Safety accountabilities in aviation safety management systems (SMS) implementations outline the bureaucratic structure of organizational safety expectations. Defining accountabilities has the ultimate goal of clearly communicating:
Safety org-charts are a good place to start when identifying and defining safety accountabilities. They provide the basic structure and flow of safety information in your aviation SMS. Ultimately, an accountabilities map will look like a much more complex org chart.
Safety accountabilities should be periodically reviewed and updated in aviation SMS implementations. By review, we should not simply consider "management review" for relevancy and accuracy, but also stakeholder review. Stakeholder review commonly occurs during the initial SMS training process. During the initial SMS training, employees are trained on:
Organizations must update safety accountabilities because the following factors can greatly influence the effectiveness of existing accountabilities:
Best practices are that safety accountabilities are reviewed by management on an annual basis. Safety professionals will also more frequently communicate these safety accountabilities during safety promotion campaigns, such as:
Fortunately, creating and updating accountabilities is not very difficult to do. Here are 5 steps you can use to define accountabilities in aviation SMS implementations.
It’s a common misconception in aviation SMS implementations that the aviation safety officer is ultimately responsible for the implementation and maintenance of the SMS. In fact, it is an appointed accountable executive who is responsible for the SMS.
The accountable executive is ultimately responsible for:
In organizations, there may be multiple executives who can be designated as the accountable safety executive, such as a CEO, COO, CBDO, etc. Choosing an accountable executive is simply a matter of identifying:
It’s not always clear which executive is the best fit. No executive may want to be accountable for a failure resulting from improper SMS implementation. These are problems with no easy answers, and it will be up to the executive team to be comfortable with the final decision.
Developing the hierarchy lines of accountability is a critical step in the overall process of defining safety accountability in aviation SMS. Hierarchy lines should establish lines of authority for safety accountability from positions with the least accountability to the most accountability.
They help answer questions:
Naturally, the hierarchy will form a pyramid shape, ending with the accountable executive at the top. Each “point” in the hierarchy lines can be a position with a singular person, such as a safety manager, or a position that has numerous employees, such as “trainees.”
Hierarchy of safety authority diagrams should also periodically be revised. For example:
It’s also extremely important to point out that what we are talking about is a safety hierarchy and not the company chain of command hierarchy. While the company hierarchy and safety hierarchy of accountability will look similar, the safety hierarchy is specifically tailored to safety
Once the hierarchy lines of safety accountability have been established, you need to establish what safety need(s) each role is responsible for. Safety needs are any actions/behaviors a company needs in their aviation SMS to drive safety performance. Some examples:
A real list will be considerably longer than this. These two useful ways to establish accountabilities of each role:
This activity is extremely important because it shows everyone in your company which specific needs they are responsible for. This step should be taken with great care and consideration.
By this point, the hard work is finished. Now you simply need to:
A great way to have employees involved in this process is to hold department-specific safety meetings where each department can discuss the completed accountabilities diagram and give their input. Managers can then meet, discuss the findings, and make changes.
A final step needed to completely define accountabilities in aviation SMS implementations is to decide:
For example, creating goals and deadlines for aviation SMS implementation are important decisions as they will set the tone for the management of change in the company. Should the accountable executive make that decision? Should the safety manager?
There are a small handful of decisions like this that need to be assigned to roles in the company. An important element that should be dealt with regards risk acceptance authority. Which managers or roles have risk acceptance authority based on risk assessments during the risk management process? This is not a "one-size-fits-all" decision, as each company is different as is their risk appetite.
As an example of risk acceptance authority, your safety policy may state that whenever a safety issue has been risk assessed as "Intolerable" or "Unacceptable," then operations must stop until authorized by the accountable executive. "Intolerable" and "Unacceptable" risk assessments are typically displayed as red cells in the risk matrix.
Another example of risk acceptance authority may be that operational department heads can accept the risk for safety issues risk assessed as "Mitigatable" or "Acceptable with Mitigations." These risk assessments are typically reflected by a yellow cell in the risk matrix.
You will know that the safety accountabilities requirement in the Safety Policy element of the Four Pillars of aviation SMS is satisfied when:
A great way to get started with defining your safety accountabilities is to download our free template for safety accountability and give yourself a head start:
Tracking management review and employee review of safety accountabilities can be facilitated by using aviation SMS software. Since 2007, SMS Pro has been working with aviation service providers. SMS Pro provides a hosted SMS data management that reduces risk to aviation operators.
To learn how you can benefit from an SMS database, please watch these short demo videos.
Last updated July 2024.