Mandatory and voluntary safety reporting policies are an extremely important part of providing guidance for safety reporting in aviation safety management systems (SMS). Yet, we rarely see these policies published and communicated in aviation SMS implementations.
A mandatory and voluntary reporting policy (or policies) outline what types of safety issues employees:
Each safety reporting policy should be simple and straightforward — written so employees are able to easily understand the message. Remember, the purpose of a reporting policy is to:
Creating a mandatory vs voluntary safety reporting policy simply involves:
Again, this policy is best written primarily as a list. The idea is that employees can consult it often and skim the list to find the safety issue they are wondering whether or not to report.
Training employees on mandatory vs voluntary safety reporting processes MUST happen. If it doesn’t, how can you expect employees to know what to report?
Here are some good tips for training employees on this policy:
Over time, employees will naturally gain an understanding of what types of safety issues they MUST and CAN report.
Safety issues that employees must report are what you would call “non-negotiable." Frankly, it’s difficult to simply say what you should and shouldn’t require employees to report.
Why? Because your mandatory vs voluntary reporting policy is specific to your organization. There are some good guidelines to follow though. Types of reportable safety issues should be mandatory if it:
The implication of some of the above points is that your list of mandatory safety issues to report will change as the environment changes. This is good. Why?
These simple best practices will help you build a safety reporting culture baseline.
Voluntary safety reporting is important for a similar reason that mandatory reporting is:
Improving voluntary safety reporting activities is something you should focus on after employees are clearly reporting mandatory safety issues most or all of the time. These voluntary safety reports are not to be discounted, as they add value in:
Minor safety issues and close calls become increasingly valuable when one considers the 1:600 rule. This Heinrich incident triangle (pictured above) illustrates that for every major accident, there will be over 600 close calls and minor incidents to "practice" refining your operational processes before the organization suffers from the major event. These minor incidents typically make up those close calls and minor incidents.
As time passes by and you are collecting your 600 minor safety issues, your SMS will have reviewed most hazards that your operations interact with. One caveat to the above-mentioned "600 minor safety issues" is that you may have your major accident on the first safety issue or the 300th or the 600th. Please don't believe you have 600 chances to get it right. You may be unfortunate and experience your major accident before you've had time to reduce hazards' associated risk to as low as reasonably practical (ALARP).
The point is: All safety issues should be reported. Let management decide what to do with the safety reports. Employees are not experts in hazard and risk management. Get employees to report everything and the safety team and the hazards' process owners can determine whether additional mitigation strategies are warranted.
Which voluntary safety issues should be included in your list? Well, like mandatory safety issues, it’s hard to give you specific items because you have your unique needs.
But it’s as easy as this:
The Heinrich incident triangle provides an excellent example to communicate to all employees why reporting all safety issues is a good practice.
Encouraging voluntary safety reporting is part of a larger conversation about how to build a safety reporting culture.
Some good practices are:
If you are reading this article, your safety reporting culture is probably not as performant as you would like. Approximately 75% of aviation service providers have substandard safety reporting cultures. This is based on a "best-in-class" safety reporting metric of "one safety report for every ten employees per month."
To keep the safety reporting culture strong, you will need to continually:
Friction to safety reporting can come from management's attitudes toward the SMS implementation or from the safety reporting process, which includes tools. When employees have to work too hard to report simple safety concerns, guess what? They won't do it!
Safety reporting processes in aviation SMS implementations should be varied and very user-friendly. By varied, I am referring to the context or situation the employee finds himself in. What tools does the employee have to report safety concerns? Are these tools convenient for employees to easily report safety concerns based on their location and work assignments? Possible approaches include:
Is your safety reporting system easy to use? Is it integrated with your SMS risk management system?
These following videos highlight a Web-based safety reporting system. What features would benefit your company? Since 2007, SMS Pro has provided a safety reporting system that is considered one of the best in the industry. Check it out!
Last updated in September 2024.