One of the biggest barriers to an effective Safety Management System (SMS) depends on the willingness of the employees to engage with the organisational system and for the managers to support such a program in a positive and tolerant way.

Without the willingness to engage with the Safety Management System (SMS) the level of data capture will lead to the creation of barriers.

Full engagement by the Management Team is an essential first step on the journey and without doubt. If we are going to maintain a healthy safety management systems (SMS) we require an open process of hazard reporting which allows us to understand the exposure and to reduce the operational risk.

How we are impact the various organisational barriers is in turn impacted by cultural and other behaviours which are often routed in mistrust.

Audit Scheduling
 
An essential requirement of our audit program is to cover the entire organizational system, notionally this should be done on an annual basis, we should also be mindful that some areas may require more frequent auditing, whilst some areas may be audited on a less frequent basis.

The primary reason to perform audits is to ensure regulatory compliance with external requirements and full compliance with internal organizational requirements. The secondary reason is to enable an understanding of opportunities to seek out improvement.
 
Audits should never appear as adversarial or confrontational, rather they are a method which should be fully supported by the auditee to demonstrate compliance in all necessary areas.

Presented by www.sofemaonline.com - Raising Awareness Through Training

Rising to the challenge of mentoring a growing workforce, becomes a more difficult challenge if the management lacks the specific skill set to deliver the Competency Management processes?

What do we mean by Competence?

Essentially we are talking about the ability of the individual to perform a task or series of task with the correct attitude awareness knowledge and understanding.

All EASA approved organisations are required to demonstrate the management of competence. 
Sometimes in sufficient attention is given by the organisation to the role of managing competence within the organisation employees who lack knowledge and experience may in fact increase the likelihood of an error or mistake (the worst outcome).