Jill James:

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. Today, my guest is Jon Liesmaki, director of environmental health and safety for Harmon. Harmon is a construction and manufacturing company based in Minnesota. Welcome to the show, Jon.

Jon Liesmaki:

Thank you. Glad to be here.

Jill James:

It's been a while since I've had anyone from the Upper Midwest on the show. For a long time, it's like, "Oh, I can't have so many people from where I'm from," and so thanks for being here as a Midwesterner.

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah.

Jill James:

We're in the same time zone. Jon, tell us your story. What is your winding path into safety? How did this profession find you?

Jon Liesmaki:

Originally, I'm from small town Northern Minnesota, about two and a half, three hours north of the Twin Cities. Like I said, grew up in a small town called Taconite, which is a fitting name, up on the Iron Range. I went to school at a school called Greenway High School, which when you tell people Greenway, they never know exactly where that is because it's the name of the school and not the town, but big sports town, big hockey town. Played hockey growing up there. Original plan was to go to UMD for pre-med.

Jill James:

Yeah, and so when Jon says UMD, he means University of Minnesota Duluth, for all of our listeners who are from various parts unknown.

Jon Liesmaki:

Good catch.

Jill James:

Yeah.

Jon Liesmaki:

Sorry about that. University of Minnesota Duluth, their medical school was known for students who wanted to go back to small towns to practice, and so that was ... I loved growing up where I grew up. I just absolutely loved it. I always expected myself to be there. I started there, and there was talk that they were going to end up closing the medical school there and just have a single medical school at the main University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities.

Jon Liesmaki:

From there, dipped back into hockey for a little bit. Played some junior hockey, which is hockey between high school and college. Got recruited by a handful of schools. Ended up going to Augsburg College. From Augsburg, I still had aspirations of pre-med. Then, Augsburg actually has a physician's assistant program that I was interested in. 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.

Jill James:

You're just describing such a ... You're like an archetype for a Minnesotan from Northern Minnesota. A hockey playing family. This is great.

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah, so from there, I'd gotten a ... I was a biology and chemistry double major. I had taken an internship with Medtronic as a chemist, so I was working as a chemist and coming to the end of my career. I was still dating my high school sweetheart. As cliché as it was, I was a hockey player, she was a hockey cheerleader for a small Northern town, Minnesota.

Jill James:

Anyone who's familiar with the Midwest is painting a picture in their mind already.

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah.

Jill James:

Yeah.

Jon Liesmaki:

She was a nurse, and so she was kind of, go anywhere. Our plan had been to get back to Northern Minnesota, and so I was racking my brain, what I could do with a biology and chemistry degree up in the Northern area of Minnesota. Through a mutual friend, he pointed me to a graduate program at the University of Minnesota Duluth for environmental health and safety. He said, "I could hire you now with your current degree, but if you went and got this master's program, 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." I thought that was a great idea. Safety falls into that medicine realm of just helping people, and so I attended the program.

Jon Liesmaki:

While I was at the program, had some great experiences. I applied for a scholarship through the, what's it called? SESHA, which is the Semiconductor Environmental Health and Safety Association, so very specific kind of safety requirements that are need for semiconductor, just because of the sheer hazards that are involved with that kind of manufacturing. During that college, or that scholarship paper had gotten accepted. They asked some of the students that had been accepted for the paper to present at their national conference in Scottsdale.

Jon Liesmaki:

After my presentation, I had a couple groups reach out and say, "Hey, we're interested in possibly a career with us after you finish your schoolwork for the year." I had one offer, that was probably the most solid, down in Southern California. Then I'd also had an offer from Eli Lilly for an internship in Indianapolis.

Jill James:

Wow.

Jon Liesmaki:

Small town Minnesota guy had two decisions to make, Indianapolis or-

Jill James:

Or California.

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah. Orange County, California.

Jill James:

Oh, man. Oh, man. Yeah, that's a big decision. For our listeners, Jon, 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 Industrial Safety program, 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 alums, so that's cool.

Jill James:

At the time I was going to UMD, University of Minnesota Duluth, yeah, that semiconductor thing was a big deal. Most of the people from my graduating class took off for California to work in that field as well, in California. Like you, I wanted to stay in Minnesota, so yeah, I'm hanging on the edge of my chair here to hear, what did you decide to do?

Jon Liesmaki:

Yes, California it was.

Jill James:

Okay.

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah.

Jill James:

Did you chase the money or the location?

Jon Liesmaki:

The location, yeah.

Jill James:

Okay, mm-hmm.

Jon Liesmaki:

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.

Jill James:

Yeah.

Jon Liesmaki:

It is amazing the number of University of Minnesota Duluth alums that are still out there that I ran acrost.

Jill James:

Wow.

Jon Liesmaki:

Moved out to Southern California, and I was working for a consulting firm. At the time, It was called EORM, so it stood for Environmental and Occupational Risk Management.

Jill James:

Mm-hmm.

Jon Liesmaki:

Started out of the gate as being a pump jockey, if you will, doing some industrial hygiene sampling for various clients. Then I had an opportunity to take a full-time, like a 40-hour a week, a full-time contract, outsource position with a company called Jazz Semiconductor through EORM, so it was part of their contract. The first guy that I worked for, his name was Eric Moschet, and he was a University of Minnesota Duluth grad.

Jill James:

Wow.

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah. A guy from Silver Bay, Minnesota.

Jill James:

Oh, close to where you are. We have these ... Sorry, guests. You might have to get out a map of Minnesota. Jon and I know these locations because we're both from Minnesota, but yeah, also from Northern Minnesota. Hey, Jon, I got to ask you quick. When you moved to California, did you still have hockey hair?

Jon Liesmaki:

No.

Jill James:

Okay.

Jon Liesmaki:

A little bit. I'm trying to think back when I finally cut it.

Jill James:

Yeah, yeah.

Jon Liesmaki:

It was more presentable than it was back in my playing days. I'll put it that way.

Jill James:

Funny. Okay, so sorry. You met another alum when you were in California.

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah.

Jill James:

Yeah.

Jon Liesmaki:

Did some great work in Southern California, and got an opportunity to just learn a lot. One of my ending managers that I had in Southern California, I still talk to this day, bounce ideas off of her. 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.

Jill James:

Mm-hmm.

Jon Liesmaki:

From there, I was promoted, once pretty quickly and then realized ... I remember that same manager, when I started, when I had some new junior staff underneath me, take me aside and say that, "Not everybody works as hard as that Midwest work ethic."

Jill James:

Oh, interesting.

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah. I've learned to slow down on some people.

Jill James:

Wow, okay.

Jon Liesmaki:

But had a fantastic career there. Had an opportunity to take a second promotion. They needed support up in their Portland, Oregon offices, and so I-

Jill James:

Beautiful.

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah. I headed up to Portland, Oregon. Again, met another three, four, five different University of Minnesota alums.

Jill James:

Wow. We are everywhere.

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah. It is such a small ... Environmental health and safety is a small world as it is, but it's amazing the number of University of Minnesota Duluth grads that are out there.

Jill James:

Yeah, so for our listening audience, if you're coaching someone, mentoring someone who needs to find a home and a graduate program for health and safety, you can look up the University of Minnesota Duluth. They have a good program.

Jon Liesmaki:

They do. I know during my year there, we had ... I think the stats still remain. It's something around 90% of the students have an offer in hand before the last day of school. It's just one of those programs that teaches so many hands-on skills that when you get out in the field, you can really hit the ground running.

Jill James:

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah, it's great, it's great. Okay, so you're now in beautiful Portland among the pine trees, which looks a little bit like Northern Minnesota.

Jon Liesmaki:

It does. I got started with Intel, and Intel has a massive Ronler Acres campus up there. That's probably their largest U.S. manufacturing location.

Jill James:

Wow.

Jon Liesmaki:

I was supporting some of their manufacturing facilities, and then their R&D facility that was there. Intel is 10, 15 years in advance of what your computer can run. Their R&D, they call it the Death Star in terms of like-

Jill James:

Wow.

Jon Liesmaki:

... what they were doing and what they were working on. Very interesting work. 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 Duluth grad. Then I get to Intel and there was like four or five more alums from the program that were working.

Jill James:

Nice.

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah, so it was crazy. We had a great time. Started with Intel, and then we had another contract that came up with a company called Shin-Etsu. Shin-Etsu actually grows the ingots, the silicone ingots that semiconductors are made off of.

Jill James:

Okay.

Jon Liesmaki:

Basically, you have these three-story volcanic reactors growing these things, so it was interesting.

Jill James:

Wow.

Jon Liesmaki:

They needed some support while they were in-between EHS managers, so I got a chance to fill in on that role.

Jill James:

Mm-hmm.

Jon Liesmaki:

Then, out of the blue, through mutual contacts when I was a graduate student, a professor ... Or, not a professor, but a manager from Honeywell called and said, "Hey, we have one of our guys retiring. Would you be interested in moving back to Minnesota?" My wife and I'd had our first child, and we'd always wanted to get back to Minnesota at some point, but we weren't expecting it that soon. I only spent one year in Portland, Oregon, before I got the call from Honeywell.

Jon Liesmaki:

The Honeywell facility that I worked for is out of Plymouth, Minnesota here. One of the suburbs in the Twin Cities. They're a semiconductor plant, so they do a lot of government contracts. They have a number of ... Their specialty is semiconductor pieces that deal with the radiation that comes from the sun, and so they have a lot of their components go on government satellites, and the Mars Rover. While I was there, I was a senior ... They use HSE. Every company's got a little different twist of the three words, but this was I was a senior manager. I was in charge of the management system from all the safety requirements, all the industrial hygiene requirements, loss prevention requirements, and half of the management system. That was really my-

Jill James:

That's huge.

Jon Liesmaki:

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 Honeywell's operating system and really how they tied together. Working at that plant, we were a large quantity generator. We were ISO 14001 certified, and then I helped lead the effort to get the site to be MNSTAR certified. MNSTAR is Minnesota's version for VPP, or Voluntary Protection Program through OSHA.

Jill James:

Wow.

Jon Liesmaki:

So we had-

Jill James:

Congratulations on that.

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah, 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 had gotten it in Minnesota. Right out of the bat, you get a one-year period of being certified, and that gives you, you don't have to ... You're not susceptible to unannounced inspections.

Jill James:

Inspection.

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah.

Jill James:

Yeah, mm-hmm, yeah.

Jon Liesmaki:

We had the one year, and then they came back and they did, the second time, they said, "All right, everything looks fantastic again. We're going to go with a three-year." Then right before I left Honeywell, we were given a five-year recert, which is the max that they do in Minnesota.

Jill James:

Wow.

Jon Liesmaki:

I believe, the last I heard, they were still carrying that certification on. I'd say it was-

Jill James:

Oh, congratulations. That's huge.

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah, the site was very mature and gave me a great opportunity to continue that learning. I always thought that my career started really well being a consultant and getting bits and pieces of different companies, seeing what worked well, what didn't work well. Then I carried that into Honeywell. We were, our site was really mature and we had a great culture there, but then there was also things from corporate that frustrated us, and so we always though that, at times, there were some requirements and stringent things that they'd ask for that were beyond compliant, which is a fantastic thing to drive to, but sometimes, you wondered if they had ... If those people writing those programs, how long it had been since they'd been on the floor of the plant knowing what to do.

Jill James:

Uh-huh, uh-huh. Yeah, the reality, yep, mm-hmm.

Jon Liesmaki:

From there, because I spent about five, six years there, and I knew I was ready to leave. Our manager had left, had retired, and everyone was moving up. I took the opportunity to look outside because my colleague was going to get the manager position. He was a great guy. He'd been there for a long time and really deserved the role. It was really his to take over. I looked out and I started as an EHS manager with a small company called ... Well, not small company, but a company called Covidien, which was a medical device manufacturer. They did stents and stuff like that for veins.

Jon Liesmaki:

I started at that facility and really took my management system knowledge that I had and implemented it there with some guidance from their corporate team. Their corporate team had another fantastic management system, a little bit different than Honeywell's but really well thought out, and identified, and laid out. I was able to 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, and it was. The first couple weeks I was there, I was reviewing everything, and kind of just threw everything in the garbage and started from scratch.

Jill James:

Yeah. What did that feel like for you? You walked into, especially at Honeywell it sounds like, some really developed plans that you were able to run with, and shine, and make great. Here, you're starting from scratch. What was that like for you, professionally?

Jon Liesmaki:

Long hours, very busy because, so as I rolled out this management system, which was new to these guys ... 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'd went from a standalone plant that was doing really well financially, to now being part of a larger company. At the time, because they were doing so well, corporate had delayed the rollout of the EHS management system with them, and so I was really their first introduction to real EHS, if you will, so we just put a plan together.

Jon Liesmaki:

I know I had to stay on top of the leaders. They still struggled with some OSHA recordables, and they had a couple environmental things that needed to be shored up and tightened up that they were doing. It was, I concentrated on building the base of the management system and continued to assure them that, "Let me build a base. We'll deal with the fires as they pop up. We'll deal with the noise and the headaches, but eventually, if we can just dedicate the time to build the system the right way, eventually, it'll work itself out." From a perspective from just the OSHA recordability rates, I think when I started, they were in the sixes. By the time I left, we were under .5.

Jill James:

Awesome, awesome.

Jon Liesmaki:

We had done some work on our hazardous waste. They had some things that we could easily ... Little to no treatment to that we could then just discharge as part of our wastewater permit. I think the first two years, we saved $85,000 a year-

Jill James:

Nice.

Jon Liesmaki:

... in hazardous waste costs. Yeah.

Jill James:

Nice, yeah. Jon, when you use the term management system, and that you were setting up a management system, for our listeners who are maybe wondering, "I wonder what Jon's talking about," what are the elements of that management ... Would you mind giving a little brief on what that meant at that time to you, and when you used that term?

Jon Liesmaki:

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. 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, and so the management system, what it does is, like I said, it's checks and balances.

Jon Liesmaki:

I have mine broken down through, it's a little bit of Honeywell, a little bit of Covidien that I've used in my current role when we get to talking about Harmon, and there's eight pillars to it for me. Pillar one is the program management and accountability, and that's your overall arching policy and your accountability, if you have any kind of safety discipline rules that you want to follow to make sure that rules are being applied consistently and fair.

Jon Liesmaki:

Number two is risk assessment and auditing. Pretty straightforward. That's where your risk assessments and your job hazard analysis might be, and any kind of requirements you have for auditing your facility or having leadership perform those audits. Three, that's my risk control program. That's your traditional safety programs like a hazard communication and a fall protection, machine guarding, that sort of thing.

Jill James:

Okay.

Jon Liesmaki:

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, so that's where you have a training matrix in there, and then you might have your content. Six, emergency preparedness and response, all your drills, your evacuation plans, that sort of thing. Seven is incident management, and that's a big one. How are you going to document, report, do all those things? Then the last one's a little bit of a catchall, and that's legal and other requirements. A lot of my regulatory reporting goes in that one. Some of my OSHA stuff goes in there. That's how I lay it out.

Jill James:

That's beautiful. That's beautiful.

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah. As I get to the Harmon piece, when I first started with Harmon, and I'll backtrack here in a second, but when I first started with Harmon, I said, "Okay. Well, where's your guys' safety information?" I get an intranet folder that's got 37 folders for various things and no rhyme or reason where stuff goes.

Jill James:

Yeah.

Jon Liesmaki:

Then taking that and transitioning it into this kind of eight-point-

Jill James:

Eight pillar, mm-hmm.

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah, management system and laid out. Now I know and all of my staff know exactly where everything is supposed to be, right?

Jill James:

Yeah.

Jon Liesmaki:

There's no questions in terms of ... I don't allow extra folders, outside of those eight. Right?

Jill James:

Well, and it makes it easier to evaluate where you are in a company as well. 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 ..." Like, "Our bucket is like 50% full here or 100% full there."

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah, it's super easy, using that layout, to perform a gap analysis, right?

Jill James:

Yeah.

Jon Liesmaki:

"Here's what we ..." When I lay it out, and when I brought it to Harmon, I said, "Okay. These are the things that I had done that were requirements within Honeywell, within Medtronic, Covidien," but you can take this to any company and I could 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." Then you can go about building a plan on how to develop and roll all those things out.

Jill James:

Beautiful, beautiful. You could teach that around the country, Jon.

Jon Liesmaki:

Thank you.

Jill James:

Yeah, that's wonderful. Okay. Thank you for that offshoot there. You're at Covidien is where we were in the story, yeah.

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah. The success I had at the plant certainly garnered attention from the corporate folks, 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 nine facilities-

Jill James:

Wow.

Jon Liesmaki:

... from Minnesota through Colorado, and then down and through Northern and Southern California. I managed those programs and those facilities. 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. During that conversion, we had, there were a number of jockeying for positions, if you will. I ended up getting a promotion but had to go back to a site level, which at the time, worked out really well for me.

Jon Liesmaki:

Going from a corporate position where I had multiple facilities to a single one was a little bit different, but it was one of the largest manufacturing plants for Medtronic, and so it's 1,700 people, 24/7 operations, and we made all of the battery devices for a lot of the Medtronic devices that are there, and so super rewarding. I was part of the executive leadership team there. We had things like, they had Quality Day. During Quality Day, they would bring in patients that had Medtronic devices, and they would get to tell their stories, and they would get to meet the workers that actually put their devices together, and yeah, it was-

Jill James:

Wow. How gratifying.

Jon Liesmaki:

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.

Jill James:

Yes, yeah. Yes, very close to where I am right now.

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah, and she was a CAD engineer. She had developed deep brain tremors and so with that, she had spasms in her hand where using CAD just became unattainable. She couldn't do that type of work, and with the deep brain stimulator that Medtronic had used, and the electronics and the battery coming from our facility, we ... Was able, really, to get her life back. She explained this journey that she had. When they charge her device, they have the ability to turn it on and turn it off, and she had shown us. She had taken a sheet of paper and started In the middle, and made a small circle, to a bigger circle, to a bigger circle without lifting the pen up, right?

Jill James:

Yeah.

Jon Liesmaki:

When she shut the device off, she shook so bad that you could not tell what she was drawing. Then she would turn it back on, and her hand steadied right away, and she could make this beautiful circle.

Jill James:

Wow.

Jon Liesmaki:

So ...

Jill James:

Wow, wow. The employees at your plant, they must have felt so like, "My work matters." Every 1,700, all 1,700 people make this possible.

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah. When Covidien and Medtronic joined, they developed the stat. They figured out the amount of products that we have across the world, and two patients every second are newly affected by a Medtronic device.

Jill James:

Wow.

Jon Liesmaki:

So ...

Jill James:

That is fantastic.

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah.

Jill James:

What a great place to work.

Jon Liesmaki:

It was. It was a very rewarding place to work there. Then on to the next step. Then as I'm managing that, I was the senior manager there. Very successful facility ISO 1401 certified, OHSAS 1801 certified. I was ready for the next step, and so for me, that was a director-level position. We had a couple of the senior directors and our VP had retired from Medtronic at the corporate level, and so the expectation was everyone was going to shuffle their way up.

Jon Liesmaki:

I was mentoring with one of the, with actually Covidien's former vice president of EHS, who took a role as a senior global director in Medtronic during the integration, and the acquisition, whatever. It was just big companies, it just takes a little bit longer and, "Do we really need that position?" As you know and some of your listeners know that sometimes, it's not always easy to explain our positions and the usefulness that they provide-

Jill James:

That's right, mm-hmm.

Jon Liesmaki:

... for companies, and so that was getting delayed, and it was going on 18 months of being delayed for those positions to reopen and reshuffle. At the time, I decided that I was 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. Harmon had, they'd done okay in safety in the past, but they had traditionally used iron workers turned safety professional, who went and took some OSHA classes and they did okay. They did okay, but the leadership team really wanted to take it to the next level, and what could they really do with someone who's professionally trained in some of this stuff?

Jon Liesmaki:

I know when I interviewed, that management system that I had described, I laid it all out in terms of, made my own tweaks from Honeywell, Covidien, and Medtronic management systems and say, "If I ever led, this is how I would roll it out." When I came to the interview, I came very prepared. I actually had the management system laid out, and details under each of those eight structures.

Jill James:

Yeah. What goes In each of them.

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah, and explained ... I had those. I made bound copies. I think I made like six or eight bound copies that I had brought in with me and reviewed with the leaders. They were impressed.

Jill James:

Jon, this is going to be a podcast episode that we're going to want to share with people who are applying for work in safety, so I'll have to reach out to Dr. Loushine at the University of Wisconsin Whitewater and say, "Hey, maybe share this episode with students who are looking for work." This is great.

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah. It was-

Jill James:

Yeah.

Jon Liesmaki:

Going backwards to that SESHA conference, when I was a student and I interviewed and got hired, the following year, I had gone and I had got some of the University of Minnesota Duluth students a chance to interview with EORM at the time. They had a couple openings. I remember sitting there thinking like, "Just provide examples. Just provide examples." Like, "Hey, tell me about a time of this." It doesn't always have to be super safety-related, but if you can provide examples of how you've done things ... I remember listening to them and a couple of the kids, the kids interviewing were like, "Like that, and stuff. Like that, and stuff." I'm like, "Oh, just explain it."

Jill James:

"Don't say that."

Jon Liesmaki:

"Just explain the situation."

Jill James:

Yeah, yeah. There you are at Harmon, and you've got, essentially, your disseminating folders with ...

Jon Liesmaki:

Yes.

Jill James:

Bound folders.

Jon Liesmaki:

Bound folders.

Jill James:

Yeah, okay.

Jon Liesmaki:

I came prepared. As I came super prepared, I remember it was funny. I was interviewing with the senior vice president, who's our current president now. I was giving my history, and he's like ... I brought up the hockey stuff because it was a big part of my life. He's like, "Oh, you're a hockey guy. Our president played for Gustavus College," which is in Southern Minnesota. He's like, "You're a hockey guy. He's going to hire you anyways."

Jill James:

That's awesome. Did Gustavus play-

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah, Oxford? Yeah. They were-

Jill James:

Oxford while you were-

Jon Liesmaki:

They were in the same league, actually.

Jill James:

That's-

Jon Liesmaki:

He was obviously much, much older than me. Yeah, so I accepted the position and just did that same thing. Like I talked about, I started by taking a look at what they had going on, and where the program was, and really where they needed to go. I think the biggest part of what they needed was the incident management system. You and I have talked about, we've done a paper and a webinar on the incident management system that I implemented, and so but that was just one section of the management system that I had rolled out.

Jon Liesmaki:

It's been fantastic. We've continued to grow, and we've continued to break records. In terms of OSHA recordable, which I'm not a super big fan of, it's a bit archaic, but we've went-

Jill James:

Yeah, mm-hmm, agree.

Jon Liesmaki:

When I started, we were in the mid-fours, which is pretty average for ... They match their industry average.

Jill James:

That's great, mm-hmm.

Jon Liesmaki:

In the last three years, we've broken their best safety records, back-to-back-to-back years.

Jill James:

Yay.

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah, so were down-

Jill James:

Congratulations.

Jon Liesmaki:

Thank you. We were down to a 1.2 last year.

Jill James:

Wow.

Jon Liesmaki:

With that, a couple of the other things that I've implemented and developed through Honeywell and Medtronic is I developed a performance index, which is a mix of leading and lagging indicators.

Jill James:

Yes, please talk about that. These are things that vex many a safety professional.

Jon Liesmaki:

The program that I developed, it's a 100-point scale and it has five components. We said, "What are those five things that I can measure?" At Harmon, I have both construction projects and I have manufacturing. 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.

Jon Liesmaki:

The five pillars we had that we ended up coming to, the first one is OSHA recordables, and so 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?" Then it becomes a numbers game of, "Okay. Well"-

Jill James:

How do you compare one to the other?

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah.

Jill James:

Yeah.

Jon Liesmaki:

We just went with just pure numbers, so you get 20 points. Each of these five pillars, you get 20 points is the max, and then there's a scale. It scales down, depending on what that is. For OSHA recordables, 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 down to five points, and if you have more than three, you don't put any points for that category.

Jill James:

Mm-hmm.

Jon Liesmaki:

Then the other four categories, they're all leading indicators. The first one is on time injury reporting and investigations. We have a 24 hour requirement and our incident management system that we have timestamps these so we can tell when it was reported. Then we can also tell when the investigation got completed on time. Again, so the rest of these we use a 75% ... 100%, gets 20 points. Greater than 75% gets 15 points. Greater than 50% gets five points, and less than 50% gets zero points. We track each region and each plant. Every single month, they get a score, and then it's cumulative so your score starts January 1, just like the OSHA log, and ends December 31st.

Jon Liesmaki:

We have OSHA recordables, and then incident reporting and investigations. The next one is our safety committees. When I first started at Harmon, the monthly safety committees for each of the plants and the nine, our five manufacturing areas, so a total of nine, it wasn't always consistently done month-to-month as it should have been. 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. They get points every month if they hold their safety committee meetings, and they've come a long, long way. To be honest, next year we'll probably have to change that category out because it's getting a little easy for them.

Jill James:

Sure, sure, yeah. They've got a system going, and I bet you have things that you want them to do and accomplish in that committee.

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah.

Jill James:

Mm-hmm.

Jon Liesmaki:

The next one is our corrective action closure. From our incident management system, we have automatic corrective actions that are generated, and then from audits, and then if they have findings from some of their ... If there's injuries, or near misses, or whatever. Making sure that the corrective actions get closed on time is a big deal. Like I tell my leaders is, if you have a corrective action ... A lot of them default to three days plus current, so they get four days to close most of them.

Jon Liesmaki:

If they need additional time, I don't mind extending dates. We're not going to let them sandbag it and say, "Yeah, give me ... I have to update to JHA. Give me three months." That's not going to fly, but the way I explain it to them is, I'm like, "As long as you call me 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. What I don't want them to do is not know they're in there. It's like the college kid that says, "All right. I'm pretty sure I'm negative in 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."

Jill James:

Yep.

Jon Liesmaki:

Right? So-

Jill James:

Oh, yes.

Jon Liesmaki:

So I do that with-

Jill James:

I know this.

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah. 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." Then that last category, that fifth category is our audits. We have audit requirements for our plant managers, for our shop managers in manufacturing, and then in the field for our general managers, our site superintendents, and then our project managers. They have, we've detailed out, they know what the requirements are.

Jon Liesmaki:

When we first rolled this out, it was very interesting because these things were expected to be ... These were, what we started measuring were things that were supposed to be getting done and we 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.

Jill James:

Yeah.

Jon Liesmaki:

In that first month out of the pilot, there was lots of reds and yellows, lots of scores of fives and zeros when I first reported on it, and all the leaders knew that we were going to start looking at this, and we were going to change over to this performance index. The president is on the ... We're on the Webex meeting, and the president is telling all the leaders, like, "Listen, don't call Jon after we get off the call. He's not going to change your numbers. I just expect you to get better." Now, we are mostly ... We started fresh.

Jon Liesmaki:

I gave them September through the end of December as kind of our pilot. Then we started with a fresh score January 1. Almost all of my plants are all 20s and 15s in terms of their scoring, so their cumulative score is at 100. We have a couple regions and plants that are at 100 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 them, all those leading indicators are all 15s and 20s.

Jill James:

Wow. You have them report on this monthly?

Jon Liesmaki:

We run the report monthly and I give them their feedback. I give them their score monthly, so they get a month score and then they get a cumulative score. Let's say one month they had 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, so that would be 28 out of 30 would be their cumulative score. Then each month, we just keep the stats running.

Jill James:

Yeah, hmm. I'm guessing this has pleased your management team because your management team wanted a number.

Jon Liesmaki:

Yes, very much so.

Jill James:

Yeah, yeah. Then how do the other leaders that report in those things, how are they ... Yeah, I guess, was it a grind or is it like, "Thanks. You have me some guardrails"?

Jon Liesmaki:

A little of both.

Jill James:

Okay.

Jon Liesmaki:

I still get, there are less and less surprises now, and especially on the corrective actions. When I run the report, it used to be, all right, there's 30 of them were late this month across the country. Now I just ran May's report a couple days ago, after closing the month, and I think six, we had six corrective actions that went late across the country.

Jill James:

Wow, wow.

Jon Liesmaki:

It makes the scoring easier. We reported this, and so Harmon actually reports to a parent company called Apogee, which is based in the Twin Cities of Minnesota as well. They have a single guy that's in charge of risk management and insurance. We started presenting, my manager, during his executive committees with Harmon's CEO or with Apogee's CEO, started reporting on this and introduced this concept. Lo and behold, starting this fiscal year now, everybody seems to have ... All the other business units have a performance index that looks shamelessly like the one that I developed and rolled out.

Jill James:

That is awesome. I'm just going to guess here that once you get these ... You have your five-point scale developed, and then there's going to be fingers that you find out that need correction. Like just the corrective action closure system, if you find out like, "Oh, we have a hole in maintenance that's fixing some of these ..." Something was identified. It needed to be repaired, fixed, maintained, put on a capital improvement budget, something like that. You're able to go down those various rabbit holes and find where there may be gaps in other systems as well, yeah?

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah. Like I said, it wasn't only a flashlight in terms of looking and making sure that things were getting done, but it just gives you more of an in-depth look. You're able to find those hotspots. To be honest, for a program that we've developed and a management system that we've rolled out, it looks, well, like we were doing all these things, back-to-back-to back safety records, but then when we go look to see all these leading indicators and it shows, "Whoa, we are really red and orange."

Jon Liesmaki:

Are we just getting lucky with that safety metric, with that OSHA recordable? Or are we really driving the really right behaviors and changing behaviors in the business to get better? 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 skating by and it was a, quote, unquote, lucky year?"

Jill James:

Yeah. Fabulous. This is great. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for sharing all of that. Hmm, yeah. I'm thinking about, as you've been talking and sharing your career path, which is pretty darn amazing, Jon, I picked up on a couple of things that you were talking about. You've developed a lot of things on your own, but I heard you talking about mentors.

Jill James:

When you were making decisions to change jobs or come up with ways to present yourself at the next job, those are things that not everybody has in terms of soft skills and figuring out how to do those kind of things. What would you like to say about the importance of having soft skills? What does that mean to you? How do you develop that? I also want to hear about mentors because I heard you talk about it a couple times.

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah.

Jill James:

Yeah.

Jon Liesmaki:

I think, to me, soft skills is to really, I wouldn't want to say make or break, but is the ability to enhance your career as a safety professional. I truly believe that the reason to my success was my ability to adapt, to influence, to collaborate. 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. In the program, we had one class that was not dedicated to regulations, or ventilation, or environmental regs. 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 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.

Jill James:

That's right.

Jon Liesmaki:

I've had those roles in certain plants and in certain situations where it was hard. It was difficult, and how to navigate that. I would say, because you can really teach ... Most people can figure out regulations fairly easy, right?

Jill James:

Mm-hmm.

Jon Liesmaki:

It is a very nerdy thing that, off the top of my head, that I know the respiratory protection standard is 1910.134, just because se I've read it 27 million times.

Jill James:

You bet. Yeah, we're nerds in that regard, yes.

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah, but now taking that and conveying that, and really being able to take the art and the science of EHS and be successful explaining that to leadership positions that don't understand that, and so we talked about there's Deming and there's the Habits of Highly Successful People. We spent a lot of time on that sort of work, and then just some personal work. Through my hockey background, I've done a lot of hockey coaching. I've attended some USA Hockey coaching seminars where I've had the chance to listen to some NHL coaches present and talk about some fantastic books that they've read.

Jon Liesmaki:

One of my favorites is called The Culture Code. It just talks about how successful groups operate, and how people lead those groups, and the ability to identify certain situations and how you apply yourself. I've always tried to continue to find opportunities that 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?" 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. What is it about that person that I want to emulate to myself? What do I think that they do that inspires me? How can I take that look and what can I do, and how can I apply that to my situation?"

Jill James:

Same. Done the same, mm-hmm.

Jon Liesmaki:

Yean, in a lot of those situations, I think the biggest is the ability when ... As I've 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 that behind me that drove this change. That these successes are based on these people, not me," because you certainly can't do it alone.

Jon Liesmaki:

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," and be able to take responsibility. I think that ability to say, whether a program failed, or a gap was missed, or whatever, and just understanding that, "Yeah, that didn't work, didn't go as planned. That was a miss on our part. We will fix it and continue to move on." We're-

Jill James:

Show your humility. Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah. We're going through right now, one system in particular that we rolled out last year, it's not working. I've told the leadership team, like, "The program's not going the way I envisioned it to go, and so we're going to change directions and we're going to try something else to be able to do that." Yeah, I think being able to relate to people and understanding ... One of the benefits I've had in a number of these roles is the ability to do some of the testing for your personality type.

Jill James:

Yeah, sure. Or your strengths. Mm-hmm.

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah, the strengths and weaknesses. I remember the one we did at Medtronic is my personality type is, "Be right, be quick, be gone," or something like that. I can see that, and I know I struggle with that, even in my staff meetings and with my one-on-ones with my staff is I just want the quick points, and so I have to ... I leave that on the front of my desk so that I continually read it, and I slow down, and I make sure that my staff feels felt, they feel heard, they feel understood. Again, but 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 investing in yourself can go such a long ways.

Jill James:

That's right. Yeah, when I went through the graduate program that you and I both went through, we didn't have that. I graduated a number of years before you did, so they hadn't figured that out yet. For our listeners who are thinking, "I'm asking for professional development," and we might think, "Oh, that's going to a conference, or that's getting us further certification," these soft skills that Jon is talking about are just as important, just as important. Jon, you mentioned a book that you like. Say the name of it again.

Jon Liesmaki:

The Culture Code.

Jill James:

The Culture Code. All right. Do you have others that you'd like to suggest or name-drop?

Jon Liesmaki:

That is, by far, my favorite-

Jill James:

Favorite, mm-hmm.

Jon Liesmaki:

... off the top of my head, so yeah, I have to go back and look through the list.

Jill James:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You might also like, since you're a sports guy, hockey guy, there's another leadership book called Wolfpack that's written by Abby Wambach, a soccer Olympian.

Jon Liesmaki:

Okay.

Jill James:

Another good leadership book, yeah. Mentors. Developing self, developing self through training, soft skills training. Some of the books we were talking about. Gosh, mentors fall in that category, don't they?

Jon Liesmaki:

They do. I've been lucky to have some great ones. I mentioned one that I ... In my early days at URM out in Southern California, who I still stay in contact with out there. There's probably like three or four off the top of my mind that they've, two have since retired and I still reach out. One of my colleagues at Honeywell, and I think at least two or three times a year, we reach out to each other and still go grab lunch and catch up. Even though there's an age gap, there's still things you can learn from people.

Jon Liesmaki:

One of the other things that I ... A gal who worked for me at Medtronic, which I thought was a fantastic idea, is she would set up kind of a lunch and learn. She'd reach out to various leaders that were outside of EHS and spend time with them, and get to know their career paths, and ideas of what went well in their careers, and what didn't go well, and constantly learning. Once a month, she'd pick a different leader. At Medtronic, she has the benefit of having several different facilities that are fairly close within the Twin Cities area. Some of those were outside of the building, and she would use maybe one to set up a meeting with another, and just have lunch, and just pick their brains, and have someone that you can relate to.

Jill James:

Yeah.

Jon Liesmaki:

Even through LinkedIn, I've had some people, recently, there was an EHS engineer from Honeywell that we'd crossed paths when I was leaving there and when she was starting. Then she was looking at a position at Medtronic and she's like, "Hey, what do you think? How's the culture? How's this sort of thing?" Just being able to reach out to someone and have conversations. It's, don't be alone in your journey, if I have anything to say. Right?

Jill James:

Yeah.

Jon Liesmaki:

Use people, ask questions. Even if you're introverted, there's still people ... You get some courage and ask for help. It doesn't have to be, you don't have to ask 20 people, but if you find a good one or two that you know you can rely on, it can make a big difference in how your career develops along the way.

Jill James:

Yeah, beautiful, beautiful. Jon, and I know we're running short on ... We're starting to run short on time, but you've laid out this beautiful eight-point management system, your five points for leading and lagging indicators. So much of our professional practice is back a few centuries when it comes to technology, and maybe doing things with duct tape and paperclips. 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, how did you figure out how to attack things using 21st century tools? Or is that too big of a question?

Jon Liesmaki:

Have we got another hour to talk?

Jill James:

Yeah, yeah. Maybe I'll have you back. Yeah.

Jon Liesmaki:

No, I think there are certain times when a lot of it, I think, is knowing your audience, and what you need, and what you want, right?

Jill James:

Mm-hmm.

Jon Liesmaki:

When it comes to technology and things like the incident management system that I implemented, 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. We can have-

Jill James:

They can meet those corrective ... Those deadlines, like you were talking about.

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah,

Jill James:

Mm-hmm.

Jon Liesmaki:

Right? For us at Harmon, it was a big deal because I have four manufacturing plants, and I have 19 to 20-some active construction projects going on across the country any one time. Before I started, the way that was done is, somebody got hurt, it would be an email or they had some paper forms, and then they would take a picture of it.

Jill James:

Phone call, mm-hmm.

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah, or a phone call, and some of the information just didn't quite get it. We would have instances where somebody might have gotten, 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, and we would-

Jill James:

From the same thing.

Jon Liesmaki:

In the same exact thing, and we would have known about it had we had a chance to use technology and advance that, right?

Jill James:

Yeah.

Jon Liesmaki:

With our parent company, Apogee, these other business units that we have aren't exactly like Harmon. We're the only ones that really have construction projects in the field. When I started there, what they were using was a SharePoint system that was, it was not nearly as technologically advanced, but for them, a lot of the other business units have one, maybe two manufacturing facilities, right?

Jill James:

Mm-hmm.

Jon Liesmaki:

So the level of sophistication didn't quite need to be there. It was, they're in four walls, so if someone got hurt in one spot, it's easier to communicate that. 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 way better than our homegrown system that we have." Then we got to cost and they're like, "Oh, no. My leader's not going to spend that much money." It wasn't, I mean, it's not really that much in the grand scheme of things, but it was they didn't see the need based on what the money was, and maybe what that effort would be to implement something like that, right?

Jill James:

Sure.

Jon Liesmaki:

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." This is something that we need, and we couldn't survive on the old homegrown system that they had had.

Jill James:

Right.

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah, like I said, we could go on.

Jill James:

We could, we could Absolutely, yeah. Thank you for that.

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah.

Jill James:

I appreciate it. I appreciate it. Well, this might be my final question. Do you still play hockey?

Jon Liesmaki:

I coach a lot.

Jill James:

Okay.

Jon Liesmaki:

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 gave up the competitive men's league a while a go.

Jill James:

Okay.

Jon Liesmaki:

They're some younger kids that are still living out their glory days and get a little too competitive for my nature, as I get older. Pre-COVID, I still skated in, there was a Wednesday night, just a pick up hockey for the, my wife likes to call, geriatric hockey, but we're not that old.

Jill James:

Geriatric hockey, where you can keep your moneymaker, your brain safe, right?

Jon Liesmaki:

Yup. 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.

Jill James:

What?

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah, that's probably Northern Minnesota of me.

Jill James:

Yeah, right. It's because you grew up on the Iron Range.

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah. I just tell my wife, "It's not like I'm getting any prettier." Yeah, pre-COVID, we were skating on Wednesday nights, and then COVID hit. I think they started back up, I want to say, in the last couple months, but I haven't got a chance to get out there with all the coaching I was doing.

Jill James:

Hmm, hmm. Well, Jon, from one Minnesotan to another, gosh, I sure appreciate everything you've shared today. This has been wonderful. We're going to have to share this with our alma mater.

Jon Liesmaki:

Yes.

Jill James:

Yep, yeah, UMD grads. We've mentioned our graduate school so often. We definitely have to share this with them. I so appreciate the time today.

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah, absolutely. Do you ever get a chance to get up there? I've been up a couple times and I've just spoken to the classes that are there, and just done a-

Jill James:

Yeah.

Jon Liesmaki:

... kind of day in the life. It's pretty fun.

Jill James:

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 like, "This is where all the safety nerds are made, right here." Yeah, it's good, it's good. Well, Jon, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Jon Liesmaki:

Yeah, absolutely. It was a pleasure.

Jill James:

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Thank you for spending your time listening today. More importantly, thank you for your contribution toward the common good, 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 Jon and I. Special thanks to Naeem Jaraysi, our podcast producer. Until next time, thanks for listening.