18 SAFETY UPDATE
GROUND HANDLING INTERNATIONAL JUNE 2013 A bit of culture Neale Millett of the Wright Stuff takes a stroll along the ramp…
o, I don’t mean going to the opera! Once again the Editor, in his wisdom, has given me
free rein to have a rant about safety in this esteemed magazine. That may sound good on the face of it but in which direction should I head? Ground damage has always been a high profi le subject as anyone who is a regular reader will know, and will be the focus of the upcoming meeting organised by the publisher, Tim, so I guess that’s as good a subject as any. One problem has always been that of identifying the actual cost of ground damage to the industry and estimates vary depending on the organisation publishing the facts. Whatever the fi gure is, we all know it runs into billions of dollars, a fi gure the industry is struggling to control. Various alphabet soup organisations, such as IATA, ASA and FSF have tried over the years but have always been hampered by a lack of information sharing on behalf of the main players. Nobody wants to admit their mistakes! As I’ve said before, complacency
also affects the way the problem is approached. Ask any senior manager or director about their safety record and they will assure you that they are doing everything they can and that they are “satisfi ed” with the safety fi gures for their organisation. But how can anybody
really be “satisfi ed” if ground damage is still occurring in their company? Surely what they should be saying is: “We’ve a reasonable safety record but are still striving to improve.” The requirement for the industry to
introduce Safety Management Systems has forced everybody in the industry to look deeper into their safety record but is the ongoing maintenance of such a system as high a priority as it should be? If you applaud and set aside those companies that have a successful and continuing SMS in place, from recent experience, there seem to be two distinct paths being followed by the rest of the industry.
The divergence
Path one is the lip service, or paper exercise approach. The SMS is in place and, when it comes the time for an audit, all the paperwork is impressively in place but the actual implementation is patchy, to say the least. The senior management does not put the correct amount of effort into the system or follow up on the continuous improvement demanded. Net result? That of “satisfaction”. The second way, and probably more
controversial, is the establishment of an overbearing and dictatorial safety
department who become the bane of everybody’s life by nit picking the slightest minor fault or infringement. They generate reams of paper for trivial details and in doing so manage to alienate the very people with whom they are trying to work. We hear a lot about the need to
create a safety culture within the company and without it, the best SMS will fail. Now I’m no psychologist, I’m just an old, hairy-tailed ramp tramp, but it seems to me that this is the most diffi cult process in the success of an SMS and, ultimately, reducing the occurrence of ground damage. We’re told that the safety culture must start at the top and that is beyond doubt. Without the support of all levels of management, the company culture will not change - but I also feel that is not enough. Human Resources, or whatever is the
current fancy name for what I used to call Personnel, must be one of the fi rst links in the chain. The selection of the right staff to work on the ramp is an important factor in ensuring the safety culture has a good foundation. Follow this up with a focus on safety during induction and training so that, from the very start, the ramp worker is aware of his or her responsibilities within the organisation. I know the attitude is to keep the induction to a minimum and then get them working but when was the last time you reviewed induction training for safety content? I’ve said before in these pages that the team leader or supervisor is one of the most vital elements in ensuring that safety and the associated culture is maintained. Just because a ramp worker is very good at his job does not always mean they will be a good supervisor. I believe the 80/20 rule works here, as in most other walks of life. For those unfamiliar with the concept, it says that 10% of people can do a particular thing naturally, 80% can be taught whilst 10% will never manage to do a task as long as they have holes in their noses. I’ve seen it myself: a good worker is
Sights like this are not in anyone’s best interest - so what are you doing to avoid this type of incident?
promoted, given little, if any, training and then fails to live up to expectations, even to the point of having to be let go. At this point the company has lost a good worker and now has to bring another supervisor up to speed. Surely it’s better to pick the right people in the fi rst place and give them appropriate training? Every ramp worker will develop bad habits. The old saying, “If you’re not learning good habits, you’ll be developing bad ones” is very true, so the company must ensure that any bad habits that a new supervisor brings with him must be identifi ed and rectifi ed. Now comes the tricky part, namely how to
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