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#93: Steps to Improve Your Safety Management Systems
122 Plays2 years ago
on Liesmaki shares his 8-step guide to effective management systems and his 5 pillars in tackling leading and lagging indicators that you can use today. Jon has years of safety leadership and management experience, currently as Director of Environmental, Health, and Safety at Harmon Construction. Learn from someone who has been there how you can not only advance your company's safety systems but also how you can advance your career as a safety professional.
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Transcript
Introduction of Podcast and Guest
00:00:07
Speaker
This is the accidental safety pro brought to you by HSI. This episode was recorded June 9th, 2022. My name is Jill James, HSI's chief safety officer. And today my guest is John Lee Smackey, director of environmental health and safety for Harmon. Harmon is a construction and manufacturing company based in Minnesota. Welcome to the show, John. Thank you. Glad to be here.
00:00:32
Speaker
It's been a while since I've had anyone from the, from the upper Midwest on the show for a long time. It's like, I can't have so many people from where I'm from. And so, um, thanks for being here as a Midwesterner. Yeah. We're in the same time zone. Um, so John, tell us, um, tell us your story.
John's Background and Career Decision
00:00:52
Speaker
What is, what is your winding path into safety? How did, how did this profession find you?
00:00:58
Speaker
Um, so originally I'm from small town, uh, Northern Minnesota, about two and a half, three hours north of the twin cities. Uh, like I said, grew up in a small town called Taconite, um, which is a fitting name up on the iron range. Um, and, uh, you know, I went to school at a school called Greenway high school, uh, which, you know, when you tell people at Greenway, they never know exactly where that is. Cause it's the name of the school and not the town, but, um,
00:01:25
Speaker
You know, the big big kind of sports down big hockey town kind of played up played hockey growing up there. Our original plan was to go to a UMD for premed. And so when John says UMD, he means University of Minnesota Duluth for all of our listeners who are from various parts unknown.
00:01:49
Speaker
So University of Minnesota Duluth was known, their medical school is known for students who wanted to go back to small towns to practice. And so that was, you know, I loved growing up where I grew up. I just absolutely loved it. I always expected myself to be there. So I started there.
00:02:09
Speaker
And there was talk that they were going to end up closing the medical school there and just have a single medical school in Minnesota at the at the the main University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities. So from there, kind of dipped back into hockey for a little bit, played some junior hockey, which is hockey kind of between high school and college, got recruited by a handful of schools, ended up going to Augsburg College.
00:02:35
Speaker
And from Augsburg, I still had aspirations of pre-med and then Augsburg actually has a physicians assistant program that I was interested in. So playing college hockey and trying to keep your grades high enough to compete to get into medical school or even physician assistant school was not a good combination.
00:02:57
Speaker
You're just describing such a like, you're like an archetype for a for a Minnesota from northern Minnesota hockey playing family. This is this is great. Yeah.
Educational Journey and Early Career Opportunities
00:03:10
Speaker
So from there, I'd gotten a so I was a biology and chemistry double major. I had taken an internship with Medtronic as a chemist.
00:03:21
Speaker
Uh, so I was kind of working as a chemist and coming to the end of my career. Um, I was still dating my, my high school sweetheart. Um, you know, as cliches it was as you know, as I was a hockey player, she was a hockey cheerleader for small leather down Minnesota.
00:03:37
Speaker
You know, anyone who's familiar with the Midwest is painting a picture in their mind already. Yeah. Yeah. And so she was a nurse. And so she was, you know, kind of kind of go anywhere. But our plan had been to get back to northern Minnesota. And so I was kind of racking my brain what I could do with biology and chemistry degree up in the northern area of Minnesota.
00:03:59
Speaker
Through a mutual friend. He kind of pointed me to A graduate program at the University of Minnesota Duluth for environmental health and safety He said, you know, I could hire you now with your current degree, but if you went and got this this master's program You know, I could pay you a little bit more and you'd have a little bit more of a better chance at some different career aspirations that that could provide you in the future so I thought that was a great idea and
00:04:24
Speaker
And, you know, kind of safety kind of falls into that, that, you know, medicine route of just helping people. And so, attended the program, while I was at the program, had some great experiences. They, I applied for a scholarship through the, what's called SESHA, which is the Semiconductor Environmental Health and Safety Association.
00:04:46
Speaker
very specific kind of safety requirements that are needed for semiconductor just because of the sheer hazards that are involved with that kind of manufacturing. So during that college or that scholarship paper had gotten accepted and they asked some of the students that had been accepted for the paper to present at their national conference in Scottsdale.
00:05:09
Speaker
Uh, after my presentation, I, I had a couple, um, a couple of groups reach out and say, Hey, we're, we're interested in, you know, you know, your, uh, you know, possibly a career with us after you finish your schoolwork for the year. So I had one offer. Um, that was probably the most solid down in Southern California. And then I'd also, um, had an offer from Eli Lilly for an internship in Indianapolis.
00:05:32
Speaker
And so a small town Minnesota guy had two decisions to make, Indianapolis or yeah, Orange County, California. Oh man. Oh man. Yeah, that's a, that's a big decision.
Career Moves and Mentorship
00:05:46
Speaker
You know, for, for our listeners, John, you and I went to the same graduate school. I also am a graduate of the university of Minnesota Duluth from the program before it was called the EHS program. It was called the, the industrial safety program.
00:06:01
Speaker
But that's not why I asked you here. You and I just happened to run into each other doing some presentations and things and then learned we are alum. So that was kind of cool. But at the time I was going to UMD, University of Minnesota Duluth, yeah that semi-conductor thing was a big deal. And most of the people from my graduating class took off for California to work in that field as well in California.
00:06:28
Speaker
Like you I wanted to stay in Minnesota. So yeah, I'm I'm hanging on the edge of my chair here to hear What did you decide to do? So yes, California was Okay Did you chase them? Did you chase the money or the locate the location?
00:06:46
Speaker
Yeah, it was definitely the location because yes, the money was there, but most of that goes right back into your rent because of the high cost of housing out there. And it is amazing the number of University of Minnesota Duluth alums that are still out there that I ran across.
00:07:06
Speaker
So, you know, moved out to Southern California and I was working for a consulting firm at the time was called EORM. So it stood for Environmental and Occupational Risk Management. And it kind of started out of the gate as being a, you know, a pump jockey, if you will, doing some industrial hygiene sampling for
00:07:25
Speaker
for various clients, then I had an opportunity to take a full-time, like a 40 hour a week, a full-time contract outsourced position with a company called Jazz Semiconductor through EORM, right? So it's part of their contract. And the first guy that I worked for, his name was Eric Moshet, and he was a University of Minnesota Duluth grad.
00:07:50
Speaker
Wow. Yeah. So, you know, if he's a guy from Silver Bay, Minnesota. Oh, close to where you are. You know, we have these. Sorry. Sorry, guess you might have to get out a map of Minnesota. John and I know these locations because we're both from Minnesota. But yeah, also from also from northern Minnesota. Hey, John, I got to ask you quick.
00:08:09
Speaker
When you moved to California, did you still have hockey hair? A little bit. I'm trying to think back when I finally cut it. It was more presentable than it was back in my playing days. I'll put it that way.
00:08:27
Speaker
Okay, so sorry you you you met another another alum while you're in California. Yeah, so You know did did some great work in Southern California and got an opportunity to just learn a lot I still One of my my ending managers that I had in Southern California. I still talk to you to this day bounce ideas off of her
00:08:50
Speaker
And then anytime I get to Southern California for whether it's work or Pleasure, I always try to reach out to those guys and meet some people So from there I was promoted once pretty quickly and then
00:09:07
Speaker
realized, and I remember that same manager, when I started, you know, when I had a juniors, you know, some new junior staff underneath me, you know, kind of take me aside and say that, you know, you're not everybody works as hard as that, that, you know, Midwest work ethic is.
Promotions and Continued Growth
00:09:25
Speaker
So I learned to slow down on some people. I
00:09:33
Speaker
had an opportunity to take a second promotion, but they needed support up in their, um, Portland, Oregon, uh, offices. And so I had, yeah, I headed up to Portland, Oregon. Um, again, met another, you know, a couple of years ago, I met another, um,
00:09:50
Speaker
three, four, five different, um, university of Minnesota alums. Uh, yeah, it is, it is such a small, you know, environmental health and safety is a small world as it is. Um, but it's amazing the number of, uh, university of Minnesota Duluth grads that are out there. Um,
00:10:10
Speaker
Yeah. So for our listening audience, if you're if you're coaching someone, mentoring someone who needs to find a find a home in a graduate program for health and safety, you can look up the University of Minnesota Duluth. They have a good program. They do. I mean, I know during my my year there, we had and I think the stats still remain. It's something around 90 percent of the students have an offer in hand before the last day of school.
00:10:38
Speaker
Um, it's just one of those programs that, that teaches, um, so many hands-on skills that, you know, when you get out in the field, you can really hit the ground running.
00:10:50
Speaker
Yeah, it's great. It's great. Okay, so you're you're now in beautiful Portland among the pine trees, which looks, you know, a little bit like northern. It does. And so I got started with Intel, and Intel has a massive Rondler Acres campus up there. And so that's where that's probably their largest US manufacturing location.
00:11:14
Speaker
So I was supporting some of their manufacturing facilities and then their R&D facility that was there. And Intel is 10, 15 years in advance of what your computer can kind of run. Their R&D, they called it the Death Star in terms of what they were doing and what they were working on. So very interesting work.
00:11:38
Speaker
Like at URM up in the Portland office, my manager was a UMD grad. One of the other senior guys there was a University of Minnesota, Luth grad. And then I get to Intel and there was like four or five more alums from the program that were working. Yeah. So it was, it was crazy. We had a great time.
Return to Minnesota and Honeywell Experience
00:11:58
Speaker
So started with Intel and then we had another contract that came up with a company called Shinetsu.
00:12:03
Speaker
And Chinnetsu actually grows the ingots, like the silicon ingots that semiconductors are made off of. And so basically you have these three-story volcanic reactors growing these things.
00:12:22
Speaker
It was interesting they needed some support while they were in between EHS managers so I got a chance to to fill in on that role. And then out of the blue through mutual contacts when I was a graduate student, a professor for not a professor but a manager from Honeywell called.
00:12:42
Speaker
And said hey, we have one of our guys retiring Would you be interested in moving back to Minnesota? My wife and I had our first child And we'd always wanted to get back to Minnesota at some point But didn't you know, we weren't expecting it kind of that soon So I only spent one year in in Portland, Oregon before I got the call from Honeywell And so the Honeywell facility that I work for is out of Plymouth, Minnesota here one of the suburbs in the Twin Cities and
00:13:08
Speaker
they do there's there's semiconductor plant so they do a lot of government contracts they have a number of their specialty is is kind of semiconductor pieces that are that deal with the radiation that comes from the Sun and so they have a lot of their components go on like government satellites and the Mars rover
00:13:30
Speaker
And so while I was there, I was a senior, they use HSE, right? Every company's got a little different twist of the three words, but this was, I was a senior manager, so I was in charge of the management system from all of the safety requirements, all the industrial hygiene requirements, loss prevention requirements, and half of the management system.
00:13:57
Speaker
And that was really my, yeah, that was really my first introduction into management system. And the way that that was laid out and how it was such an integral piece of the of the Honeywells operating system and really how they tied together.
00:14:14
Speaker
So, uh, working at that plant, we were, uh, you know, large quantity generator. We were, uh, ISO 14,001 certified, and then I helped lead the effort, uh, to get the site to be, um, Minstar certified. So Minstar is Minnesota's version for, you know, VPP or Voluntary Protection Program through OSHA. And, uh, so we had, um,
00:14:39
Speaker
Congratulations. Yeah, it was it was a big deal I think at the time that we did that we were like one of 17 companies at the time that that had gotten it in Minnesota, so We did a we had our so right out of the bat you get a you know kind of a one-year period of being certified and that gives you You don't have to you're not Susceptible to unannounced inspections
00:15:05
Speaker
So we had the one year and then they came back and they did a the second time we were they said hey All right, everything looks fantastic again We're gonna go with the three year and then right before I left Honeywell We were given a five-year research, which is the max that they do in Minnesota and I believe the last I heard they're still carrying that carrying that certification on so let's say it was a
00:15:26
Speaker
Oh, congratulations. That was very mature and gave me a great opportunity to continue that learning. And so I always thought that my career started really well being a consultant and kind of getting bits and pieces of different companies, kind of seeing what worked well, what didn't work well. And then I kind of carried that into Honeywell.
00:15:47
Speaker
You know, we were our site was was really mature and we had a Great culture there, but then there was also things from corporate that frustrated us, right? And so we always thought that There were different at times or there were some requirements and stringent, you know stringent things that they'd asked for that That you know, we're beyond compliance, which is a fantastic thing to drive through but sometimes you wondered if they had
00:16:25
Speaker
So from there I knew I was you know because I've been about five six years there and I knew I was ready to lead,
Transforming EHS Culture at Covidien
00:16:32
Speaker
right
00:16:32
Speaker
And so just the we had our our manager had left had retired and everyone was kind of, you know, moving up. And so I took the opportunity to kind of look outside because my my colleague was going to get the manager position. He was a great guy. He'd been there for a long time and and really deserve the role. It was really his.
00:16:54
Speaker
to take over. So I looked out and I started as a EHS manager with a small company called, well not small company, but a company called Covidian, which was a medical device manufacturer. And they did, they did like stents and stuff like that for veins.
00:17:11
Speaker
So I started at that facility and really kind of took my management system knowledge that I had and implemented it there with some guidance from their corporate team. And their corporate team had another fantastic management system.
00:17:28
Speaker
a little bit different than Honeywell's, but really well thought out and identified and laid out. So I was able to kind of use their playbook and some of my previous knowledge and really advance the site. I remember when I interviewed there, the plant manager had said, hey, listen, on a scale of zero to 10 in terms of EHS culture and programs, we're a minus three. So if you want this job, you're going to have your work cut out for you. Yeah.
00:17:58
Speaker
Um, and it was they, you know, they, uh, you know, the first couple of weeks I was there, I was reviewing everything and, um, you know, kind of just threw everything in the garbage and started from scratch. Yeah. What did that feel like for you? I mean, you, you walked into, especially at Honeywell, it sounds like some really developed plans that you were able to run with and, you know, shine and make, make great. And here you're starting kind of from scratch. What, what was that like for you professionally?
00:18:27
Speaker
Long hours, very busy, right? Because, so as I rolled out this management system, which was new to these guys, so the facility I took over had been purchased, had been acquired by Covidien. The company before was called EV3, and so they were a startup as EV3, and then they got bought out by Covidien. So they went from a standalone plant that was doing really well financially to now being part of a larger company.
00:18:54
Speaker
And, uh, at the time, because they were doing so well, corporate kind of delayed the rollout of the EHS management system with them. And so I was really their first introduction to, uh, you know, real EHS, if you will. Uh, so we, we just put a plan together and, and I, I know I had to stay kind of on top of the leaders. Um, you know, they, they still struggled with, you know, some OSHR.
00:19:20
Speaker
and they had, you know, some, they had a couple environmental things that needed to be short up and tightened up that they were doing. And it was, I concentrated on building the base of the management system and continue to assure them that
00:19:36
Speaker
You know, let me build a base. I'll we'll deal with the fires as they kind of pop up, right? We'll deal with the noise and the headaches. But eventually, if we can if we can just dedicate the time to build the system the right way, eventually it'll work itself out. And so from a perspective from just the offshore recordability rates, I think when I started, they were in the sixes. By the time I left, we were under point five.
00:20:02
Speaker
Um, you know, they had, we had done some work on our, uh, hazardous waste. Uh, they had some things that we could easily, um, we, you know, little to no treatment to, um, that we could then just discharge it as part of our wastewater permit. And I think out of the first year, the first two years we saved $85,000 a year in hazardous waste costs. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. John, when, when you use the term management system and that you're setting up a management system,
00:20:32
Speaker
For our listeners who might not who are maybe wondering, I wonder what john's talking about, like, what are the elements of that manage, what would you mind giving a little brief on on what that meant at that time to you and when you use that term. Yeah, so a management systems, to me, is all the checks and balances in your environmental health and safety programs that allow them to run autonomously.
00:20:59
Speaker
And it's kind of a weird thing to say. In layman's terms, my goal at the end of the day when I implement a proper management system is that it runs without me. When you ask that question, when you step into a room and say, who's responsible for safety, not everybody should point at the safety person.
00:21:19
Speaker
Right. And so the management system, what it does is, like I said, it's, it's checks and balances. And I, I kind of have mine broken down, you know, through, it's a little bit of, of Honeywell, a little bit of Covidian, um, that I've used in my current role when kind of get to talking more Harmon. Um, and there's eight pillars to it for me.
00:21:38
Speaker
And so I'll kind of go, so pillar one is the program management and accountability. And that's kind of your, your, your overall arching policy and, uh, your accountability. If you have any kind of safety discipline rules that you want to follow to make sure that, um, rules are being applied consistently and fair. Number two is risk assessment and auditing. Um, you know, pretty straightforward, right? That's where you, you know, kind of your risk assessments and your job hazard analysis might be in any kind of requirements.
00:22:05
Speaker
you have for auditing your facility or having leadership perform those audits. In three, that's my risk control program. So that's kind of your traditional safety programs, like a hazard communication and a fall protection, machine guarding, that sort of thing.
00:22:21
Speaker
Number four is employee engagement and communication. That's where I capture stuff like behavior-based safety, safety committees, any kind of safety alerts or email communications, publications that I have. Number five is training. That's where you have a training matrix in there and then you might have your content
00:22:43
Speaker
six emergency preparedness and response, you know, all your drills, your evacuation plans, that sort of thing. Uh, seven is incident management. Uh, and you know, that's a big one, right? How do you, um, how are you going to document report, do all those things? And then the last one's a little bit of a catchall and that's legal and other requirements. So a lot of my regulatory reporting goes in that one. Um, some of my OSHA stuff, uh, goes in there. Uh, and that's, that's kind of how I lay it out. So.
00:23:12
Speaker
That's beautiful. That's beautiful. Yeah, so when I, so, you know, kind of as I get to, to the Harmon piece, when I first started with Harmon, and I'll kind of backtrack here in a second, but when I first started with Harmon in, you know, I say, Okay, well, where's your guys's safety information and I get a, you know, internet folder that's got, you know,
00:23:31
Speaker
37 folders for various things and no rhyme or reason where stuff goes. Yeah. And then taking that and transitioning it into this, this, you know, kind of eight point, yeah, management system and laid out. Now I know, now I know and all of my staff know exactly where everything is supposed to be, right? There's, there's no questions in terms of, and I don't allow extra folders outside of those eight, right?
00:23:56
Speaker
Well, and it makes it easier to evaluate where you are in a company as well. You know, especially if you're stepping into a new role, if you look at your eight points here, then you're like, okay, we've got this, we've got this, oh, missing this, missing, you know, like our bucket is like 50% full here or 100% full there. Yeah, it's super easy using that layout to perform a gap analysis.
00:24:21
Speaker
You can, when I lay it out and when I brought it to harm and I said, okay, these are the things that I had done, you know, that were requirements within, within Honeywell, within Metronic, Covidian. But you can take this to any company and I can say, okay, out of all these, I know this doesn't apply, this doesn't apply, this doesn't apply, but the rest of these apply. And then you can go about building a plan on how to develop and roll all those things out. Beautiful.
00:24:52
Speaker
Beautiful. You could teach that around the country. Thank you.
00:24:57
Speaker
Yeah, that's wonderful. Okay. Thank you for the offshoot there. So you're, you're, you're at Covidien, right? Is where we were in the store. Yeah. So the success I had at the plant certainly garnered attention from the corporate folks.
Corporate Transition to Medtronic
00:25:11
Speaker
So I was quickly promoted to a corporate position. I had basically the Western half of the United States for one of their product lines. And so I had, you know,
00:25:25
Speaker
from, you know, kind of Minnesota through Colorado, um, and then down in through, you know, Northern and Southern California. Um, and so I kind of manage those, those programs and those facilities.
00:25:39
Speaker
And then we were purchased by Medtronic, which is a, for people in Minnesota, Medtronic is a big name. I come to find out it's not quite as big when you get outside Minnesota, especially outside medical device, but homegrown company. And so during that conversion, we had, there were a number of, you know, kind of jockeying for positions, if you will.
00:26:05
Speaker
Um, and so I was, I ended up getting a promotion, but had to go back to a site level. Um, which at the time worked out really well for me. Um, you know, going from, from a corporate position where I had multiple facilities to a single one was a little bit different, but, uh, we, I, it was the largest, one of the largest manufacturing plants for Medtronic. Um,
00:26:27
Speaker
And so it was, we had 1700 people, 24 seven operations, and we made all of the battery devices for a lot of the Medtronic devices that are there. And so super rewarding.
00:26:44
Speaker
Uh, we had, um, you know, I was part of the executive leadership team there. Um, we had things like we had quality day, right? And so during quality day, they would bring in, uh, patients that had Medtronic devices and they would get to tell their stories and they would get to meet the workers, uh, that actually put their devices together. And yeah.
00:27:05
Speaker
Yeah, it was so cool. One of the ladies was from a small Minnesota town, Litchfield. Again, your listeners will have to grab a map. Yes, very close to where I am right now. And she was a cat engineer and she had developed deep brain tremors.
00:27:29
Speaker
And so with that, she had kind of spasms in her hand where using CAD just became unattainable, right? She couldn't do that type of work. And with the deep brain stimulator that Medtronic had used in the electronics and the battery coming from our facility, we was able to her to really to get her life back. And she explained this journey that she had
00:27:57
Speaker
And they have the ability to, so when they charge her device, they have the ability to kind of turn it on and turn it off. And she had shown us, she'd taken a sheet of paper and kind of started in the middle and, you know, made a small circle to a bigger circle to a bigger circle without lifting the pen up. Right. And when she shut the device off, she shook so bad that you could not tell, you know, kind of what she was drawing and then she would turn it back on and her hand steadied right away and she could make this beautiful circle.
00:28:27
Speaker
So, wow. I mean, the employees that your plant must just, they must have felt so like my work matters. Every 1700, all 1700 people, it's make this possible. Yeah. And they so when Covidian and Medtronic joined, they developed a stat, they figured out the amount of products that we have in, you know, across the world, and two patients every second
00:28:56
Speaker
newly affected by a Medtronic device.
00:29:03
Speaker
That is fantastic. What a great place to work. It was. It was the very rewarding place to work there. So then on to the next step. So then as I'm managing that, I was a senior manager there, very successful facility, ISO 14001 certified, OSAS 18001 certified.
00:29:26
Speaker
I was ready for the for the next step. And so for me, that was a director level position. We had a couple of the senior senior directors and our VP had retired from Medtronic at the corporate level. And so the expectation was everyone was going to kind of shuffle their way up. So
00:29:47
Speaker
I was mentoring with one of the, actually with Covidians former vice president of EHS who took a role as a senior global director in Medtronic during the integration, the acquisition or whatever.
00:30:02
Speaker
And, um, it was just, you know, big companies, right? It just takes a little bit longer. And, you know, do we really need that position? And, you know, as you know, and in, you know, some of your listeners know that, you know, sometimes it's not always, you know, it's easy to explain our positions, um, in the usefulness that they provide, uh, for companies. And so.
00:30:24
Speaker
That was getting delayed. It was kind of going on 18 months of being delayed for those positions to kind of reopen and reshuffle and so at the time I decided that you know, I was kind of ready for that next challenge and so through LinkedIn and some recruiters I decided to interview at a position at Harmon where I'm currently at and they Harmon had
Joining Harmon and Implementing Strategies
00:30:49
Speaker
They've done okay in safety in the past, but they had traditionally used kind of ironworkers turned safety professional who took some OSHA classes and they did okay. They did okay, but the leadership team really wanted to kind of take it to the next level.
00:31:07
Speaker
And what could they really do with, you know, somewhat like someone who's professionally trained in some of this stuff. And so I know when I interviewed I that management system that I had described it, I laid it all out in terms of, you know, kind of made my own tweaks from from Honeywell, Covidien and Medtronic management systems and say, if I ever led this, this is how I would roll it out.
00:31:29
Speaker
And so when I came to the interview, I came very prepared. I actually had the management system kind of laid out details under each of those those eight structures, what goes in each. Yeah. And kind of I had those I made bound copies. I think I made like six or eight bound copies that I brought in with me and, you know, kind of reviewed with the leaders and, you know, and they were
00:31:55
Speaker
John, this is going to be a podcast episode that we're going to want to share with
00:32:00
Speaker
with people who are applying for work in safety. So we're gonna have to have to reach out to Dr. Lucine at the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater and say, hey, maybe share this episode with students who are looking for work. This is great. Yeah, it was, you know, kind of going backwards to that, that SESHA conference where when I was a student and I interviewed and got hired the following year I had gone and I got some of the University of Minnesota Duluth students
00:32:26
Speaker
a chance to interview with your arm at the time they had a couple openings and I remember sitting there thinking like like just provide examples just provide examples like hey tell me about a time of this it doesn't always have to be like super safety related but if you can provide examples of how you've done things
00:32:47
Speaker
I remember listening to them and a couple of the kids, right, their kids interviewing were like, like that and stuff, like that and stuff. And I'm like, oh, I just explained it. Just explain the situation. Yes. So there you are at Harmon and you've got essentially your disseminating folders. Yes.
00:33:08
Speaker
Bound, bound folders. So I came prepared. So I, I got the, so as I came super prepared, I remember it was funny. I was interviewing with the senior vice president who's our current vice president now.
00:33:21
Speaker
And I was kind of giving my history and he's like, uh, you know, I brought up the hockey stuff and he's, um, cause it was a big part of my life. He's like, Oh, you're a hockey guy. Our president played for Gus Davis college, um, which is in Southern Minnesota. He's like, you're a hockey guy. He's going to hire you anyway.
00:33:43
Speaker
They were in the same uh same league actually so but he was obviously much much older than me but um so yeah so i accepted the position and um you know just kind of did that same thing right i i started uh like i talked to what i i started by
00:34:00
Speaker
taking a look at what they had going on and where the program was and really where they needed to go. And I think the biggest part of what they needed was the incident management system. And you and I have talked about, we've done a paper and a webinar on the incident management system that I implemented. But that was just one section of the management system that I had rolled out.
00:34:27
Speaker
And it's been fantastic. We've continued to groan. We've continued to break records. So in terms of OSHA recordable, which I'm not a super big fan of, it's a bit archaic. So when I started, we were in the mid fours, which is pretty average for, they kind of match their industry average. In the last three years, we've broken their best safety records back to back to back years.
00:34:54
Speaker
Yeah. So we're down. Congratulations. Thank you. We're down to a 1.2 last year. And so, and with that, one of the, you know, a couple of the other things that I've implemented and, you know, kind of developed through, through Honeywell Medtronic is I developed a performance index, which is a mix of leading and lagging indicators.
00:35:18
Speaker
Yes, please talk about that. These are things that vex many a safety professional. So the program that I developed, it's a hundred point scale and it has five components.
Developing and Utilizing a Performance Index
00:35:30
Speaker
And so we said, what are those five things that I can measure?
00:35:34
Speaker
At Harmon, I have both construction projects and I have manufacturing. And so one of the challenges that my president gave is he wanted one number that could apply to both. So I can't try to measure something that's important in manufacturing if it doesn't apply to the field.
00:35:54
Speaker
So the five pillars we had that we ended up coming to the first one is OSHA recordables. And so we we took a look and tried to figure out, well, does that mean should we take a look at it from a rate standpoint or just OSHA recordables themselves, because our regions and our plants are different sizes. So then it becomes a numbers game of, OK, well, what
00:36:15
Speaker
How do you compare one to the other? Yeah. So we just went with just pure numbers. So you get, you know, you get 20 points. So each of these five pillars, you get 20 points of the max. And then there's a scale. It scales down depending on what that that is. So for OSHA recordables, if you if you don't have any or you have one OSHA recordable, you get all 20 points. If you have more than if you have two, then you get 15 points. If you have three, then it goes on to five points. And if you have more than three, you don't get any points for that category.
00:36:45
Speaker
And then the other four categories are all leading indicators. So the first one is on-time injury reporting and investigations. So we have a 24-hour requirement in our incident management system that we have, timestamps. So we can tell when it was reported, and then we can also tell when the investigation got completed on time.
00:37:11
Speaker
So, so against we, the rest of these, we use a 75%, you know, a hundred percent gets 20 points, 75, greater than 75% gets 15 points greater than 50% gets five points and less than 50% get zero points. So we track each region in each plant every single month, they get a score and then it's cumulative.
00:37:34
Speaker
So your score starts January 1, just like the OSHA log and ends December 31st. So we have OSHA recordables and then incident reporting and investigations. The next one is our safety committees.
00:37:50
Speaker
So when I first started at Harmon, the monthly safety committees for each of the plants and the nine or five manufacturing areas, so a total of nine, it wasn't always consistently done month to month as it should have been. And so we identified that for this month or this year as something we wanted to concentrate on. And they've done a great job of turning it around.
00:38:14
Speaker
So they get points every month if they hold their safety committee meetings. And they've come a long, long way. So to be honest, next year we'll probably have to change that category out because it's getting a little easy for them.
00:38:25
Speaker
Sure, sure. Yeah, they've got a they've got a system going and I bet you have like things that you want them to do and accomplish in that committee. Yeah. The next one is our corrective action closure. So from our instant management system, we have automatic corrective actions that are generated and then from like audits and then if they have findings from some of their if there's injuries or near misses or whatever.
00:38:50
Speaker
So making sure that the corrective actions get closed on time is a big deal. And like I tell my leaders is, you know, if you have a corrective action, so it defaults, a lot of them default to three days plus current. So they get four days to kind of close most of them.
00:39:07
Speaker
But if they need additional time, I don't mind extending dates, right? We're not gonna let them sandbag it and say, yeah, give me, I have to update a JHA, give me three months, that's not gonna fly. But the way I explain it to them is I'm like, as long as you call me,
00:39:24
Speaker
and say, Hey, these three are, we're going to be late on these three. Can you extend the dates? Then it doesn't impact their performance index. And what I, but what I don't want them to do is, is not know they're in there, right? It's like the college kid that says, all right, I'm pretty sure I'm negative in my, my checking account, but if I don't log in and I don't look at it, then I don't know I'm negative.
00:39:48
Speaker
I use that same analogy when I try to explain of like, just understand what you have in the system. And if we need to make adjustments, we can make adjustments. And then that last category, that fifth category is our audits. So we have audit requirements for our plant managers, for our shop managers and manufacturing, and then in the field for our general managers, our site superintendents, and then our project managers.
00:40:13
Speaker
And so they have, um, we've detailed out, they know what the requirements are. When we first rolled this out, it was very interesting because these things were expected to be, you know, these were what we started measuring were things that were supposed to be getting done. And we kind of expected them to get done. We just never shined a light on it to see if all the regions and all the plants were actively getting their stuff closed on time, that the audits were being done on time.
00:40:36
Speaker
Um, yeah. And that first month on the pilot, there was lots of reds and yellows, lots of, you know, scores of fives and zeros. And when I first reported on it and all the leaders knew that, you know, we were going to start looking at this and we were going to change over to this performance index.
00:40:52
Speaker
And the president is on the, we're on the Webex meeting and the president is telling, you know, all the leaders like, listen, don't call John after we get off the call. He's not going to change your numbers. I just expect you to get better. And now we are mostly, you know, we started fresh. So I gave them September through the end of December as our kind of our pilot. And then we started with a fresh score, January one.
00:41:19
Speaker
And almost all of my plants are all 20s and 15s in terms of their scoring. So they're cumulative score out of that hundred. We have a couple of regions and plants that are at a hundred still. And then most, I don't think anybody is, we have one region that's a 75. They had a small string of injuries, but the rest of all those leading indicators are all 15 and 20s. Wow. And do you have them report on this monthly?
00:41:46
Speaker
So we run the report monthly and I give them their feedback. I give them their score monthly. So they, they get a month score and then they get their cumulative score. So let's say, let's say one month they had, you know, 15 audits that needed to get done and they got 13 of them done. And then the next month they got all 15 out of 15. Um, so that would be, you know, 28 out of 30, right? Would be their cumulative score. And then each month, um, we, we just kind of keep the stats running. Yeah.
00:42:15
Speaker
I mean, I'm guessing this has pleased your management team because that your management team wanted a number. Yes, very much. Yeah. Yeah. And then how did the other leaders that report in on those things? How are they did it? Yeah, I guess was it a grind? Or is it like, thanks, you gave me some guardrails.
00:42:34
Speaker
Uh, a little of both. Um, you know, so I still get, uh, there are less and less surprises now. And especially like on the corrective actions, when I run the report, right, it used to be, all right, there's, you know, 30 of them were late this month across the country. Uh, now I just ran, you know, maze report a couple of days ago at the close of the month. And I think six, we had six corrective actions that went late across the country.
00:43:02
Speaker
Uh, and so it makes it just, it makes the scoring easier. Uh, and so we reported this and so, uh, Harmon actually reports to a parent company called Apogee, which is, is based in, uh, in the, the twin cities of Minnesota as well.
00:43:18
Speaker
And they have a single guy that's kind of in charge of risk management and insurance. And so we started presenting, my manager during his executive committees with Harmon CEO or with Apigee CEO started reporting on this and introduced this concept. And lo and behold, starting this fiscal year now,
00:43:41
Speaker
Everybody seems to have a, all the other business units have a performance index that looks shamelessly like the one that I developed and rolled out. That is awesome. And you know, I'm just going to guess here that once you get these, you know, you have your five point scale developed and then there's going to be fingers that you find out, you know, that need correction, like just the
00:44:05
Speaker
corrective action closure system if you find out like oh we have a hole in maintenance that's fixing some of these like you know something was identified it needed to be repaired fixed maintained put on a capital improvement prod you know budget something like that
00:44:21
Speaker
You're able to kind of go down those various rabbit holes and find where there may be gaps and in other systems as well. Yeah. Yeah. Like I said, I mean, it wasn't only a flashlight in terms of, you know, looking and making sure that things were getting done, but it just gives you more of an in-depth look. Right. You're able to find those hotspots for, you know, to be honest, right.
00:44:43
Speaker
for a program that we've we've developed an management system that we've rolled out and it's it looks you know it looks well like we were doing all these things right you know back to back to back safety records but then when we go to look to see all these leading indicators and it shows whoa we are we are really red and orange are are we just getting lucky with um with that safety metric with that OSHA recordable
00:45:05
Speaker
Or are we really driving the right behaviors and changing behaviors in the business to get better? And so using the performance index gives me a light to say, are we actively making changes? Are we being transformational in the work we're doing? Or are we just kind of skating by and it was a quote unquote lucky year. Yeah. Fabulous. This is great. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for sharing all of that.
00:45:36
Speaker
Yeah, so I'm thinking about you have been, as you've been talking and sharing your career path, which is pretty darn amazing, John, I picked up on a couple of things that you were talking
Importance of Soft Skills and Mentorship
00:45:52
Speaker
about. I mean, you've developed a lot of things on your own, but I heard you talking about
00:45:56
Speaker
mentors. And, you know, when when you are making decisions to change jobs or come up with ways to present yourself for the next job, those are things that not everybody has in terms of like, soft skills and figuring out how to do those kind of kind of things. What would you like to say about
00:46:20
Speaker
the importance of having soft skills, what does that mean to you? How do you develop that? And I also want to hear about mentors, because I heard you talk about it a couple of times. Yeah. So I think, to me, soft skills is can really, I wouldn't want to say make or break, but is the ability to enhance your career as a safety professional.
00:46:47
Speaker
You know, I truly believe the reason to my success was my ability to adapt, to influence, to collaborate. And we at the University of Minnesota Duluth program, you and I talked about this a little bit before, is they have added a soft skills class.
00:47:11
Speaker
In the program, we had one class that was not dedicated to regulations or ventilation or environmental rights. It was just dedicated to developing your soft skills and being able to portray that because we know as safety professionals, it's difficult to
00:47:30
Speaker
to always get buy-in, to always find the right position or to get the leadership support. It's not always the easiest at every company you go to. And I've had those roles in certain plants and in certain situations where it was hard, right? It was difficult and how to navigate that. And I would say, because you can really teach
00:47:58
Speaker
Um, you know, most people get, can figure out regulations fairly easy, right? Um, you know, it is a very nerdy thing that off the top of my head that I know the, uh, the respiratory protection standard is 1910, one 34. And like, just because I've read it, you know, 27 million times.
00:48:17
Speaker
Yeah, we're nerds in that regard. Yeah, but now taking that in conveying that in, you know, really the being able to, to take the art and the science of EHS, and be successful explaining that to leadership positions that don't understand that. And so
00:48:38
Speaker
Um, we talked about like, you know, there's Deming and there's, you know, the habits of highly successful people. We spent a lot of time on that sort of work. Um, and, and then just some personal work. I mean, kind of through, through my hockey background, uh, I've done a lot of hockey coaching. Um, I've attended some USA hockey coaching seminars where, you know, I've
00:49:00
Speaker
had a chance to listen to some NHL coaches present and talk about some fantastic books that they've read. One of my favorites is called The Culture Code. It just kind of talks about how successful groups operate and how people lead those groups and the ability to identify certain situations and how you apply yourself.
00:49:26
Speaker
I've always tried to continue to find opportunities that kind of push my comfort zone and be willing to say, hey, this is an area I could use help in. How do I continue to do this? And I would say, what I tried to do along my career is pick those things, those leaders, whether they were my direct manager or not, or they were just someone in the organization that I looked up to and say, okay,
00:49:55
Speaker
What what is it about that person that I want to emulate to myself? What do I think that they do that? Inspires me and how can I use how can I take that look and what can I do and how can I apply that to my situation? Yeah in a lot of those situations right I mean I think the biggest is
00:50:17
Speaker
is the ability when, as I've kind of got to that manager level and I've had staff, and I've had a lot of success in various roles along my career path, but I've always been the first one to step aside and always say, no, no, no, these are the people behind me that drove this change, right? That these successes are based on these people, not me, because you certainly can't do it alone,
00:50:44
Speaker
And then on the flip side is, whenever there was a problem, whether it was my fault or not, as a manager, you have to be the one to step up and say, nope, that was my responsibility. I'm in charge of this team.
00:51:00
Speaker
and be able to take responsibility and I think that ability to say, you know, whether a program failed, or a gap was missed or whatever, and just understanding that, yeah, you know that that didn't that didn't work didn't go as planned. That was a miss on our part, we will, you know, fix it and continue to move on.
00:51:22
Speaker
Yeah, we're going through it right now. One system in particular that we kind of rolled out last year, just it's not working. And, you know, I've told the leadership team like, yeah, this is just not as
00:51:37
Speaker
the program's not going the way I envisioned it to go. And so we're gonna change directions and we're gonna try something else and be able to do that. But yeah, I think being able to relate to people and understanding, so kind of one of the benefits I've had in a number of these roles is the ability to do some of the testing for what type of your personality type.
00:52:04
Speaker
Yeah, sure. Or your strengths. Yeah, the strengths and weaknesses. And, you know, so I remember the one we did at Medtronic is, you know, my personality type is be right, be quick, be gone or something like that.
00:52:19
Speaker
And I can see that and I know I struggle with that even in my staff meetings and with my one on ones with with my staff is, you know, I just want the quick points. And so I have to, you know, I leave that on the front of my desk so that I continually read it and I slow down and I make sure that that my my staff feels felt, you know, they feel heard, they feel understood. And
00:52:43
Speaker
Again, but it's it's always I would say it's one of those things where if you're not changing, you're getting worse. The world will pass you by. So just constantly always kind of investing in in yourself can go such a long way. That's right. Yeah, when when when I went through the graduate program that you and I both went through, we didn't we didn't have that I graduated a number of years before you did. So they hadn't figured that out yet.
00:53:08
Speaker
But you know, for our listeners who are thinking, you know, I'm asking for professional development, and you know, we might think, oh, that's going to a conference, or that's getting us further certification. These soft skills that john is talking about are just as important, just as important. And you mentioned john, you mentioned a book that you'd like say the name of it again, the culture code, the culture code. All right, do you have do you have others that you'd like to suggest or name drop?
00:53:36
Speaker
Um, that is by far my favorite off the top of my head. So yeah, I have to go back and look through the list. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You might, um, you might also like, since, since you're sports guy, hockey guy, um, there's another leadership book called wolf pack. Um, that was written by Abby Wambach, um, uh, soccer Olympian. Okay. Um, uh, a, another good, uh, leadership book. Yeah. So, um, mentors.
00:54:07
Speaker
So developing self, developing self through training, soft skills training, some of the books we're talking about. Gosh, mentors fall in that category, don't they?
00:54:17
Speaker
They do. And I've had, you know, I've been lucky to have some great ones. Like I mentioned one that I in my early days in at URM out in Southern California, who I still stay in contact with out
Insights from Cross-Functional Leadership
00:54:31
Speaker
there. And so, you know, there's there's probably like three or four off top my mind that I, you know, they've
00:54:39
Speaker
Um, two have since retired and I still reach out. Um, you know, one of my colleagues at, at Honeywell, um, and I think at least two or three times a year, we, we reach out to each other and still go grab lunch and, and kind of catch up. And even though there's an age gap, there's still, um, you know, there's still things you can learn from people. Uh, one of the other things that, that a, um, a gal who worked for me at Medtronic, which I thought was a fantastic idea is.
00:55:07
Speaker
She would set up, um, you know, kind of a lunch and learn she'd, um, reach out to various leaders that were outside of EHS, uh, in, in spend time with them and get to know their career paths and ideas of, you know, kind of what went well in their careers and what didn't go well and, um, constantly learning. And so once a month, she would just, she'd pick a different leader in a Medtronic.
00:55:30
Speaker
She has the benefit of having several Different facilities that are fairly close within the Twin Cities area And so she you know Some of those were outside of the building and she would use you know Maybe one to set up a meeting with another And just have lunch and just kind of pick their brains and have someone that you can relate to You know even through through LinkedIn. I've I've had some people you know recently a there was a EHS engineer from
00:55:59
Speaker
that we'd kind of crossed paths when I was leaving there and when she was starting. And then she was looking at a position of Medtronic and she's like, you know, Hey, what do you think? You know, how's the culture? How's this sort of thing? And just being able to reach out to someone and have conversations. It just
00:56:18
Speaker
It's don't be alone in your journey. If I have anything to say, right. Yeah. Um, use people, ask questions. Um, even, you know, even if you're introverted, right, there's, there's still people, you know, you get some courage in, in, you know, kind of ask for help. It doesn't have to be, you know, you don't have to ask 20 people, but if you find a good one or two, um, that, you know, you can rely on, it can make a big difference in how your career develops along the way.
00:56:42
Speaker
Yeah, beautiful, beautiful. You know, John, as as and I know we're running short on we're starting to run short on time. But, you know, you've laid out this beautiful eight point eight point management system, the your five points for leading and lagging indicators, you know, so many, so much of our
00:57:04
Speaker
of our professional practice is back a few centuries when it comes to technology. And, you know, maybe doing things, you know, with duct tape and paper clips. I'm guessing that some of what you've implemented actually takes some technology and some things that are better without. Do you want to talk about like, like, how did you figure out how to attack things using 21st century tools?
00:57:30
Speaker
Or is that too big of a question? We've got another hour to talk. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe I'll have you back. No, I think there are certain times when a lot of it, I think, is knowing your audience in what you need and what you want. So when it comes to technology and things like the incident management system that I implemented,
00:57:58
Speaker
That's a cloud-based solution with an app on a mobile phone where now I can have people submit injuries. They can do their audits on it. I can set up automatic notifications. And they can meet those correct, those deadlines, like you were talking about. Yeah. And so for us at Harmon, it was a big deal because
00:58:26
Speaker
We have, I have four manufacturing plants and I have, you know, 19 to 20 some active construction projects going on across the country at any one time. And so before I started, the way that that was done is, you know, if somebody got hurt, it would be, you know, an email or they had some paper forms and then they would take a picture of it or a phone call.
00:58:49
Speaker
And some of the information just didn't quite get it. So we would have instances where, you know, somebody might have gotten, you know, had a significant near miss in the Baltimore region. And because it didn't get communicated in a timely manner, we didn't adjust and fix that gap in our process. And then maybe somebody got hurt down in Texas.
00:59:09
Speaker
And we would from the same thing, the same exact thing. And we would have known about it had we had a chance to, to use technology, um, in advance that right. Um, and so with our parent company, uh, Apogee there, these other business units that we have.
00:59:25
Speaker
aren't exactly like Harmon. We're the only ones that really have construction projects in the field. And so when I started there, what they were using was a SharePoint system that was not nearly as technologically advanced. But for them, a lot of the other business units have one, maybe two manufacturing facilities.
00:59:50
Speaker
So the level of sophistication didn't quite need to be there. They're in four walls. So if someone got hurt in one spot, it's easier to communicate that. And so when I brought the idea of going to this incident management software, and I showed them, and a lot of them were, yeah, that's fantastic. That works kind of way better than our homegrown system that we have. And then we got to cost.
01:00:20
Speaker
And they're like, oh no, my leader's not going to spend that much money. Um, and it wasn't, I mean, it's really, it's not really that, that much in the grand scheme of things. Um, but it was, they just, they didn't see the need based on what the money was and maybe what that effort would be to implement something like that. Where I, I had that leadership backing that basically said, yeah, just give us a ballpark of what you think this is going to cost so that we can make sure we appropriately budget for it. But this is.
01:00:47
Speaker
This is something that we need and we couldn't survive on the old homegrown system that they had had. So yeah, just like I said, we could go on. We could, we could. Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you for that. I appreciate it. I appreciate it.
01:01:04
Speaker
Well, this might be my final question Do you still play hockey? I coach a lot Okay. Yeah, I have two sons that are in hockey and so I've continued to coach along the way I had been playing in I I gave up the competitive men's league a while ago and
01:01:24
Speaker
There are some younger kids that are still living out their glory days and get a little too competitive for my nature as I get older. But pre-COVID, I still skated and there was a Wednesday night just to pick up hockey for the, my wife likes to call it geriatric hockey.
01:01:46
Speaker
We're not we're not geriatric hockey where you can keep your your money maker your brain. Yeah safe safe, right? Yeah, and you know As a safety professional, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but I do not wear a face mask when I play hockey What yeah, that's probably northern Minnesota of me. Yeah, right. It's because you grew up on the iron range Yeah, I just tell my wife. It's not like I'm getting any prettier. So
01:02:10
Speaker
Um, but yeah, we, so pre-COVID we were, we were skating on Wednesday nights and then COVID hit. Um, I think they started back up. Um, I want to say in the last couple of months, but I'm not, uh, I haven't got a chance to get out there with all the coaching I was doing.
01:02:26
Speaker
Well, John, from one Minnesotan to another, gosh, I sure appreciate everything you've shared today. This has been, this has been wonderful. We're going to have to share this with our alma mater. Yes. Yeah. UMD grads. We're going to, we've mentioned our graduate school so often we definitely have to, have to share this with them. And I, I so appreciate the time.
01:02:50
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Do you ever get a chance to get up there? I've been up a couple of times and I've just spoken to the classes that are there and just done a day in the life. It's pretty fun. Yeah, I've done the same, but it's been years. I've been to the campus in the last couple of years with my own child on college tours and things. And then, of course, have to walk through the department and say, this is where all the safety nerds are made, like right here.
01:03:19
Speaker
Yeah, that's good. That's good. Well, John, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely. It was a pleasure. And thank you for spending your time listening today. And more importantly, thank you for your contribution toward the common good.
01:03:33
Speaker
making sure your workers, including your temporary workers, make it home safe every day. If you aren't subscribed and want to hear past and future episodes, you can subscribe in iTunes, the Apple Podcast app, or any other podcast player you'd like. We'd love it if you could leave a rating and review us on iTunes. It really helps us connect the show with more and more safety and health professionals like John and I. Special thanks to Naive Jarisey, our podcast producer. And until next time, thanks for listening.