Fatigue is a top safety priority. Even moderate levels of fatigue can cause employees to demonstrate the same mental and physical capabilities as an intoxicated person.
Discussing fatigue in aviation safety management systems (SMS) becomes interesting when one considers the onus for managing fatigue is on multiple parties, namely:
Fatigue is such a high priority that there are even subsystems dedicated to fatigue – Fatigue Risk Management Systems (FRM). Dealing with FRM correctly involves a proper understanding of what fatigue is.
Fatigue manifests itself in two ways: physically and mentally. “Manifestations” simply means observable behavior or personal sensation. Physical manifestations of fatigue include:
Mental manifestations include:
Some of the most common causes of fatigue include:
Fatigue risk management (FRM or FRMS) is simply a subsystem/approach within an aviation SMS meant for dealing with fatigue. Some organizations have actually dedicated subsystems (FRMS) or simply strategies (FRM) that they can demonstrate to oversight agencies as proof of mitigating fatigue-related safety issues.
What this usually entails is having:
In short, fatigue risk management and fatigue risk management systems are both modeled after aviation SMS implementations in that they address fatigue from the standpoint of the 4 pillars of aviation SMS.
Here are 3 specific ways to deal with FRM in your aviation SMS.
The first thing safety managers should do to understand fatigue in their organization is to begin gathering safety data. Some aviation safety data that will be especially important for clarifying if there is a fatigue problem (and how severe the problem may be) are:
If this data has not already been collected, it may take some time to compile it, especially if there have been many fatigue reports within the past year. However, it will be well worth the effort. With this information safety managers will be able to establish:
The second essential part of fatigue risk management is making sure employees are regularly reminded how important fatigue is for maintaining safety and reducing risk to as low as reasonably practical (ALARP). Fatigue-related safety communications can be addressed through:
In all of the above points, safety management teams must adopt and reinforce the tenets of your non-punitive reporting policy. It is similar to how some organizations go to great lengths to establish a standard of “if you are even a little bit sick, then stay home.”
The best way to make the “non-punitive” reporting aspect clear is to let employees know exactly how management deals with reported incidents of employee fatigue. Ideally, fatigue risk management policies in aviation SMS should set some very high standards of conduct that communicate:
Most aviation service providers are profit-motivated. The organizational culture leans more toward "mission first, safety second." This becomes understandable, as pilots and maintenance engineers are responsible, conscientious employees. They realize their performance, or lack of it, will affect the lives and schedules of their clients. In short, they want to perform!
We recognize that military operations focus on the mission regardless of the cost; however, employees need to be assured that operational risk becomes unacceptable when employees neglect to properly manage fatigue. Management may be promoting the "mission first" culture by constantly rewarding "performance-based behavior. This is another instance of the shared responsibility for fatigue management that was alluded to at the beginning of this article.
A sad fact of life is that some managers are not comfortable promoting a non-punitive reporting policy with fatigue. Where do you draw the line?
These are some very weighty considerations. Unfortunately, in safety cultures where there is a lack of trust between employees and management, the cards will be stacked in management's favor.
From management's perspective, the other side of the argument does not look appealing either. What happens if we don't properly manage fatigue in our organization? One dreads the results from an accident investigation that leads to fatigue.
Making fatigue reporting quick and easy is an effective way to generate a safety reporting culture for fatigue. It also helps ensure the completeness of your fatigue data – the reported fatigue reports capture most incidents of fatigue. Let's face it. You will never get all fatigue incidents. I know this for a fact because I personally am very hesitant to admit that I'm fatigued.
I can use myself as an example. I am intelligent. I am hard-working. I am responsible. I am not weak. I am an "Alpha male." I will not report myself as being "incapable." I don't want to appear incapable of managing my own sleep patterns. So I would not normally self-report. I would be the perfect employee for safety managers to "educate" and change my opinion as to why I should put aside my pride and self-report fatigue whenever necessary.
So first, as an employee, my internal attitudes must be changed.
Being ex-military, I'm sure that other military types recognize the "sick, lame, and lazy" title given to soldiers who are unable to make muster. I was never on the "sick, lame, and lazy" list. I take this as a matter of pride, so again, it would be employees like me who need to be "educated" to accept that "it is normal for us to become overly fatigued at times."
Life does not always allow us to adhere to a schedule. My wife may need to go to the hospital for an emergency or the dog may run away from home. I may be going through a traumatic life experience, such as
There are many ways that "life" can adversely affect our sleep schedules. This does not make me a bad person, or an irresponsible person. I think that this is the message that we need to promote to employees whose performance may be affected by fatigue. This message will reduce friction for employees like me, who are reluctant to self-report.
Once the friction to report has been reduced, I will need a simple, user-friendly way to confidentially report my fatigued condition. Since I'm highly reluctant to self-report, confidentiality is of utmost importance.
Some convenient, user-friendly ways of making fatigue reporting available are:
One last element of FRMS that is extremely important to understand is that:
This means that:
In other words, the bureaucratic side of FRM and FRMS is less important than the performance of fatigue in the operational environment. This is different from SMS, where the SMS bureaucracy and performance are equally important.
Fatigue statistics can prove to be extremely valuable leading indicators. For a full list of leading indicators, get our free list below:
Last updated July 2024.