At Baldwin, we annually conduct a myriad of safety culture surveys to measure the success of SMS implementation and its performance for all types and sizes of operations. By analyzing six key cultural dimensions (Leadership, Reporting, Justness, Accountability, Learning, and Safety Citizenship) the survey data gives us insight into how safety culture scores are inextricably linked to its broader organizational culture.
As aviation departments strive to enhance their safety performance, a critical element often overlooked is the need to foster a learning-culture mindset. This mindset shift can unlock invaluable opportunities for continuous improvement, employee engagement, and creating a resilient safety environment. From a behavioral management perspective - “as your company's learning culture goes, so goes the ongoing success of your SMS.”
However, the path to cultivating a learning-culture mindset is not without its challenges. Let's explore the top three management challenges that aviation departments must navigate to effectively create and sustain this transformative approach to improving your company’s safety culture.
1. Formalizing a Just Culture Framework
One of the foundational elements of a learning-culture mindset is effectively managing all aspects of a just culture. In a just culture, employees feel empowered to report safety-related incidents and concerns without fear of punitive action. Our safety culture survey data shows that employees have a good understanding of just culture’s non-punitive elements. However, survey data indicates that fewer managers know how to use its coaching and counseling aspects to create learning opportunities addressing at-risk behavior.
Managing the tool becomes a delicate balance between accountability and fairness. Department managers must ensure that safety breaches or errors are addressed with a non-punitive approach while still coaching the need for clear standards and expectations. This can be a difficult task, as the natural inclination may be to automatically assign blame or impose disciplinary measures.
To overcome this challenge, management should invest in ongoing just culture training to maintain a comprehensive, just culture framework. This includes clearly defining the principles of accountability, establishing well-defined processes for incident reporting and investigation/feedback, while consistently applying these standards across all levels of the organization.
Have you created an initial and recurrent just culture learning plan for all levels of department management?
2. Promoting Continuous Improvement and Organizational Learning
At the heart of a learning culture mindset is a relentless pursuit of continuous improvement. Aviation departments must adopt an attitude that views safety-related data, incidents, and lessons learned as opportunities for growth and prevention rather than simply treating them as problems to be solved.
The challenge lies in transitioning from a reactive, compliance-driven approach to one that prioritizes proactive and data-driven decision-making. Managers must facilitate the systematic analysis of safety information, ensuring that insights are effectively translated into actionable safety enhancements. Our survey data indicates when low safety culture scores exist, the primary cause is a lack of timely and effective reporting feedback. Employee comments – collected from all six of the safety culture sub-dimensions - stated their managers failed to make the time and effort to visibly share how changes were made from front-line reports being submitted. This fact alone pulled trust, accountability, leadership, learning, and reporting scores lower than their peer organizations.
In the busy environment of aviation departments, the challenge arises in breaking down departmental silos and facilitating the seamless flow of safety-related information across all departments. This is seconded only by managers making the time to facilitate and maintain clear and open communication channels, ensuring that safety decisions, lessons learned, and best practices are transparently shared with the entire workforce.
Given all the new technology and reporting applications, personalized and timely feedback loops remain paramount in changing your safety culture. A proactive SMS is not a “top-down” system but a “middle-out” system that maintains the continuous exchange of safety-related information. This approach fosters two-way communication, learning, and a collaborative learning environment where all levels of the organization contribute to the management safety process.
Can each leader and manager speak first-hand about the findings and resolutions of current safety report submissions for all first-level / front-line employees?
Can each manager speak about how each employee’s safety actions contribute to the organization?
What SMS and safety management reporting performance metrics are reported daily on your safety assurance dashboard? How are these targets and objectives integrated into your management teams’ annual performance reviews?
3. Improving Collaboration
As stated, the success of a learning-culture mindset hinges on the ability of aviation department management to foster effective communication and collaboration among all stakeholders. From the frontline employees to the executive leadership, everyone must be aligned with the safety vision and empowered to contribute to its realization.
Moreover, cross-departmental collaboration is crucial in cultivating a learning-culture mindset. By encouraging sharing of safety-related experiences and the collective problem-solving of challenges, the department can leverage diverse perspectives and expertise to drive continuous improvement.
Our safety culture data is sorted by work role, location, and employee demographics. When there were statistically significant score differences between work roles and/or locations, respondents commented about their lack of feedback on reports, ineffective change management, lack of understanding of their issues, and low leadership trust scores.
To address this challenge, aviation department managers must prioritize the implementation of cross-functional collaboration platforms. These can take the form of more frequent and pertinent safety meetings, daily/weekly safety action groups, digital collaboration, and meeting tools to address front-line team scheduling and location challenges.
How does the management team foster learning in collaboration meetings? Is the leadership team trained in and continually practices humble inquiry as a key element continuously improving the company’s safety leadership culture?
Does your company’s vision and values include a specific tenant on resiliency through continuous organizational learning?
If you want to nurture and grow an employee learning mindset within your SMS, give timely and constructive feedback, showcase continual learning through cross-functional safety action groups, and build a resilient knowledge base managing a middle-out SMS.
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