Air traffic management safety culture

Improving Safety Culture in Air Traffic Control

Background

As with any project, Safety Culture enhancement activities need to be properly planned, resourced and monitored to ensure that they achieve the intended objectives. The Safety Culture assessment process will suggest many opportunities for improvement. An additional process is required to establish the priority areas for action, and to consider limitations in what can be achieved in practice.

Objective

The Air Navigation Service Provider’s goal should be to identify:

· The most important Safety Culture improvements required (effectiveness or benefit), based on their interpretation of the diagnosis, and

· How easy will it be to make meaningful change, that is, which of the improvements will be easy to achieve and which will be more difficult (their feasibility).

Planning and Managing the Change

The first process for making these distinctions is referred to as an Effectiveness / Feasibility evaluation.

This can be undertaken via management meetings, or as a workshop activity, run by a facilitator who understands the process, and with participation from a range of stakeholders in the Safety Culture improvement project.

Effectiveness / Feasibility evaluation

Step 1: Determine the likely effectiveness of the change, through discussion of the following questions:

· What is the expected effect / benefit on safety management?

· What would be the extent (e.g., whole ANSP versus local) and depth of the effect? How durable or lasting would the effects be - long-term or temporary?

· Is there any ‘downside’, that is, potential risk or adverse colateral effect from the change (e.g., risk transfer or creation of new risks)?

Step 2: How feasible is the action, in terms of factors such as cost, practicality and difficulty:

· What is the financial cost?

· What operating constraints or limitations apply? How will the target population be affected by and respond to the intervention?

· How complex and widespread will the impact be on the organisation as a whole, on policies, procedures and practices; on structures; on regulatory compliance; and on socio-political systems (powers, status, corporate interests).

Key steps in planning and managing cultural change are:

Establish commitment to the project

Clearly define the scope, objectives and timeframe

Identify and allocate funding

Agree in advance the measures of success

Prepare a project plan (summarising issues above)

Identify risks, and ways to manage these

Assign responsibilities for activities to the Project Team

Set up monitoring processes (for resources, objectives, output and timeliness)

Report progress and communicate achievements

Celebrate success!

It should be remembered also that cultural change projects are somewhat intangible, in that the desired changes in attitudes may be hard to see, and the behavioural effects may be gradual and subtle. This means momentum for the project may fall away unless commitment and project controls are actively maintained, and the project is given ongoing prominence in the organisation - through regular reporting and communication of progress.

Senior Management Commitment

A commitment to safety by the organisation’s senior management group is essential to the existence of a positive Safety Culture. The simplest way for managers to show commitment is through their behaviour - the things they say and do.

Two preliminary steps are important:

· First, become informed about the organisation and its risks; about the nature of Safety Culture; and about the impact of (collective) decisions and actions on safety. This information can come from the formal culture assessment activities, research, and informal information gathering.

· Second, develop integrated strategy and supporting plans for safety improvement that recognise the importance of Safety Culture and guarantee the necessary level of resourcing, regardless of financial pressures.

To begin changing behaviour, identify exactly what it is that distinguishes managers who are highly committed to safety from those who are not interested in, or only pay ‘lip-service’ to safety. These ‘management safety competencies’ allow managers to ‘walk the talk’, for example, by:

· Promoting safety and communicating the right messages

· Leading or participating in safety meetings, workshops and forums

· Encouraging people to report hazards, safety concerns and ‘normal errors’

· Listening to, and addressing employee concerns

· Treating people justly when they report ‘normal errors’

· Being ‘visible’ in the workplace, and

· Maintaining safety standards, by example, and by correcting unsafe behaviour by others.

Establishing Blame and Reward Policy - Just Culture

Establishing blame and reward policies outlining the organisational Just Culture is not only an ethically responsible way of dealing with inevitable human errors - it is a pre-condition for reporting systems that enable an organisation to learn about the errors, hazards and risks inherent in its operations.

Communicating for Safety

Communication is a fundamental and essential process through which people cooperate to achieve any mutual goal. An effective leader would support a Safety Culture by:

v Promoting safety - as a priority, reporting related activities and highlighting achievements

v Clarifying safety goals - explaining the vision for safety, expressing clear expectations about safe behaviour

v Interacting ‘at the coalface’ - being visible, discussing safety issues

v Listening - to safety concerns, seeking feedback, asking about problems

v Closing the loop - asking how incidents occur, communicating lessons from safety occurrences, notifying improvements made

v Shaping behaviour - acknowledging and rewarding good behaviour, challenging and correcting inappropriate actions

v Being just - communicating an understanding that people are fallible and will make errors, applying a ‘Just Culture’ policy.

Feedback processes are essential to a positive Safety Culture, so that managers can understand where to make improvements to safety practices.

Upward communication channels generally exist in any organisation. These include face to face activities, such as meetings, briefings and debriefs, as well as written processes, such as event reporting systems and hazard notification forms. All of these communication channels provide the opportunity for frontline operators to pass relevant information to their supervisors or managers.

In addition, line supervisors / first level managers are supposed to observe and talk to their staff, and report to their managers.

As with many aspects of organisational functioning, there is a distinction between policy - what should happen, and practice - what actually occurs. Often, these processes of upward communication and feedback are ineffective. There are many possible reasons for this. They include what might be called ‘barriers’ to effective communication. (See Figure 1)