Monitoring Safety

Performance Workflow
in Aviation SMS Programs

A guide for what and how to track

employee and company safety performance
 Safety Performance Workflow
Know what you need before getting
Prerequisites started

Choose Choose which safety data you want to

and are able to track
Safety Data
Track your chosen data metrics so that you
Gather Data can compile them at any time

Put employee data into perspective

“Normalize” Data by establishing reference points for your
metrics
Meaningful Integrate employee data into a
report that is easily understandable
Reports and meaningful

Organizational The total/average performance metrics of

all employees is your overall SMS performance
Performance (which can be compared to other organizations)
 Approaching Safety Performance
Tracking safety performance for individual employees has additional
benefits of also tracking the cumulative performance of all employees,
and your organization’s SMS program as a whole.
Before you get started, there are 5 prerequisites that need to be
addressed and/or understood.

What data you are already tracking in your

1 ogranization

What data your organization has the means to track,

2 either manually or with software

Why each tracked metric is important for safety

3 performance in your organization (justification)

Your safety data will only be as reliable and

4 sophisticated as your SMS program (implementation)

Safety performance data should mostly consist of

5 the quantitative type - it should be “trackable”
 Choose Safety Data to Track
Next, relevant safety data needs to be chosen. Obviously, the more
tracked data you have, the clearer you can assess employee
safety performances. Of course, to manage more data you will need
reliable means to efficiently and quickly acquire it.
Here are some examples of important safety performance behavior
that you should consider:
How many reported issues since last review
Average number of hazard reports submitted per month per employee

Number of safety suggestions made since last review

How many times employee was identified in a hazard report (positive or negative)
How many safety meetings attended (out of total relevant meetings)
How many training courses attended since last review
How many training courses completed out of total relevant courses
Competency of test scores (i.e. at end of training)
On-time CPA task completion vs total assigned CPAs
Average CPA performance rating
Inspection results associated with employee’s duty/responsibility
[For Managers] Number issues closed on time vs. total issues
 Track/Gather Safety Data
Once you choose which safety metrics you will be tracking, you
will need to regularly and efficiently monitor it.
Obviously, to do this you will need:
A professionally designed database, because some metrics
will require complex interactions that are only achieved
by a well-designed database;

Integrated software solution to track metrics in real time, as

point-solutions (different software for different tasks) require
manual work that is simply impossible for complex metrics;

To omit metrics from particular employees when that metric

is not pertinent to their position. This way, when you review
performance you aren’t reviewing irrelevant information.
 Normalize Data
Normalizing data is “making sense” of it by giving it a reference
point. In other words, if you analyze an employee’s performance data,
but don’t have anything to compare it to, you have little way of
knowing if whether what you are looking at is good or bad.
Here are several ways of normalizing employee safety metrics:
Vs. Company Averages
Comparing metrics against company averages will establish how
an employee ranks in your organization for each piece of data
Vs. Other Organizations’ Averages
If you have access to other organizations’ safety data, you can
easily establish how an employee stacks up against industry averages
Vs. Company Goals
Especially for newer/smaller SMS programs, comparing metrics to
goals is a great baseline “are they doing what they are supposed to.”

Inter-Data Relationships
Analyze metrics together to establish the validity of each metric. (e.g.
an employee may have attended training but received poor competency scores)

Metrics Over Time Period

Seeing a metric over time helps you establish recent/historical trends.
(e.g. number of monthly hazard reports submitted each month for last year)
 Create Meaning Reports
Performance reports need to contain meaningful metrics. If reports
don’t contain meaningful data, employees won’t:
understand metrics
see the value of the metrics
appreciate metrics as a part of their overall performance
Most importantly, these reports will not change safety behavior.

Use things like charts and graphs to visualize the data. This is easier to
comprehend and makes a greater impression than strictly numbers

Make sure to include company averages with all data. Knowing their
position in the organization’s “safety order” can give incentive to
improve performance

Mix in safety performance metrics with other, non-safety performance

metrics. This will impress upon employees that safety performance
is not a “separate (i.e. less important) thing.”
 Understand Company Performance
A fantastic benefit of monitoring employee safety performance
with safety data is that when you analyze the totals
and/or average for all employees’ safety metrics, you immediately
understand the overall safety performance of your SMS program.
Equipped with such valuable information, four things you should
do are:

Track key company metrics over Compare metrics to other

time, as they may organizations (if available)
be leading indicators and/or key or against industry averages
performance indicators (if available)

Revise your organization’s Use data to demonstrate safety

safety goals and objectives assurance activities and
continuous imrovement