[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on Aviation Safety Program
Around every complex operation there is a human envelope that develops, operates, maintains, interfaces, and evaluates the functioning of the sociotechnical system. The system depends on the integrity of this envelope, on its thickness and strength. Compromises to its strength and integrity uncover the system's weakness and make it vulnerable.
Accordingly, an aviation organization that nurtures this envelope will be strong. One that weakens it is asking for trouble.
Maintaining the human assets of an organization is critical to high integrity. Yet human assets are often neglected. Accident and incident reports are filled with descriptions of inadequate training, inappropriate tasking, fatigue, job-related stress, boredom, and burnout.
Big differences can be found in the approaches organizations take to their members.
Although high-integrity organizations are careful with their people, obviously many others are not. High-performance teams, for instance, are anything but passive in their attitude toward the people who are members. They show special care in hiring, in making sure their people get trained correctly, in giving personnel appropriate tasks, and in monitoring how they are doing. New members are carefully vetted and "checked out" to see what their capabilities are.
Previous training is not taken for granted. Rather, new recruits are given a variety of formal and informal tests to assess their abilities. (Lineberry C., & Carleton J. R, 1992).
Evaluating new members is not enough. Once skills have been certified, personnel have to join the team psychologically as well as legally. Aviation systems are often tightly coupled.
This means that all personnel need to be considered part of the system, because a failure by any one of them may cause grave problems. Yet often higher managers fail to secure "buy in" by the organization's less visible members. Resulting disaffection by the "invisibles" can be costly....
