliability," Amber says. "And vice versa."

At the most basic level, she says both succeed by empowering and trusting the people around you.

"I always keep in mind something Rina Bethany, Western Lumber vice president, likes to say: 'Everyone is a leader in safety, even if they're not a safety manager,'" Amber says. "It's the same in reliability: Our operators are leaders of their equipment processes and systems even if they're not a mill manager or shift supervisor."

Amber's excited about bringing this mindset to the mill's reliability work while transitioning back to her ODR role now that Cottage Grove has hired a permanent safety manager.

"I learned so much in the safety role, but I was excited to get back to reliability," Amber says. "It's truly my passion."

ADVICE FROM AMBER

Nurture a support system. A lot of people around me have made the leap from hourly to management, so I can tap into their experience when needed. And I've developed a network of people within the mill and across the company I can contact for help. No one person can be an expert at everything, so I focus on making sure I know what I don't know and who the experts are.

Understand your passions. When the permanent safety manager position was posted, I seriously considered applying. But after a few days mulling it over, I realized that although I'm passionate about safety, my greater passion is for operator-driven reliability. My decision was reinforced while we interviewed folks for the safety manager job. When I gave a quick overview of operator-driven reliability, I felt a different level of excitement and realized that's where I belong.

Know who you are and be yourself to be effective in any role. In a recent safety manager interview, a candidate asked us about our favorite part of working for the company. After over two decades with Weyerhaeuser, I found it easy to answer: I get to be myself. I can come to work daily and be my authentic, unique self. For instance, I wear a unicorn onesie every Halloween and hand out candy bars to the crew.

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