If you’ve recently developed your safety management system (SMS), the next step is to put it into practice.
To deliver safety benefits, your SMS must be used as part of daily operations and decision-making.
The following practical steps will help you move from a documented SMS to one that supports day-to-day safety management and delivers measurable safety outcomes.
1. Leadership drives SMS success
An effective SMS depends on visible leadership and ongoing commitment from the CEO, safety manager and other key personnel. They must actively promote, support and participate in the SMS as part of normal business operations.
This includes:
- The CEO demonstrating commitment to the SMS. For example, regularly reviewing SMS performance, discussing safety issues with the safety manager, chairing safety meetings and ensuring adequate safety resources are available.
- The safety manager and key personnel supporting personnel to use the SMS. For example, encouraging hazard and occurrence reporting, being approachable and ensuring all personnel understand and are confident in the organisation’s just culture policy.
- All personnel understand their SMS responsibilities. This includes reporting safety issues, participating in safety activities and raising concerns or errors without fear or blame. Personnel should be trained and confident in using the SMS.
- Regular discussion of safety objectives and performance. For example, management can demonstrate their commitment by including safety discussions in scheduled meetings, toolbox talks and hangar briefings and by communicating safety matters that are relevant to the organisation.
‘If leaders genuinely believe in and model safe behaviours, staff will immediately recognise that authenticity and respond to it.’ – Paul Daff, CEO, Royal Victorian Aero Club
2. Apply your SMS consistently and systematically
Before implementing an SMS, most organisations manage safety through informal and ad hoc actions, often reactively when safety issues arise.
An SMS provides a structured and consistent approach to managing safety. It formalises the activities you may already undertake and helps ensure safety risks are identified, assessed and managed in a planned and documented way. It also involves personnel across the organisation in monitoring safety performance and identifying opportunities for improvement.
A systematic approach relies on clearly defined:
- safety responsibilities
- hazard identification, risk assessment and risk control processes
- safety reporting, monitoring and review activities
- planned safety actions carried out consistently as described in the SMS manual.
When these processes are applied consistently, they provide reliable information about safety performance and support better decision-making. This helps the organisation identify emerging risks, address safety issues early and continually improve safety outcomes.
‘An SMS is a great way to formalise the process so that you can track, you can trend and then you can develop the procedures so that you are able to successfully mitigate any challenges that you may be facing.’ – Greg White, safety and compliance manager, Flight One Group
3. Measure and monitor safety performance
Without an SMS, organisations may view good safety performance simply as the absence of accidents. While accident and incident data is important, it does not always reveal the conditions and risks that can lead to safety events.
An SMS helps organisations identify and manage hazards before they contribute to an accident or incident through defined responsibilities, documented processes and regular safety activities.
Your SMS manual should include practical activities that are carried out consistently over time. The results provide measurable indicators of how effectively safety risks are being managed.
Examples include:
- regular safety meetings involving the CEO and key personnel to discuss reported safety issues, monitor corrective actions and review risk controls
- emergency response plan reviews and exercises to confirm emergency contacts are current and personnel understand their responsibilities during an emergency
- hazard identification activities, such as reviewing internal safety reports, assessing relevant accident investigation findings and maintaining the hazard register
- audits and assurance activities to assess compliance with the exposition and evaluate whether the SMS is operating as intended
- safety communications and staff engagement activities that share lessons learnt, discuss reported hazards and support the implementation of operational changes.
These activities should be documented in your SMS manual and conducted at intervals appropriate to your operation. Consistent application is what turns an SMS from a document into a functioning safety management system.
Start small. Learn. Improve.
SMS implementation does not have to be a major project completed in one hit.
Start with what you already do. Pick one risk. Involve the people and improve as you learn.
You are not starting from zero, and your SMS does not need to be perfect on day one. The important thing is to start using it, learn from it and keep improving it.
Still not sure where to begin?
Download Booklet 8 from the SMS resource kit. It includes guidance and practical tools for implementing, operating and continuously improving your SMS.
