SMS Pro Aviation Safety Software Blog 4 Airlines & Airports

What Is Participation in Your SMS

Employee participation in your aviation SMS is critical to its maintainability. We do this over and over, where the SMS is being pushed by one person and when that person leaves, the program falls apart.

One of the primary goals of generating good involvement is creating a sustainable SMS.

Participation is a word that is often lost on service providers.

• What does it mean?
• What does it look like?
• How do I know if my SMS has it?

How to Quantify Resistance to Your SMS Using This Article

Grab a spare pen and paper so you can write down some notes. What we are looking for is a total score. It works like this:

• Score is on a scale from 0 to 25
• Lower number is better, indicating less resistance
• Higher number is worse, indicating higher resistance
• Read through each section of this article, learning about each piece of resistance
• Perform the exercise in each section and notate your score

Transparency, a Hot Topic:

In recent years, managerial concerns surrounding organizational transparency have become extremely important at all levels of industry and government. So important in fact, that most sensational news stories in recent years - namely Edward Snowden, Wikileaks, the Sony Hack, Bradley Manning - are issues of organizational transparency.

For individuals who defend transparency, we even have a name that has acquired the show-stopping power of words like "terrorist", "hero," or "whistle blower."

What Is Confidentiality in Aviation SMS

Confidentiality in aviation SMS refers to how much personal information should be made available to your organization. By personal information, we are mainly talking about personal information in safety reports, such as people involved or the name of the reporter.

When safety issues are reported, employees may or may not have access to details about the reported issue. When employees do have access, or when you release information about a reported issue, you will need to decide if employees who are not directly involved can view information like:

Why Is Safety Culture So Important?

In many of today's articles about aviation safety management systems, there is something about safety culture. Why? Safety culture ties into every part of your SMS, feeding it as your SMS nurtures your safety culture in return.

It’s a symbiotic relationship, like honeybees and flowers. Each one needs the other to grow and thrive. When your safety culture thrives, your SMS is easier to build and maintain.

So, how do we feed our safety culture in our day-to-day operations?

What Is Safety Culture?

Safety culture is a set of values that a company has in relation to safety and is one of the main characteristics that distinguish one company from other companies.

Some industrial sectors, such as aviation, require a level of safety culture which is higher than in other sectors.

The maturity of the safety culture sometimes depends on the type of business, but this does not mean that industrial sectors, which should have and have a higher level of safety culture, cannot improve. As a matter of fact, safety culture can always be improved.

What Is the Iceberg of Ignorance

The Iceberg of Ignorance was first developed in 1989 by a consultant named Sidney Yoshida. The Iceberg of Ignorance is a model that addressed concerns about safety awareness in large organizations. This model contends that of all problems:

• Only 4% of problems are known to upper managers;
• Only 9% of problems are known to middle managers;
• 74% of problems are known to supervisors; and
• 100% of problems are known to staff and front-line employees.

How Risk Management Depends on Managers and Employees

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. Nothing but the thin walls of a pressurized enclosure, hurtling through space at unimaginable speeds, lay between his small team onboard the space station and the cold eternity of space.

If the Shoe Fits, Wear It - Which Cronies Do You See?

This is a delicate topic, yet must be approached. After reading this article, if you have any solutions or even part solutions that I'm unable to address, please comment. Your help will be appreciated. I know of at least five safety managers who need some advice on this topic.

In most countries, aviation safety officers don't have a sense of entitlement.

They applied for their safety manager job. Perhaps they applied for more than one position at multiple companies.

Multiculturalism in Aviation

In the old days of national airline carriers the crews almost invariably shared the same nationality. Indeed, a common national identity of the workforce was a trademark of these carriers.

Now, with the liberalization of air transport occurring in many parts of the world, workforces have become increasingly multicultural. Examples of this trend can be seen around the world.