Safety Promotion
Liberty University
AVIA 409 - Safety Management Systems
Professor: Andrew Walton
2022
Definition
Safety promotion — Means, processes and procedures that ensure that aviation personnel are
trained and competent to perform their safety management duties, and are prepared for effective two-
way communication of safety issues between operational personnel and the organisation’s
management. The primary source for this article is International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) Doc
9859 — Safety Management Manual, Fourth Edition (2018).
A safety promotion programme at the State level, for example, provides safety risk controls as
valuable as those found in airworthiness directives; oversight and monitoring of aviation service
providers; amendments to certification; rule making or safety policies; and facilitating regional or
national workshops focused on lessons learned.
Safety culture — According to Doc 9859, positive safety cultures develop from a basic idea: “When
visibly supported by upper- and middle management, frontline employees tend to feel a sense of shared
responsibilities towards achieving their safety objectives.”
Objective
ICAO Doc 9859 states, “Safety promotion plays a supporting, yet important, role in achieving
effective control of safety risks during service delivery. … Once employees embrace and understand
their responsibilities towards safety performance, it is expected they will actively seek means and
information that can be used for effectively accomplishing their responsibilities towards a safe aviation.”
Routine peer-to-peer communication among States and aviation service providers is essential to
enhance the aviation industry’s safety culture, increase awareness of safety issues and encourage
collaboration that helps to identify and implement safety-enhancement initiatives.
Description
Safety promotion, at its best, instills a will to do the right thing at the right time in response to
normal and emergency situations in aviation. It’s now a major component of safety management
system (SMS) initiatives worldwide. Safety promotion builds upon two operational components of SMS:
[management] and safety assurance. Synchronising the three focus areas helps aviation stakeholders to
control latent and operational risks, and maintain proper balance between production and protection.
Safety promotion supports safety culture communication and safety lesson dissemination, and
enables the continuous improvement process. The safety promotion requirements apply not only to
aviation service provider organisations but also to States. In fact, safety promotion is identified as one of
the four components of ICAO’s State Safety Programme (SSP). (The other components are State safety
policy, objectives and resources; State safety risk management; and State safety assurance.)
Doc 9859 also links safety promotion to ICAO’s safety performance management process, safety
data collection and processing systems (SDCPS) and safety analysis. Decisions generated by safety
analysis, for example, should be communicated to all personnel at an aviation service provider to keep
them informed of safety improvements and to continually enhance the organisational knowledge base.
According to terminology in ICAO Doc 9859, the SMS framework and safety promotion share two
conceptual elements:
Training and education; and,
Safety communication.
Twenty years ago, EUROCONTROL's ESARR 3 set similar safety promotion requirements for air traffic
service providers (ANSPs) regarding air traffic management (ATM). These requirements defined a slightly
different scope, addressing:
Safety lesson dissemination; and,
Safety improvement.
ESARR 3 described competency-related requirements similar to those in the safety
achievement domain of SMS. ESARR 3 said air navigation service providers (ANSPs) and air traffic
management (ATM) “shall ensure that staff are adequately trained, motivated and competent for the
job they are required to do, in addition to being properly licensed if so required.”
Notably, ICAO Doc 9859 recommends, “Safety promotion activities should be carried out
throughout the life cycle of the SMS, not only at the beginning.” Another practice strongly endorsed by
ICAO is creating a communication plan. A typical plan — at a minimum — maps high-priority interests
and risks of aviation stakeholder groups, targets messages, selects optimal media/channels and
measures effectiveness.
ICAO Doc 9859 also acknowledges the professional value of social media, adding, “Some [types of]
information can be communicated through less formal bulletins and posts using social media, while
others are better addressed in dedicated meetings or seminars.”
Training and Education
ICAO requires aviation service providers “to develop and maintain a safety training programme that
ensures that personnel are trained and competent to perform their SMS duties.” Training programmes
should be adapted to fit the needs and complexity of the organisation.
The scope of the safety training shall be appropriate to each individual’s involvement in the SMS.
The provision of appropriate training to all staff, regardless of their level in the organisation, is an
indication of management’s commitment to an effective SMS. The quality and effectiveness of training
have a significant influence on the attitude and actual performance — the “professionalism” that the
employees will subsequently demonstrate in their everyday work.
ICAO embraces positive safety culture as superior to outdated management philosophies, noting,
“Effective safety management cannot be achieved solely by mandate or strict adherence to policies and
procedures.”
Doc 9859 lists the following topics as essential for organisations’ accountable executives and senior
managers to fulfill their safety training responsibilities:
“Specific awareness training for new accountable executives and post holders on their SMS
accountabilities and responsibilities;
Importance of compliance with national and organisational safety requirements;
Management commitment;
Allocation of resources;
Promotion of the safety policy and the SMS;
Promotion of a positive safety culture;
Effective interdepartmental safety communication;
Safety objective, safety performance targets (SPTs) and alert levels; and,
Disciplinary policy.”
Initial and recurrent training for the individual employee’s role in SMS, as recommended by ICAO, should
include the following competency-related subjects to maintain their proficiency in safety promotion
tasks:
“Organisational safety policies and safety objectives;
Organisational roles and responsibilities related to safety;
Basic safety risk management (SRM) principles;
Safety reporting systems;
The organization’s SMS processes and procedures; and,
Human factors.”
Safety Communication
Like State authorities, non-governmental aviation service providers should develop and maintain formal
programmes for safety communication. Programmes should include continuous safety-improvement
feedback loops. Specifically, ICAO Doc 9859 recommends that organisations aim to:
“Ensure that staff are fully aware of the SMS [and promoting] safety policy and safety objectives;
Convey safety-critical information;
Raise awareness of new safety risk controls and corrective actions;
Provide information on new or amended safety procedures;
Promote a positive safety culture and encourage personnel to identify and report hazards; and,
Provide feedback to personnel … submitting safety reports on what actions have been taken to
address any concerns identified.”
Finally, safety lesson dissemination remains a vital part of reducing aviation risk. Often, lesson
dissemination closely complements safety training. As the ICAO document reiterates, “The safety
manager should also ensure that lessons learned from investigations and case histories or experiences,
both internally and from other organizations, are distributed widely.”
Without this practice, safety lessons either are not learnt or they become lost. Passage of time, distance
from the event, changes of operational environment and subconscious drift toward complacency are
among many human factors known to adversely affect aviation risk management.
