Aviation safety management systems (SMS) have been required by most aviation service providers since the November 2006 ICAO mandate. To add structure to SMS implementations and to educate safety professionals, ICAO provides SMS implementation guidance in the form of a Safety Management Manual (SMM), now in the fourth edition.
In the SMM, aviation SMS implementation requirements are logically grouped under four components (also known as four pillars):
The four components, or pillars, are further broken down into twelve elements, with between two and five elements for each pillar. The Safety Promotion pillar has two elements:
In aviation SMS discussions and literature, the Safety Risk Management (SRM) and Safety Assurance (SA) pillars receive by far the most attention.
Lagging behind them is the Safety Policy. One can reasonably justify why the Safety Policy pillar does not capture or maintain long-term attention. The safety policy pillar focuses on the structure and accountabilities of the aviation SMS, both features that one logically correlates with starting a new "safety initiative."
But why is safety promotion always the laggard? All safety managers and accountable executives must understand that every successful SMS is supported by:
repeatedly broadcasting safety messages that resonate with line employees who constantly monitor safety activities and report safety concerns.
Without safety promotion activities, there will be insufficient fuel (reported safety issues) to drive the SA and SRM processes.
We can also logically explain why SRM and SA retain long-term attention from most aviation organizations.
Perhaps the attention to SRM and SA is justified as these two components are critical to understanding the aviation SMS' risk management processes. SRM is the design of your "system" and SA risk management processes focus on monitoring the system for safety anomalies. While an SMS' objective is to reduce risk and improve system safety, SA processes are also capable of discovering and managing opportunities to initiate system improvements to reduce risk to as low as reasonably practical (ALARP).
So while SRM and SA risk management processes can be considered "critical" components for a successful design, we must not be too hasty to discount the other two SMS components. Aviation SMS is a "system" and in this "system," there are no extraneous, optional components, despite management's dismissive attitude toward safety promotion.
Unfortunately, SRM and SA get the most attention in SMS implementation guidance distributed by civil aviation authorities and other standards-setting bodies, such as IS-BAO and IATA. You will see volumes of great advice devoted to these two pillars. Then, the way in the back, sometimes barely noticeable, is safety promotion. To put it in perspective, in the FAA’s Advisory Circular:
Safety promotion is also a very difficult element for aviation SMS auditors to evaluate. Who is to say "What is an appropriate safety promotion strategy" for any given company? As long as there are some indicators of safety promotion activities, an operator seldom receives findings relating to safety promotion. Most SMS auditors will focus on the other three pillars, as they can be more "objectively" evaluated. Safety promotion, just like safety culture, is evaluated in a highly subjective manner.
In the shadow of SRM and SA, it’s easy to overlook just how important safety promotion is. This pillar accounts for:
In short, safety promotion covers all of the mission-critical mechanisms that allow your SMS implementation to work in the operational environment. You could even make the argument that safety promotion is the most indispensable of all pillars.
Poor demonstrations of safety promotion in an SMS implementation, such as poor awareness, communication, and/or safety culture, will completely cripple any aviation SMS. No other pillar can boast such a claim.
In general, the primary goals of safety promotion revolve around building confidence in the SMS implementation, as well as safety in general. This confidence should arise through:
The above points are only helpful conceptually. But they are generalities. It's important to know "what" the above points translate to in the operational environment in tangible ways, such as:
It’s always recommended that safety management teams outline specific safety promotional goals in their policies.
Most promotional activities are what we call “input activities.” What this means is that they are influencing what goes in to safety performance (as opposed to Safety Assurance, which addresses what comes out of safety performance). It’s also no coincidence that a majority of aviation leading indicators address the Safety Promotion pillar.
Here are some of the most important safety promotional activities:
More than any other pillar, we have seen safety promotion at its most successful when companies have a dedicated calendar for promotional activities. This is because it’s easy to get bogged down in SRM, Safety Policy, and SA activities, and only practice promotion sporadically. This calendar will ensure that daily, weekly, and monthly promotional activities are consistent and your safety culture continually improves.
Here’s the rub: how do you know if your safety promotion activities are working? This is a tough question with no immediately clear answers unless you have a robust SMS data management strategy, such as using an aviation safety database.
An aviation safety database allows your organization to easily monitor safety performance activities. If your SMS data management processes are not easy to follow, they will never be sustainable in the long run. Therefore, keep your processes simple. There are a few, low-cost, commercially available SMS databases that are affordable for smaller operators that support tracking safety promotion activities. SMS Pro is one of these products.
There are 3 creative ways to monitor the effects of your safety promotion activities:
In conjunction, these three activities can give you an extremely accurate picture of how effective promotional activities are. It works like this:
Having a side-by-side visual comparison of leading indicators, employee performance, and KPIs will produce solid evidence and a great understanding of what promotional activities are or aren’t translating to improved performance on an individual and company-wide level.
The most obvious metric to track is the number of safety reports submitted through your organization's safety reporting system. Whenever possible, attempt to evaluate safety reporting metrics by:
By evaluating and comparing safety reporting metrics at various levels, safety teams and the accountable executive will be able to gain insights into resistance to aviation SMS implementation. When evaluating metrics only by the company's performance, you will be leaving yourself open to having sub-performing pockets of resistance to aviation that are supported by other areas of the company that earnestly support the SMS implementation.
So the question remains: if safety promotion is so important, why is it so undervalued?
First and foremost, oversight agencies are not making it a priority. When the FAA only allots 10% of its requirement descriptions to safety promotion and 90% to the other three pillars, it’s no wonder the lack of safety promotion is endemic in aviation SMS implementations.
Consider a couple of hard questions:
Unfortunately, most companies don’t have much to say in response to these kinds of questions. Who can blame them? Oversight agencies are pushing much higher priorities on service providers so safety promotion gets lost in the weeds.
The second reason that safety promotion is undervalued is for the mentioned reasons:
Combine this vagueness with a sore lack of oversight guidance, and companies have very little incentive to make a sincere go at safety promotion. Unfortunately, this harms safety performance which is demonstrated by substandard safety reporting metrics.
Ideally, this article will have helped you:
The "Safety Promotion" pillar should never be discounted by managers. Without the support of line employees, your aviation SMS implementation will never reduce risks to as low as reasonably possible. Safety reports are among the core inputs of every successful SMS implementation. Employees must be onboard the SMS train. Isn't this obvious to everyone?
Managing an aviation SMS' required documentation may seem overwhelming unless you have access to tools designed to handle this task. Since 2007, SMS Pro has been supporting aviation SMS implementations across the world. We recognize that if your SMS data management strategy is not easy, your SMS will suffer.
Please review these short SMS Pro demo videos to learn how we can help.
Last updated in June 2024.