Seven Core SMS Principles

A safety management system (SMS) is not about what to restrict, how to restrict, or what to eliminate from operations, but what can be added to operations for a successful business venture. SMS is an adaptable system which adapts to both written and unwritten processes. Adapting processes are also called drift or deviations. When a process adapts, the process might need to get back on track for compliance with the process text in the SMS manual, or the SMS manual text might need to get back on track for compliance with the practical application of the process. Rigid processes may not produce desired outcome and human behavior is to adapt to practical processes as viewed by frontline workers. 

Adaptability is the capacity to be modified for a new use or purpose. Adaptability is resilience, flexibility, versatility, and adjustability. Adaptability is not to waver, but it is to stay focused on the goal when special cause variations interrupts. Just as a lion keeps its eyes on the goal and its vision remain on the target in a turn, on a straight track, or when it tumbles and fall. When Orville and Wilbur flight took place on December 17, 1903, they used car gas to run the engine. The process worked fine until one day at 8,000 feet the engine quit due to a vapor lock, which left them with two options. Option one was to remain rigid and faithful to the process using car gas, or option two, to change the airplane engine requirements text in the operations manual to use the newly invented avgas. Adaptability to avgas reduced the likelihood of harm to pilots and passengers or destruction of property to an acceptable level. 

SMS principles are the foundational guidelines or rules that are beneficial for assessing risks and making sound decisions. It is common for departments, teams, and organizations to implement principles that serves as valuable guidelines in an extensive range of interactions and processes. Principles are intended to state SMS structure and influence or control the conduct of a safety management system. Principles are helpful in describing definitions, constraints, and operations that apply to an SMS enterprise. SMS principles can be functional to processes, people, systems, organizational and human behavior, and are put in place to aid operators, both airports and airlines, to reach goals and objectives.

Principles are different from policies. Policies include visionary statements of the path an organization has chosen, policies are long term-term visions, policies are leading an organization from ahead, and stake out the path for an SMS enterprise. A policy is the foundation where goals and objectives are anchored. Principles are responsibilities accepted by individuals when performing their operational roles. As an example, an airport may operate with an icy runway since airport manager believe in a principle that they are not responsible for decisions made by pilots to use an icy runway. Another principle is how an accountable executive (AE) lead personnel to maintain regulatory compliance with performance-based regulations.

There are seven core principles of a safety management system. Without these seven principles in place an SMS becomes an administrative task only in an environment without opposition, and where there are no operational consequences. The seven core principles of an SMS are Trust, Learning, Accountability, Information Sharing, Training, Just Culture, and Customer-centric Approach. 

Everything begins with trust. Goals cannot be designed, built, or be reached in an organization with suspicious minds. 

There are just a few elemental forces that hold a safety management system world together. The one that is the glue of an organization is called trust. Its presence cements relationships by allowing people to get together in an office environment daily, to work together, feel safe and that they belong to a group with a purpose. Trust in a leader allows organizations and communities to flourish, while the absence of trust can cause fragmentation and conflicts. An SMS enterprise has a responsibility to build trust by example and begins at the top-level in the organization. 

Trust is about reliability, ability, confidence, and vision, where reliability is a performance measurement, ability is a skill measurement, confidence is an ownership measurement, and vision is an ambassador measurement.

When trust is lost, the energy level of engagement is diminishing. In some way, a reactive human behavior is to go on an internal strike searching for justification to oppose organizational principles and the line of hierarchy.  As a result, a person pulls back from initiatives and engagements and no longer feel part of the organizational culture. A sure sign of an organization where trust is without action, is when there are no opposing views, there are very few reported suggestions, and suggestions are aimed at pleasing manager’s, or owner’s opinions, and personnel suppress their natural instinct to help out and to go above and beyond. An organization without trust operates as a prescriptive and rigid organization. When non-prescriptive tasks are ignored, or non-approved initiatives are suppressed, there is no punishment to any person for making a mistake. A non-punitive policy under the safety management system is not a guarantee that there will not be any punishment, or non-punitive actions. During the course of a day’s work, an AE can always find a special cause variation contributed to a person’s work behavior. Special cause variation is not bad or good but is neutral. A special cause variation could be the wrong color shoes. The purpose when applying punitive actions to special cause variations is to divide and find common grounds and silently attack from within. 

On the positive side, trust makes people feel eager to be part of a successful SMS enterprise, with a shared purpose and a willingness to depend on each other. When trust is intact, we will willingly contribute what is needed, not just by offering our presence, but also by sharing our dedication, talent, energy, and honest thoughts on how the SMS enterprise is working.

When the level of trust is low in an organization, people limit their involvement and what they are willing to do or share. They might think to themselves, “This is all you deserve,” or, “This is as all I am willing to give.” In contrast, when the trust level is high, people reward it by giving more. But, more often than not, people feel that their distrust is not safe to share. So, a leader may be slow to discover that they have lost a person’s trust. Remember, trust is earned, everything else can be enforced.

Learning is a process that leads to change, which occurs as a result of experience and increases the potential for improved performance and future learning. The change in the learner may happen at the level of knowledge, attitude, or behavior. As a result of learning, learners come to see concepts, ideas, and the world differently.

Learning is not something done to candidates, but rather something candidates themselves do. Learning is the result of how candidates interpret and respond to their experiences. For learning to be effective, candidates need to have significant opportunities to develop and practice intellectual skills, thinking processes, motor skills and attitudes and values that are important for a successful safety management system. In addition, candidates need opportunities to develop interpersonal and social skills that are important for professional and personal success. These skills include teamwork, communication, conflict resolution and creative thinking. Instructors need to keep in mind that there is much more to learning than content and that should pay attention not only to the content but also to thinking processes and other types of learning.

Accountability is vital for a successful SMS. It is impossible to create a high-performing team when there is lack of accountability. When no one takes ownership of making decisions, addressing issues, and solving problems is a sign of an unhealthy SMS enterprise. Accountability is when people take responsibility for their own actions withing their organizational roles and responsibilities.  Accountability is about taking initiative and recognizing not only that individuals have the power to cause problems, but also that individuals come with resilience to bounce back and make things right when there are unexpected occurrences.  

Accountability within an SMS enterprise is forward-looking accountability. Organizational leadership or other personnel do not possess skills, tasks, or abilities to predict forward-looking occurrences, but they have the ability to perform roles, responsibilities and tasks in the manner in which they are successfully trained. When a person performs their tasks as expected but still things go wrong, accountability within an SMS enterprise is not to hold that person accountable for performing tasks as expected, but it is to assign a root cause to the special cause variation which interrupted the process. An SMS enterprise then assigns the root cause to either human factors, organizational factors, supervision factors, or environmental factors. By applying these root cause factors, an SMS enterprise are establishing organizational reliability and forward-looking accountability. It is practical impossible to create an acceptable performance level without accountability.

Information sharing is to share data and analyses internally and externally as decided by the accountable executive. It is essential that information sharing is without bias and opinions to promote a pre-determined outcome. There are two “red flags” frequently associated with information sharing. One is when information is shared only for the purpose of elevating their SMS enterprise above an emotionally acceptable safety level, and another is when information shared is only for the purpose of operational contract agreements compliance. An emotionally safety level sharing could be to minimize a special cause variation as irrelevant to operational safety, and contract agreement compliance sharing might exclude organizational factors in a root cause analysis.       
  
Data was formerly frequently kept in silos and often not shared among other entities due to its proprietary, non-portable format or the inability to import and export data. Even simple items such as dates were stored in a whole range of different formats, making online sharing of a simple field almost impossible. The same applied to a whole range of data, and even if it was compatible, it was often not possible to physically transfer the data from one platform to another. Today, information sharing is relatively simple, and it is publicly accessible. Don’t forget that information sharing is also to share information in paper format, or by a simple telephone call. 

  
Training and development are integral parts of a successful safety management system. Conventional wisdom is that training is that training is “busy time”, or a waste of time since personnel were trained at some point in the past and therefore competent to perform their duties years later. In the past training was only viewed as a disruption to operations to maintain regulatory compliance. 

Training and development initiatives are educational activities within an organization that are designed to improve the job performance of an individual or group. These programs typically involve advancing knowledge and skill sets and instilling greater motivation to enhance job performance. 
Training programs can be created independently or with a learning administration system, with the goal of personnel long-term development. Common training practices include orientations, indoctrination training, classroom lectures, case studies, role playing, simulations and computer-based training, including e-learning.

Benefits from training are increased productivity, reduced micromanagement, training of future leaders, increased job satisfaction and retention, attract highly skilled personnel, higher level of reliability, positive relationships within an organization, bolstered safety, ability for upgrade, or cross-training, and support in strategy development.

Training and development initiatives are educational activities within an organization that are designed to improve the job performance of an individual or group. These programs typically involve advancing knowledge and skill sets and instilling greater motivation to enhance job performance. One purpose of training is to detect organizational drift, while learning is to detect changes in individual human behaviors.

A just-culture is balancing safety in operations and accountability. In a just-culture environment reactive or proactive actions are justified by consensus within an SMS enterprise. Simply said, a just-culture is to justify actions. Justification of actions are not the same as excuses for behaviors but are justification to establish a root cause and implement changes as needed for process reliability. 

For those who run organizations, the incentive to have a just culture is to learn what is going on. A just culture is necessary if you want to monitor the safety of an operation. A just culture is necessary if you want to have any idea about the capability of your people to effectively meet challenges that will come their way.

For those who work inside an organization, the incentive of having a just culture is to feel free to concentrate on doing a quality job rather than on limiting personal liability, to feel involved and empowered to contribute to safety improvements by learning why thigs goes right most of the time, but also by flagging for weak spots.

For those in society who consume an organization’s product or service, just cultures are in their own long-term best interest. Without a just culture, an easy trap to fall into is to prioritize short-term measures to limit exposure over long-term investments in safety.

The opposite of operating within a just culture is to operate within a blame-culture. A blame-culture is without accountability since it is an environment where people, groups, and teams, are singled out and blamed and criticized, and fault is allocated to individuals for mistakes and errors.

A customer-centric approach is a business strategy based on putting customer first and at the core of the business in order to provide a positive experience and build long-term relationships. A customer-centric approach does not necessarily include the word “safety” to define their safety management system.  An airline had operated by this principle for 30 years without major incidents but was required by regulator to change their priority from a customer first approach to a safety priority approach. Just a few years later they experienced a fatal accident. Under their customer-centric approach they had a system in place for winter operations at remote airports, which in the opinion of the regulator was not required to the same degree and level of safety when operating with a safety management system.

When operating with a customer-centric approach the focus is that of customer’s needs and experiences. A customer needs an event and accident-free flight, they need a well-maintained aircraft, they need friendly crew, a relaxed atmosphere, and a clean environment. After arrival at their destination, their recent experience should trigger a desire to board their next flight with the same operator. When operating within a customer-centric environment people are informed, they are treated with respect and dignity, they receive guidance, and they feel integrated with the team as opposed to being segregated as a paying customer. 

When an SMS enterprise is guided by the seven core SMS principles, Trust, Learning, Accountability, Information Sharing, Training, Just Culture, and Customer-centric Approach, their safety management system is operating with a vision, a reliability strategy, and a desire to succeed. 

When assessing a safety management system level of success, don’t make the mistake to equal accountable executive and operational managers behaviors to front-line workforce behavior.    

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