SMS Pro Aviation Safety Software Blog 4 Airlines & Airports

Why Managers Struggle with Safety Promotion

Safety Promotion is definitely the least appreciated of the 4 Pillars of SMS.

Almost without fail, promoting safety takes the “back seat” in most aviation safety programs because civil aviation authorities and auditors are significantly more interested in seeing that you comply with:

• Safety Policy,
• Safety Risk Management, and
• Safety Assurance.

Building Hazard Reporting Culture Through Convenience

If you want to improve your aviation SMS program’s hazard reporting culture, the first thing you should do is see if you can make hazard reporting easier.

“Easier” is a tricky word.

Are manual hazard reporting forms easy? The long answer begins with: it depends on the situation. The short answer is: sometimes yes, sometimes no.

How to Improve Safety Culture in Front Line Employees 

As a current aviation maintenance technology student and worker in the aviation maintenance field, I get to experience both the school and the workplace safety cultures. As mentioned in a previous post, the meaning of aviation safety culture is:

When We Say Promote Safety, What are We Actually Promoting

Safety promotion plays a crucial role in your aviation safety culture. So when we talk about promoting your SMS, we are really talking about how to build safety culture in your organization.

By far, safety promotion is often the most neglected portion of SMS. One, promoting the safety program is difficult, and two, it is vastly underrepresented in most aviation compliance authorities’ requirements.

What are the Economics of SMS

Despite the having the word “economic,” the economics of SMS are not concerned with money.

Rather, the economics of SMS look at continuous improvement from the standpoint of incentives.

What is Just Culture in Aviation SMS Programs

In layman terms, Just Culture in aviation SMS programs is an organization’s commitment to focusing on learning and improving in the light of unsafe acts, as opposed to blaming and punishing.

What is Safety Promotion Component of 4 Pillars?

The Safety Risk Management and Safety Assurance pillars of SMS receive by far the most attention.

Lagging behind them is Safety Policy.

Then, way in the back, sometimes barely noticeable, is Safety Promotion. To put it in perspective, in the FAA’s Advisory Circular:

Our Goals for this Aviation Scholarship

SMS-Pro's aviation scholarship was extremely successful in 2016: we received many submissions of very high quality. It's good to know that budding aviation safety professionals already have a solid understanding of what quality aviation risk management looks like. The first dealine this year for the Aviation Safety Management Scholarship is July 1st, which is only one week away! Apply yourself or share with friends who could use some extra cash to help them through their aviation education.

Our Goals for this Aviation Scholarship

SMS-Pro's aviation scholarship was extremely successful in 2016: we received many submissions of very high quality. It's good to know that budding aviation safety professionals already have a solid understanding of what quality aviation risk management looks like. The first dealine this year for the Aviation Safety Management Scholarship is July 1st, which is only two months away! Apply yourself or share with friends who could use some extra cash to help them through their aviation education.

What is Safety Transparency in Safety Management Systems

Safety transparency is a bid deal in aviation SMS programs.

One of the most frequent questions we receive is "how a program should set up roles, responsibilities, and access to safety data?"

Transparency is how you define access to such data based on employee-roles in your safety program.