Presented by Steve Bentley MD. Sofema Aviation Services www.sassofia.com considers the subject of SMS Engagement.
Offer – See the final paragraph for an easy way to measure the engagement of your SMS across your business – use it as an organisational tool (repeat after 6 months)
As our industry approached the first Decade anniversary since ICAO introduced SMS as a requirement in several Standard and Recommended Practices (SARP’s), now is the time to consider a few issues.
What does success look like anyway?
This brings us to the purpose of SMS and there are 2 reasons why we should throw our all at our safety management system
a) We want to ensure we minimize any exposure to unacceptable risks associated with any hazard.
b) Potentially this can be the most interesting one but it is the one which can be overlooked – we want to identify any opportunities to drive improvement which can improve the organisations behaviour – call this the optimization opportunity !
How successful was your SMS Implementation?
Was it ultimately led by the senior management team – means the executive group or was it tasked to a safety manager et al?
If the implementation was not overseen at the highest level then you have possibly disadvantaged yourself.
Change management is hard at the best of times, however when driven from the bottom up it is particularly challenging!
Have you measured the effectiveness of the implementation?
If the answer is no then again it is likely you have fallen short of the potential. There are many reasons why the SMS is not given the attention it deserves “apathy rules” being one reason.
Resource deficiencies being another reason why we never quite get round to doing what we know we need to!
Case Study
A major organisation with 3000 employees was assessed for effectiveness of the SMS system – The major finding – that not a single amendment was offered to the process in the 2 years following implementation. Moreover very little work had been done (due to manpower constraints) on developing a risk register.
The auditor found a significant disconnect between the real status of the SMS and the executive team awareness of the status.
SMS Drives the Optimization Opportunity
Put simply an effective SMS provides a compensation for the “Iceberg of Ignorance” – and addresses the 4% story which is the executive understanding of the front line issues. The availability of such data can support the executive’s team willingness to drive exposures which impact ultimately the efficiency of the organisation.
How effective is the reporting culture in your organisation?
Is it active? – How do you know? What does effective looks like for your organisation?
Have you implemented Service Level Agreements / Objectives and do they drive through to Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) and are they providing the data you need?
An effective reporting culture needs to have effective feedback – how good is yours?
An effective SMS also requires viable mitigations – how successful is your process to assess the effectiveness
Free offer if you would like to receive a simple tool which you can use to measure the success of you SMS please email office@sassofia.com subject SMS and we will send you a link to the document.
For additional questions please see www.sassofia.com or email office @sassofia.com
