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 a 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.
However, the good news is that when we say promote safety, we are actually talking about a small handful of specific things that you are trying to promote:
Understanding these points allows you to make a more targeted effort when brainstorming ways to promote safety in your organization. Managers who don’t understand that the above points are the target of safety promotion will feel lost and listless in promotional efforts.
Here are the best ways to promote safety in your organization.
First and foremost, promoting your safety program is done through safety management’s actions. As the saying goes, actions speak louder than words. No amount of incentives, posters, and other efforts will ameliorate management which is uninterested in having employees involved in:
The best SMS promotion tool is to demonstrate to employees that they work with the SMS to enact safety, rather than the SMS being something that happens to them. One great way to demonstrate this commitment is to:
It will show employees that they are a part of the SMS continuous improvement process.
Corporate culture destroys countless departments and organizations. It will destroy your safety program as well. As said in the previous section, the best way to promote your program is with actions rather than words.
You need to crack down on corporate culture within the SMS. Your organization may struggle with corporate culture, in which case you have an opportunity to set your program apart – employees will notice and will greatly appreciate you for it.
One way to demonstrate non-corporate culture is to remind employees over and over that the SMS rests on their shoulders in three important ways:
Show management’s commitment to depending on front-line employees, and you will show employees that your SMS is not into corporate culture.
As simple as it may be, posting signs and posters regarding identifying and reporting issues can actually be a very effective way to promote your safety program.
I can’t take credit for this idea, as we were informed by one of our clients that they adopted this practice and saw immediate and positive effects. What they did was create a bunch of posters that said four simple pieces of information:
The SEE, ACT, and SUBMIT words were capitalized, bolded, much larger font size, and a different color than the rest of the text. The contact info was the same font/size/color as the capitalized words.
If employees see these signs multiple times every day, they will most likely report more. In a way, it’s a positive form of conditioning.
Emergency drills are drills that are used to test your emergency response plan. Emergency drills help promote safety in your SMS for a couple of good reasons:
Confident, motivated, and compliant employees tend to be very safe employees.
Newsletters are one of the best means for formally communicating safety information to your entire organization (or a large section of it). A newsletter is a document that is sent to communicate:
Why are newsletters considered “formal” modes of communication in comparison to things like safety meetings?
The best practices for creating newsletters are:
On the opposite end of the spectrum from newsletters, a very informal tool for safety promotion could simply be communicating via email or morning meeting:
The point here is that safety promotion and safety communication don’t have to be serious, dry, and (unfortunately) fairly boring strategies they often are. Inserting some humor into your promotion strategy is a great way to:
Last but not least, outside of demonstrating management’s commitment to the SMS, aviation safety training may be the best way to promote the safety program. Safety training naturally:
See these free resources that will help you promote your safety program, and know where to promote it.
Last updated June 2024.