Enhancing Voluntary Safety Management Systems (SMS)

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Prior to September 11, 2001, the aerial banner towing business was a weekend endeavor that brought many flying families closer together. I learned how to spell while tying on those big red letters behind my Uncle Roland’s blue and white Citabria tail dragger airplane. My favorite message was heavy for the airplane to pull, but was easy to spell. We tied on super-large letters that we pulled at a NASCAR race in Rockingham, North Carolina. It read: “NO - FOR THE THIRD TIME.” 

The first thing that I learned about being a pilot was that an airplane named Airbatic spelled backwards was capable of flying upside down. In 1976, the stick hit my seven-year-old right knee cap and the wings swapped places.

“When you’re inverted, don’t forget to push the stick toward your shoes to go up!” Roland’s loud voice was co-mingled with laughter and competing with the induced changes in angle of attack, flashing across the prop. When the old cigar butts and stale French fries hit me in the face, I was hooked.

Throughout the years, many aviation minded folks have turned their weekend traffic pattern practice into bonafide businesses.  I went from being a banner boy to earning my airplane flight instructor’s certificate and teaching in an Aeronca Champ to various members of a flying club. Later, I took my helicopter add-on rides, became a helicopter instrument flight instructor and airline transport pilot. My family opened an FAA approved, 141 helicopter school in 1998. With unbelievable dedication from the staff, the company eventually became a high-tech, aerial data collection and processing business. By 2013, we were running over a dozen aircraft under FAA Part 133 and 135. Three of these aircraft had advanced triple sensor, gyro-stabilized cameras and LiDAR systems. Other helicopters were equipped with energized work platforms and cargo hooks.

Hiring staff for the banner towing business was easy and a trip around the pattern was a paycheck. Filling vacancies in my helicopter company was more challenging, especially as we moved into the various commercial service offerings that required technical standard operating procedures (SOPs). We worked with Helicopter Association International (HAI), integrating the results of safety audits into our SOPs to develop our own Safety Management System (SMS).

An effective SMS is a tool that manages risk within an organization. An SMS identifies threats to safety that flow with the information, resources, actions and reactions within an entity and determines the best methodology to identify, react to and control risk. This should not be a simple definition, but a way of life for the organization.

I sold my company in 2014 and recently began working on my master’s degree from Embry-Riddle University (ERAU). During one of my aviation psychology courses, I realized that there were connections between general psychological theories, the SMS and human resources policies that could have detrimental impacts on SMS effectiveness. In thinking back over my human resources experiences since 1998, the pieces of the puzzle began to fit. I do not profess to be a psychologist or to have made some major discovery. The hope is that my personal serendipity will result in a discussion that is initiated within aviation circles regarding these relationships.

It is well known fact in psychological research that there are human centric biases related to hiring processes. People, even in managerial positions, tend to protect their own place in the company hierarchy, often at the expense of finding the best qualified candidates. 

A couple of years after having sold my company, I decided to go back to work. I interviewed for a vacant safety analyst position at a large aviation based company with several thousand employees. Upon arriving, I was surprised to see that the interview was to be conducted with just two people, the Safety Manager and the SMS Manager. They represented the entire safety staff.

During the first half of the interview, I don’t think I said ten words. An earful of explanations ensued regarding the planned hierarchy of the safety department, how aviation was not the basis of the company and how inter-departmental cooperation regarding safety matters had to be coaxed to prevent employee frustrations. The SMS manager admitted that he had initially set my resume aside because he thought I was “overqualified and should be out there doing something exciting.” I skipped the “antenna up” suspicions and went straight for the red flags.

Without going into too much detail, it was plainly evident that the two safety department employees had developed a subgroup with its own expectations, which likely did not represent the primary company’s norms and values. Since I was “overqualified,” both safety representatives thought it necessary to squash any prospects that I may have had for professional growth at the company by highlighting the non-aviation foundations of the firm, downplay of the importance of pilot knowledge and emphasis on the transfer of power that was to occur. I withdrew my application as soon as I arrived home.

Little did these two employees know that I was not seeking power or influence. I was just seeking an aviation position through which I could maintain my connection to aviation, especially with helicopters. I had applied for a specific employment opening that was accountable to the Safety Manager. But, because of my experience, both members of the safety department assumed that I wanted to become the Safety Manager. The well-developed hiring biases and the culture that permitted them, effectively closed the door on a well-qualified employee that would have been an asset to the overall safety of the organization. 

During the interview, I was shown how the company evaluated flight risks with specific numbered and colored scales relating to certain physiological and environmental variables. The company was dealing with process risks well, but were neglecting substantial risk mitigation tools that dealt with new employees and the hiring functions of the organization.

I am certainly not regretful about my experience with this interview. It provided me the experience that I needed to map out the relationships between hiring biases and negative impacts on the SMS. We all know that bias exists. The problem is that these potential weaknesses are not captured in most aviation SMS programs. Companies with 3,000 employees should not desire that employment decisions are made by two people, especially when those employees are members of the department hosting the vacancy.

Company leadership is ultimately responsible for establishing effective risk treatment programs. When this responsibility is not adequately fulfilled, filters must catch the mistake. Not a single International Standard for Business Aircraft Operations or other professional aviation safety audit dealt with human resources biases in the sixteen years that I owned my aviation company. Since the audits are not capturing these pitfalls, the issue is not being dealt with in SOPs and SMS programs. Can we agree that the holes are starting to line up in James Reason’s Swiss cheese?

Voluntary SMS programs are being implemented industry-wide, sometimes as an attempt to be more marketable or competitive in a certain niche. These voluntary SMS programs often overlook the importance of adequate human resource controls. To complicate matters, these voluntary SMS programs also exist within a corporate structure which permits a separation between HR and the Safety Department. 

I personally hope that aviation companies begin to address human resources practices in their SMS programs. Many books could be written on the sub-cultures, types of biases and other weaknesses that we develop as human beings. Two suggestions that I have for consideration that could act as stop gap measures until additional policies can be developed are:

1.      Require all incoming interviews to be scheduled in front of a panel comprised of representatives from every company department. Collectively develop and provide written evaluation criteria and subsequent scoring from each panel member after each session.

2.     Combine human resources and safety departments. Allowing safety departments to exist outside of human resources oversight increases the likelihood of bias errors. Human resource divisions are responsible for proper oversight, hiring and well-being of employees. HR should be directly involved in all aspects of safety systems.

I have made many mistakes with employees over the years. In looking back at those mistakes and successes, I will admit two more things. The greatest human resources success stories that our company had were the result of multi-member interview and disciplinary panels. The most pronounced HR failures of my career are those decisions that I made hastily, out of frustration and without the guidance of my staff.

As an industry, let’s start talking about aviation human resources best practices and integrating those values and procedures into our SMS development. If I could pull another banner behind the Citabria, it would read “PATCH UMBRELLA BEFORE RAIN.”

Wilson Gilliam formerly owned an aviation company in Virginia. He holds a helicopter ATP and CFII, along with single engine airplane CFI and Advanced Ground Instructor – Instrument certificates. He was a former helicopter DPE and 133, 135 Chief Pilot. He is completing his Master of Science degree in Aviation Safety at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University.