Gaining Insight Into the Living DNA of a Safety Management System

As safety managers across diverse aviation organizations implement, operate and enhance safety management systems (SMS), the challenge lies not just in daily risk management duties but in cultivating the right culture to sustain them.

A multidimensional safety culture survey (SCS) emerges as a vital tool for periodic assessment and improvement of the organizational dynamics of your employees. This also helps fulfill the spirit and intent of continuous improvement requirements of 14 CFR 5.75.

The Importance of Safety Citizenship Behaviors

Safety citizenship behaviors refer to the voluntary actions taken by employees to promote and enhance safety beyond their basic job responsibilities. These actions can significantly influence the overall safety culture and effectiveness of the SMS. By understanding and evaluating these behaviors, you can uncover the intrinsic motivations for how your employees prioritize their own safety limits and model behavior for their crews, teams and peers.

Understandably, this can easily be complemented by collecting insights into their emotional intelligence (EI) to deepen understanding of these behaviors and begin to describe the living DNA of your SMS. Citizenship encompasses: 1) attention to coworker safety, 2) willingness to intervene in dangerous situations, 3) perceptions of reporting external safety hazards, 4) perception of collaborative risk mitigation, 5) willingness to suggest safety improvements, and 6) initiative to communicate and comply with all safety procedures.

Integrating Emotional Intelligence

It is said that a person’s IQ does not improve, but EI can be continually developed.

EI encompasses self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy and social skills — all of which play a vital role in promoting a proactive, “living” SMS culture. Thus, organizational effectiveness and especially safety citizenship behaviors are more easily maintained with strong EI quotients.

How To Frame Citizenship Questions with EI

Here are some topical examples and tips on constructing citizenship survey questions that will give you the assurance that your employees will grow and sustain your company’s safety culture:

1. Proactive Safety Identification

• Element: Demonstrating a proactive approach to identifying safety concerns.
• Emotional Intelligence: Self-awareness and self-regulation.
• Survey Question: “How often do you take the initiative to identify potential safety concerns in your work environment?”
• Tip: Consider using a Likert scale (e.g., Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Often, Always) to gauge the frequency of these behaviors.

2. Open Communication

• Element: Engaging in effective communication to promote safety.
• Emotional Intelligence: Communication skills and empathy.
• Survey Question: “Rate your ability to share safety-related information clearly and supportively with colleagues.”
• Technique: Include open-ended questions alongside scaled responses to capture qualitative insights about communication barriers and successes.

3. Team Collaboration

• Element: Collaborating with team members on safety initiatives.
• Emotional Intelligence: Social skills and motivation.
• Survey Question: “To what extent do you actively participate in team efforts to improve safety practices?”
• Example: You could follow up with a question asking for specific examples of collaboration, which can reveal deeper insights into team dynamics.

4. Mentorship and Support

• Element: Willingness to mentor peers in safety protocols.
• Emotional Intelligence: Empathy and social skills.
• Survey Question: “How often do you provide guidance to colleagues regarding safety standards?”
• Tip: Encourage respondents to think about not just actions but the impact of their mentoring on team safety culture.

Fostering a Culture of Safety Excellence

Utilizing the insights from your safety culture survey can lead to targeted training and development initiatives, creating a feedback loop that promotes continuous improvement. By regularly revisiting the survey, you can track progress and adapt strategies as needed.

Conclusion

Managing safety culture is very much like baking bread. It is a living organism, and no matter how carefully you measure the same ingredients and bake it, each loaf has its own uniqueness in shape, color and crumb. As a safety manager, you may have all the right safety management ingredients, but you have to keep sampling, measuring and proofing to get that perfect citizenship loaf.