Safety Performance Measures Continued from page 53 Performance isn’t Permanent Whatever SPIs and SPTs you choose, please don’t etch them into stone tablets. While your safety vision is enduring, your organizational safety objections should change—and relatively frequently. The SPIs and SPTs that help track progress toward objectives should like- wise shift over time, so you may consider including them in your manuals only by reference or as an appendix to give you the flexibility you need without requiring manual updates. However you record your SPIs and SPTs, make sure they are not only available, but also that your team has an understanding of how they work—and their role in achieving safety objectives. Victor Rodriguez, the FBO Safety and Training Coordinator for Meridian in Teterboro stresses that effective SPIs should strive for simplicity, “but they need to be relatable; for instance, we were able to quickly implement short-term SPIs to track our performance on aircraft cleaning and hygiene during the COVID-19 crisis we’re all going through.” That focus on relevance means that SPIs and SPTs—and the safety objectives they sup- port—need to be able to react to changes in the business, no matter where they come from. Even relevant SPIs do not always work as intended, though, and Rodriguez relates an example at Meridian where a target was initially set at one hundred percent— inadvertently overlooking a few legitimate scenarios where that simply wasn’t possible. “It’s completely normal to change SPIs and SPTs, and we use our safety committee meetings to make sure that what we measure is not just applicable to the business, but important,” he said of keeping measurement a dynamic part of their risk management processes. Indicators and targets may require some revision as the organization matures as well. Tracking voluntary attendance at in-person safety meetings may be a good metric for an organization new to SMS and interested in how employees engage with new or different safety activities, but for a mature orga- nization with a strong, cultural commitment to safety performance, that measure may hold less value—at least as a primary indicator of success. No matter the sce- nario, being careful to regularly evaluate your SPIs and SPTs can help ensure they stay relevant, actionable, and appropriate to the operation. 54 The Tail Wagging the Dog We humans are particularly susceptible to confusing the thing being measured with the measurement itself, a human factors peculiarity called surrogation. You’ve no doubt seen examples in the news during recent financial crises when prominent banks and mortgage companies prioritized new account and mortgage volume over qual- ity. When there is a mismatch between the measurement and the organization’s strategy, it can be especially prone to dangerous manipulation. If a manager’s success is evaluated on the number of complaints, there may be unintended pressure to avoid complaints no matter the cost—not terribly different from rewarding a group for no incidents, and inadvertently ensuring none are reported, even when they should be. Another common example is setting a target for safety report submissions—sure, you might have more reports at the end of an effort to raise awareness, but you’re unlikely to have uncovered any more useful intelligence by pursuing a specific number. We tend to chase performance metrics where strategy is unclear, so, if you start to sense an over-focus on driving the numbers, then it may be useful to revisit your vision and objectives with clarity in mind. Better still, involve the people charged with implementing safety vision and objectives in the process of formulating strategy and objectives, and they’ll have a better chance of sticking. Integrating a Performance Focus A lot of organizations struggle at first with develop- ing and implementing safety performance metrics. It’s a daunting task—but it doesn’t have to be. Start with what matters most to your organization and ask ques- tions throughout the organization and the industry. Look for ways to answer meaningful performance questions with data you already have access to. Want to know how your reporting system is doing? We may want to com- pare reporting rates throughout different departments to identify issues of trust in the system. Take advantage of opportunities—like in the reporting system example—to tie safety to organizational vision across company siloes. Finally, keep in mind that you own these metrics—change them as you need to so that you gain the intelligence to support decisions—and don’t make chasing the numbers the goal. We’ve come a long way in understanding that Aviation Business Journal | Summer 2020
