Silas Hays

One must be very familiar with what is within scope and what is out. However, Terms of Reference and/or Job Descriptions often have a 'catch all' such as...do whatever your boss tells you! Either way, we all want to be well thought of and perhaps get rewarded, so scope creep, or increased workload with things you never imagined you would be required to do is not unusual. A good tip is to create a list of all your tasks and colour code them (say green for within your scope and amber for outside). Put a priority number of say 1-10 (some of these may be amber) and then sit with your boss to agree what you believe are the priorities. This should have a powerful effect as your boss will be reminded of your heavy workload and out of scope tasks.

The best weapon in the arsenal I believe, are Safety Leadership Blue Book Walkarounds where senior leaders take time to ask individuals and teams what is preventing them from doing their job first time, and, what is causing frustration or delay. By understanding the elements of the system of support that may be missing can not only identify opportunities to prevent any accidents chain from beginning but the business benefits can be huge with increased efficiency, higher morale due to people feeling they have a voice and are supported, leading to a potentially reduced need for retention measures and the costs associated with recruitment and training.

Agreed, but, this increases the workload of a no doubt already busy Quality team, and, to understand SMS and all that is supposed to be achieved, the Quality team need training on it or they may struggle to ask intelligent questions and add value.

Organisations understand Quality audits but some struggle with safety audits I believe. Quality has been around for a long time and so it's accepted, and unless a good communication campaign reaches all staff, resistance can be found. Also, Quality uses standards such as ISO and can blame the failure to follow the standard on the standard, not an opinion, but safety audits can be somewhat opinion based and may then cause frustration. An example would be how effective a risk assessment and risk management may be. To achieve ALARP may require a effort to understand all that CAN be done to further reduce a risk, and the auditor may believe more effort is required, but the personnel involved may believe there is nothing more to be done.

For me it's a 'horses for courses' to understand where you are now. If just starting out you need a shallow but wide approach like the CAA Phase II, or the MAA tool if supporting the MOD. This should then be used annually to gain an annual snapshot of improvement (or not). Then a deep but narrow audit programme over say 3 years to cover the auditable facets is needed. The view of the employees via a survey can also help, but again, this has more value once the SMS is designed and has been operating for a few years.

Having a loose annual plan on a page (to show intent) that is linked to electronic calendar reminders can really help leaders to stay on top of proactive and regular communications. Always starting any face to face brief with a pertinent safety information also shows good commitment to safety and the SMS.