Aviation safety management systems (SMS) needs input from three levels of your organization to be successful. Without the total involvement of your company, hazard reporting will fail.
The three levels of your company and their corresponding responsibility for setting up a successful hazard reporting program are:
Topics: 4-Safety Promotion, Safety Culture
Apathy is the bane of any aviation safety management system (SMS).
Apathy is the most insidious kind of resistance any aviation safety manager will face. It can take many forms, such as:
Topics: 4-Safety Promotion
As the former Commander of the International Space Station, it is not surprising that in interviews, Chris Hadfield often stresses the importance of effective risk management. Whether for career or pleasure, every aviator experiences a considerable level of risk in their operational environment.
This is epitomized by the life of this former astronaut.
Topics: 4-Safety Promotion, Safety Culture
Organization’s with successful aviation safety management systems (SMS) training strategies universally have very well performing aviation SMS. End of story.
Training can make or break a company.
And let’s be honest, 99% of all training courses you or I have ever attended were dreadfully boring, uninspiring, and (worst of all) forgettable.
There are really only two main goals for training to change. The first goal of aviation SMS training is preparing individuals for how to act safely in all situations, be it
Topics: 4-Safety Promotion
The Human Factor Lack of Awareness is the “dead end” that many other Human Factors lead to. It happens when you are:
Topics: 4-Safety Promotion
Human Factor Complacency is one of the most important Human Factors in aviation safety that you need to be aware of.
Complacency can happen when you are feeling satisfied with your level of safety, and it can happen when you are apathetic to your own safety level.
Complacency is the cause of countless safety incidents because of things like:
Topics: 4-Safety Promotion
Aviation safety risk management programs are on a spectrum of regression, stagnation, or improvement. What condition is your SMS?
Is your aviation risk management program dying? The truth is that it can be hard to know the current status of your SMS.
Change happens slowly. You may think that your SMS is improving nicely, but then a year later your safety performance is struggling, and you don’t know why. We see it happen with regularity.
Topics: 4-Safety Promotion
If you want to improve your aviation SMS program’s hazard reporting culture, the first thing you should do is to see if you can make hazard reporting easier.
“Easier” is a tricky word.
Are manual hazard reporting forms easy? The long answer begins with: it depends on the situation. The short answer is: sometimes yes, sometimes no.
It’s the “sometimes no” that you should care about. In your SMS program, in which situation is it not convenient to report issues?
Topics: 4-Safety Promotion
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.
Topics: 4-Safety Promotion
Despite the having the word “economic,” the economics of SMS are not concerned with money.
Rather, the economics of SMS look at continuous improvement from the standpoint of incentives.
Incentives play a powerful role in your SMS, for better or worse. Safety programs with good incentives generally have employees who:
Topics: 4-Safety Promotion
These two on-demand videos offer:
