What Are Problems With Traditional Record Keeping

Tracking employees' documents and records is one of the most important documentation tasks aviation service providers have. This is especially true in the case of pilots, where poor record-keeping can result in regulatory fines.

Most aviation service providers manage their record keeping manually, such as in:

• Excel spreadsheets;
• Word documents;
• PDFs; or
• Folders spread out across your organization.

Managing record-keeping in this way is often a major headache because of how complicated it can become. The main concerns are:

• Needed record-keeping tasks are not completed on time;
• Missing important records; and
• Being unable to organize, retrieve, track, or monitor record keeping.

What Is Optimized Records Management

Optimized record keeping solves traditional record-keeping problems by:

• Centralizing employee records into one location, backed by a database;
• Having set procedures and tasks for different types of records, such as:
  • Records for prehire,
  • Records for new employees, or
  • Records for separation.
• Automating record-keeping task reminders, such as:
  • Upcoming due dates,
  • Record keeping items that are overdue, and
  • Progress for employees’ various record-keeping processes.
• Making search and retrieval of records extremely quick and easy;
• Integrate record keeping with your safety management system; and
• Allowing top managers to easily monitor progress for employees’ records without bothering managers responsible for managing records.

Optimized records management is made possible by software functionality where you can design and build set record-keeping processes. Let’s look at these benefits of optimized record keeping in more detail in terms of how they greatly benefit top managers and executives.

Have Different Templates for Different Company Divisions and Processes

Organizations will require different types of record-keeping tasks. For example, HR will have record-keeping processes related to hiring and terminating employees.

In the case of pilots, for example, HR will need to gather and document many records in order to interview, hire, and terminate such employees. Flight Ops will need to gather and document records pertaining to pilot readiness, competency, etc.

Optimized records management allows each division and part of your company to organize and manage these employee records in the process and tasks that best fit that division. Doing this to ensure that employee records:

• Are not overly complex; and
• Allow subject-matter experts to manage employee records in their expertise:
  • Should HR be in charge of record-keeping pilots' competency records?

Built In, Configurable Templates

Optimized record keeping software includes built in templates. These templates are useful because they are:

• Designed for,
• Tested by, and
• Proven for aviation service providers.

These templates will likely be an improvement on your own record-keeping processes. That being said, different organizations will also have record-keeping requirements that are unique. Built in templates are configurable, meaning that you can:

• Add new record keeping tasks;
• Remove record-keeping tasks that are not relevant; and
• Change requirements of existing record-keeping tasks.

In short, you get the best of both worlds: proven record-keeping processes that can be tailored to your organization.

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Minimize Time Required to Find Records

With optimized records management software, searching for and retrieving records is extremely easy. You can filter records based on several variables, such as:

• The name of the employee;
• The type of task;
• Type of procedure; and
• The name of the manager who updated a task.

Also, with optimized record keeping you can review and search through a log of every action taken on that employee, including when a given action was taken.

Reduce Exposure to Compliance Fines

Receiving automated updates for employees is powerful and useful for managers to ensure that record-keeping tasks are:

• Up to date;
• Completed before they are overdue; and
• Promptly addressed once they become overdue.

Secondly, with automated record keeping you can flag each task as:

• PRIA;
• Compliance; and
• The cost of a financial fine.

Thus, when reviewing reports for employee records, you can see a record of:

• Number of upcoming task deadlines for each employee;
• Number of those tasks' deadlines that are compliance or PRIA; and
• Total regulatory fine cost of the upcoming deadline.

Thus, if you see that an employee has 6 records coming due within the next week, and the total regulatory fine cost of those records is $8,000, you can easily task to manage record keeping.

Top managers are ultimately responsible for regulatory fines, meaning that they benefit greatly from optimized records management functionality that offers many barriers against compliance fines.

Improve Record Visibility to Relevant Parties

One of the greatest benefits of optimized records management for top managers is the ability to:

• Easily monitor each employee’s records;
• Retrieve record documents;
• Track progress of record-keeping tasks; and
• Review the processes and tasks for the company’s record keeping.

Furthermore, top managers can do all of this without even having to speak to managers who are responsible for managing the records.

In normal circumstances, top managers have to ask responsible managers each time they want status updates for various record-keeping data, and then wait while responsible managers retrieve the data. Optimized record keeping allows top managers to quietly monitor record keeping in the background, and at their convenience.

To see a demo video of pilot records management, click the link below:

Last updated January 2024.