Episode 2: Empower Your Team | Vince Hafeli Talks Tips for Mental Health First Aid Training

This podcast is sponsored by Dynapac.

Listen to the audio-only version of this podcast on our Suicide Prevention page, and take a moment to sign the Suicide in Construction Awareness Proclamation while you’re there. 

Sandy: Welcome to part one of the AsphaltPro Magazine podcast mini series on mental health wellness and suicide prevention. I’m magazine editor Sandy Lender and your host for this mini series. In this three-part podcast, we’ll explore ideas for incorporating a mental health wellness component in your safety program. AsphaltPro is honored to expand the conversation around this important topic and to bring Ajax Paving’s Vince Hafeli onto the podcast for that purpose.

Sandy: Vince Hafeli has over 38 years’ experience in the highway construction industry. He’s been leading a team of nearly 500 employees as president of Ajax Paving Industries of Florida for the past four years. Although his diverse background includes positions like field quality control and inspection and project manager, at the time of this recording, he’s working toward his Doctorate of Business Administration degree to further his research and training skills related to suicide in the construction industry. As a consultant and speaker advocate, he works with individuals and organizations to create open discussions around suicide prevention and mental health. I encourage you to follow him on LinkedIn because Vince has new information, speaking engagements, and updates on mental health wellness information posted on his page frequently.

Sandy: Let’s begin part two of this three-part podcast, looking at the concept of building a caring culture as it relates to workforce development. You’ve talked about mental health first aid. Could you give our audience your definition of mental health first aid and the level of importance you place on it?

Vince: Well, I guess we have physical first aid, right? If you get cut, they give you a Band-Aid, or if you twist your ankle, maybe you have to go to a quick care center. Mental health first aid is kind of the same way, only you can’t physically see it. So, it’s about opening up the conversation and finding out what’s going on in someone’s mind. I mean, we actually have sent employees through mental health first aid training. It’s a two-year national program. You can get trained to be a mental health first aid responder. Prior to November, we didn’t have any in our company, and in November, we trained 11 people. This month, we’ve trained 12 more people, and we have a list of other people waiting to take the class.

Vince: Some owners are afraid [of what the mental health first aid training does]. They think, “I don’t want people asking questions because is this going to get me sued?” So, this helps the members on the team understand what to ask and how to ask. It trains people that have been certified in the resources available nationally, regionally, and what our company has as far as resources. I think what people need to understand first about mental health is everyone doesn’t need to go and be medicated. Sometimes in mental health, you just need someone to talk to, and sometimes someone to talk to may just be a friend, and a friend in our company, which may be that mental health first aid responder. So, we have people from a laborer to me and various roles in between. So, we have plant foremen that have been certified. So, if I’m another plant foreman, I’ve got someone on my level that I can go talk to if need be, or if you want to talk to the president, you can talk to the president. So, [that training] teaches them how to protect the company (which I’m not worried about). I’ve said that if anybody wants to sue me for trying to save someone’s life, do what you got to do. 

Vince: It has built a peer-to-peer network internally to where they can help each other. It’s powerful. We’ve had one gentleman in our company that’s really taken the lead and run on it because I feel like my role as the leader in our company was to kick it off. And when I say kick it off, I mean back to day one, talking in front of 400 people. Now, my goal is to be able to build the network to where I can fade into the back, not go away, but they know that, “Hey, this is important; HR is involved in it, the president’s involved in it, the plant foremen are involved in it.” So, again, it’s about changing the culture in the company, and I can’t be the one that leads the charge every day because one day I’ll be gone. I’ve talked to companies in my interviews where I’ve asked, “Where are you at on Mental Health?” And they said, “We were phenomenal.” [But then that person leading the charge] left, and they realized, “We should probably start doing it again.” So, that’s the importance of building the network, and that’s how the mental health first aid program helps.

Sandy: You kind of touched on this by saying everyone from the paving foreman to the laborer to the company president can have that mental health first aid training. I guess I want to ask you, which members of the crew would you recommend sending to mental health first aid training? How do you pick and choose who you send?

Vince: Well, first off, I think anyone in any organization, on any given day, in any given situation, can be a leader. It doesn’t have to be just the foreman; it can be the lute guy, it can be the guy at Amazon packing boxes, assuming they have that type of culture. We didn’t go out and handpick anyone; we said we have this program, and if you would like to be part of it, we will get you through the program. We have done programs in the past where we have said, “You, you, and you,” but the problem is two of them, three of them don’t want anything to do with it, right? So, it dies. So, we really want to have the people that get into it. Two ladies that have participated in our annual suicide walk for the last three or four years, those two helped me organize the state walk. Another gentleman in there, his father was lost to suicide. Another gentleman in there, through our employee program, we helped him get help, and he did need medication. His life’s back in balance. So, the people that initially got in there were people that had situations in their life that they had gone through, and they wanted to help others not go through the struggle they went through. 

Vince: And now, the second group of people that are getting in there, again, we didn’t handpick any; we just said, “Hey, we’re having the program.” They want to be involved. Will we ever have 100% of the company? Probably not. Will we have 50%? I don’t know, maybe. I would never go out and say we need to have a paving foreman in each area. We need to have a grade foreman in each area. You need to have the people in those areas that want to do it for the right reason.

Sandy: One of the topics that comes up in the mental health wellness conversation is that of the financial costs to the employer, and I’m trying to think of a tasteful way to ask this question…But how do we convince the numbers-based CEO or the numbers-based HR rep that we need to implement mental health first aid training or we need to implement mental health wellness in our safety plans? I mean, how do we go to that person and say, “All right, yes, there’s a financial cost to this, but we need to do it”?

Vince: What’s the financial cost when the guy today does something crazy on the job and injures someone? The cost to do this is minimal. I’m not saying everyone has to send someone to mental health first aid training. You can go to the Construction Industry Alliance for Suicide Prevention. You can download toolbox talks for free. You can sign into their site to support this for free. They take donations, and they would probably appreciate a donation. But to get the tools that you need to do this, the cost is very, very minimal. And I understand that the international companies of the world are different from the little guys in my area in Tampa, Florida. I understand that in the morning, he’s running the paver and in the evening he’s bidding jobs. It’s literally a mom and pop shop, and I understand it. But I think the better question is, how can you not afford to do this? Because the younger generation coming into our workforce want to work in industries that respect their opinions and want to take care of them. 

Vince: This is the next level of wanting to take care of [our employees]. A lot of these younger people struggled through Covid and they’ve struggled through emotional issues. There and older people [who faced these challenges], but particularly for the younger generation, mental health is a topic that they’re open to discussing. They don’t run away from it the way you would see the baby boomers do. But, I will tell you, even the baby boomers don’t run away from it once you tell them that it’s okay to talk about it. Because that’s often the men that sit with me, and we cry together when we talk about things. So, the hardest part about doing this is starting it. And there are plenty of people that you can ask. You can go Google mental health and construction websites will pop up. You just gotta take the first step. 

Vince: And then, I would also tell people to do what we did. I don’t know that we did it perfectly, but we said we’re going to go slow. Nobody, and particularly strong-willed men in construction, wants to have anything jammed down their throat, right? There’s enough coming from regulations and inspectors hitting you every day. So, we said, “Hey, in year one, we’re going to do four toolbox talks once a quarter. We’re going to talk about this in the field.” And then, three-quarters of the way into the year, we did the mental health thing I talked about in January. I talked about it again in July at our midyear safety meeting. So, it’s not something you have to do every day to begin with; you just gotta take the first step. And then, hey, if you’re going to do the quarterly toolbox talk, then you have to remember at the end of the quarter to do it again, right? It’s easy to forget and let things go. So, to me, it’s not the question of how can I afford to do this. It’s the question of how can I afford not to do it if I want to continue to hire people going into the future?

Sandy: It’s been a pleasure talking with Vince Hafeli today. I hope everyone listening in has picked up something they can use in their companies to expand the conversation around mental health wellness and suicide prevention. I want to encourage you again to follow Vince on LinkedIn. You can find his company online at www.AjaxPaving.com or on Facebook at Ajax Paving Industries of Florida. Be sure to visit theAsphaltPro.com/SuicidePrevention to read and sign his Suicide in Construction Awareness Proclamation. If you or a colleague needs immediate help, the suicide and crisis lifeline has licensed counselors standing by at all times to speak with you. Please call or text 988. Thank you for tuning in, and thank you for your willingness to share this podcast and conversation with others.