I gave a presentation to aviators recently which was about improving aviation safety and productivity generally.
Included in my talk was a short session about managing risks in the aviation industry. Many of the audience, immediately recognized and associated my comments with aviation safety, however as I progressed, I hope it became evident that safety and business risks are intertwined. In other words one may impact upon the other. In my experience mitigating strategies for safety and business risks which are not complementary may be ineffectual or at worst exacerbate the other risk.
The presentation moved to discuss the importance of effective and efficient mitigators to treat the risks. During this session, I introduced the concept of a treatment adding safety or business value. In the safety context, if the mitigator does not add safety value it probably will not treat the risk.
From this, a discussion ensued which started to examine the “things” in the system of civil aviation which do not add safety value. I suppose that we could have had the same discussion about “things” which do not add business value. These ranged from “things” Governments do, “things” the regulator does, “things” operators do, and finally, “things” we do. The audience agreed that if we were doing things to achieve safe outcomes which did not add safety value we were wasting resource and maybe even compromising safety.
In my experience every organization, even those with the best of intentions collects “dust”! Occasionally, Management needs to spring clean to ensure its policies, processes and work practices add value; be it business or safety value. Importantly though, it should engage staff thoughtfully to assist in this process.
