The oil industry, which in terms of safety standards is rather similar to the aviation industry, provides a great example with its statistic that over 50% of all accidents are caused by employees with less than 1 year of experience in their current work environment.
When airlines, airports, and other aviation service providers hire new employees, those employees pose a significant risk so long as they are unfamiliar with their new:
Management’s safety training procedures and the safety culture of the work environment play a critical role in how quickly new employees adjust to participating in the aviation safety management system (SMS). Two months of extremely effective training in an SMS with a healthy safety culture can accomplish what an inefficient, immature aviation SMS would in an entire year.
The important point is that safety managers need to know how quickly employees are being integrated into their aviation SMS and how quickly they begin to participate in the most important way possible. This is the business question that a risk management dashboard chart can answer. We will describe in detail the "Average Days to First Hazard Identification" chart.
This chart shows us:
This performance monitoring chart gives safety managers some very useful information about how quickly employees are integrated into their aviation SMS. There may be other ways to determine whether users are participating in the SMS, such as responding to safety communications, such as
So while this chart in question is not the definitive answer for determining who is actively participating in the SMS, there can be no doubt that tracking safety reporting activity is an excellent indicator of "somebody motivated to perform."
First off, let’s look at the average number of days from completing SMS and hazard identification training to the first reported safety issue.
The lower the number of average days the better that the SMS is integrating new employees into the safety culture. When employees start reporting quickly, it demonstrates that they are:
Of course, this number in and of itself is incomplete, because it relies on employees who have already submitted safety issues. If the average training/reporting days are 2, but only 20% of new employees have reported a safety concern, then the safety training and safety culture are clearly much less effective.
When taken together, this chart indicates the initial risk that aviation SMS takes on when they hire new employees. If the average/training/reporting days and percent of reporting are both good, then the training and safety culture is effective, and thus the risk of hiring new employees is lower.
Both the average training/reporting days and percent of reporters need to be taken in conjunction. The thing all safety managers should be looking for is a high percentage of reporters and a low average number of days. This indicates:
If the percentage of reporters is low or the average days until the first report is high, then this should raise a red flag. It indicates that the aviation SMS':
Knowing how quickly new employees are comfortable enough to start identifying and reporting safety concerns needs to be identified as a concern of safety managers.
This data, which is stored in an aviation SMS database program, will always take into account 3 things when filtering the data:
Based on this data safety managers, or an aviation SMS software, will:
One of the primary responsibilities that aviation SMS oversight agencies put onto service providers and carriers is that they fully implement their SMS through the 4 phases of aviation SMS implementation.
Mature aviation SMS with
should see an extremely high percentage of users who have reported their first issue as well a very low number of average days between training and reporting.
Garnering evidence for the following makes a strong case for completing important elements of phase 3 and phase 4 implementation requirements:
This chart effectively demonstrates operational safety assurance at its finest. On the contrary, it could also indicate a stagnant, paper SMS. Obvious indications such as this chart would belie are not needed for managers who already understand their safety culture. When a safety culture is bad, the safety manager needs no chart like this slapping him in the face. When this report tells safety teams that their safety reporting culture needs serious work, then I recommend that you get the accountable executive immediately involved.
The accountable executive may already know that the safety reporting culture is abysmal, but when there is a report staring him in the face, this report will carry more weight than the "sneaking suspicion" that is not validated by cold hard numbers.
Don't fret if your numbers are in the toilet. There is hope. First, as I said, I'd notify the accountable executive. The mitigation plan would cover some of these points:
Because of the ability to judge the effectiveness of SMS and hazard identification training, the "Average Days to First Hazard Identification" chart should be of great concern to:
The front-line employees in the SMS that feature healthy numbers for this chart should be congratulated for the positive effects their safety habits have on new employees. Likewise, safety management should be satisfied that their training and reporting tools are effective.
An SMS performance monitoring dashboard report that relates extremely closely to the Average Days to First Hazard Identification chart is the Not Inducted Users safety chart.
This Not Inducted Users chart shows a list of employees who have not completed their mandatory SMS training requirements. Well, more accurately, this report shows users whose SMS training documentation is not in the system. In the case of SMS Pro, there is automated SMS training management. New employees can be trained in SMS and hazard identification as they become "inducted" into the SMS. "SMS Induction" seems to be an appropriate and universally acceptable term for bringing new employees into the SMS.
When safety managers are reviewing data for the Average Days to First Hazard Identification chart in order to assess the effectiveness of training, they may also want to factor in how many employees are still currently completing training requirements. For those employees, safety managers may also want to assess:
Taking both charts together will give safety management teams an even more clarified idea of their safety reporting culture and SMS training effectiveness.
To see these charts live, ask us for a live demo.
Alternatively, you may be interested in watching demo videos with these SMS performance monitoring dashboard charts.
Last updated August 2024.