Setting the tone

The problem with that view is sometimes very obvious and sometimes very subtle.

A lack of induction is likely to impact on quality control and safety management for the company. Yes, the pilot can probably do the job – but will they do it the way the company has promised its clients? Will they have the local knowledge to avoid traps? Or will you spend weeks or even months afterwards cleaning up the mess and mending fences? The real power of good induction lies in setting your expectations for all your crew – and especially new arrivals. There have been plenty of ag accidents where the pilot has said afterwards ‘I thought I was doing the right thing by the boss’ while the boss is left wondering ‘how on earth could they think they were doing the right thing when I have a damaged aircraft and all these bills?’ Expectations are critical to the way people try and do the right thing – if they are trying to make sense of how others in the team are doing their jobs they may have the wrong goalposts from the start.

Every day pilots, LAMEs, mixers and ops managers are confronted with hundreds of operational decisions critical to safety, efficiency and productivity.

A practical way of considering these decisions was coined by Erik Hollnagel, a well known safety author, who described the ‘ETTO Principle’ – the efficiencythoroughness trade-off.

Without the company clearly setting expectations people are left to work it out for themselves. Sometimes they lean towards doing things safely (ie thoroughness), sometimes they make a judgement to lean towards productivity (ie efficiency) – and sometimes they are not even aware a decision was involved.

To put it even more bluntly, money often ends up being the driving force, not safety.

All company staff need a guiding light to provide overall direction and perspective. If that is not there, you have just signed over the future of your company. If you are not providing a good induction for staff, how do they know what your expectations are? In addition to priority-setting through induction, constant reinforcement is required – from the top. Sometimes this can be as simple as giving permission to staff to be safe.

Money often ends up being the driving force, not safety.

This could take the form of a written policy that pilots’ operational decisions to treat a paddock a certain way – for example because of a rising/setting sun and glare – will always be backed by management. Or it could be behaviour of the chief pilot to take a safer option.

Even simple signage can reinforce your expectations. For example, a sign reinforcing company priorities placed near the exit to the loading pad sends a clear message about what should come first. The same applies to safety messages in the crew room.

The AAAA Aerial Application Pilots Manual reinforces the importance of expectations, with the clear priorities for every professional application pilot being safety first, quality second and productivity third – in that order, every job.

The challenge for managers is simply around the discipline of enforcing a sound induction for every staff member. You might be frantic, but still commit adequatetime to make this ‘the way we do things around here’, rather than being the amateur who just points the newly-arrived pilot at an aircraft.

Ignore the fact that induction is a critical legal responsibility for every company and every director. Forget about the importance of communicating standardised systems to new staff. Don’t worry you are missing out on important intelligence because your new staff doesn’t understand your incident reporting system.

Regardless of all those compelling reasons, there is still one over-riding reason to have and to honour a good induction system.

How do you know what culture is being introduced to your company or what expectations are being created? The mere fact of not having a formal induction for staff is a powerful message in its own right.

‘ANZAC’ Convention 2015

The AAAA and the NZAAA combined conference registration is now available from the AAAA website – www. aerialag. com. au.