part of our safety culture. Every member of the team participates in safety discussions and collaborative learning. Throughout the year, we reinforce the concepts discussed with messaging, coaching, and skill develop- ment. Through feedback loops in our Aviation Safety Action Program (ASAP) and active evaluation of results and process gaps, we constantly refine and improve. When a company does not communicate where roles and responsibilities begin and end, there is inevitable confusion, overlap, or gaps. That’s why it is crucial to delineate roles and responsibilities in a clear and mea- surable manner. At Jet Linx, every employee signs the safety policy. Each team member receives a facilitated discussion about their role in the Safety Management System (SMS). Their voluntary signature is an annual recommit- ment to our team and to being an active contributor to the safety culture. We culminate that acknowledgement with a review of our performance principles of selfless- ness, dedication, enthusiasm, integrity, and compassion (our “Supply the High-5” core values). Each new team member adds a handprint (literally) on our High-5 wall, affirming their commitment to our principles and safety culture. We also ensure our leaders understand that a safety culture based on punishment and fear of consequences will drive employee reporting underground, break- ing apart the intertwinement of safety and operations. A punitive approach to managing errors can appear swift, showing quick “results.” But, this approach is as erroneous as demanding compliance and simply expect- ing it to take hold. Both methods are short-sighted and demotivating to employees. At Jet Linx, we firmly believe that every employee wants to create value. We owe it to our team to maintain a respectful, continuous learning approach to everything we do. To keep our checks and balances as simple as possi- ble, we use the mantra “pause, plan, and proceed”—both tactically and systemically. In day-to-day operations, if something falls outside the normal span of guidance or results for a process, then we encourage employees to pause the operation, team with others to plan the next step, and proceed. By using “pause, plan, proceed,” we empower employees to keep safety and operations Aviation Business Journal | Spring 2020 intertwined. From a sys- tem standpoint, when unusual events occur, we ask employees to document it in a hazard or ASAP report. The appropriate stakeholders/leaders then have to apply the same concept; completing a root cause analysis on the event, determining what didn’t work as planned, and why not. In our evaluation, we begin with system processes, not with the individual. When a revision is warranted, we implement. This methodology again rein- forces the culture of intertwined operations and safety. Tying it all together is important—our Operations Directors work tirelessly to refine and improve opera- tions; we continue to scale-up on SMS and address issues at the system level. In daily huddles at all levels and in all departments, we discuss hazard assessment and management. We document department processes so we can refine them for consistency—this is LEAN management in action (delivering value, while eliminat- ing waste and continuously improving), which is another topic for a future journal article! Jet Linx also recognizes the effort of our employees and values their feedback. We use safety feedback from ASAP and hazard reporting to evaluate our actions. Team members are recognized for ‘Supplying the High’ each week. And, we provide every ASAP report submit- ter with lessons learned and actions taken from their submission. We also offer recognition to every pilot that initiates a go-around from an unstable approach and recently launched a program to celebrate crews for exceptional airmanship in unusual situations. We actively recognize employees and reward behavior that exemplifies—and elevates—our culture. In September 2019, we initiated our private aviation Safety Symposium, a focused working group that meets quarterly to tackle specific issues facing our industry, such as fatigue, SMS scaling, outsourcing, etc. Where big industry safety meetings are valuable on a macro- level, our initiative is focused on conversations between companies in the charter operations space to collectively standardize and advance safety on a micro-level. It effec- tively supplements the industry symposium concepts. We learn from each other, work together on issues, and Continued on page 72 71
