Review: Civil Air Patrol’s Ideal Safety Culture

The basic elements that support an ideal safety culture include:

Shared core values, principles, and behaviors that connect the ideal characteristics of an ideal safety culture to an organization’s desired results.

Training and development of people at every level to convey clarity of expectations and to support them in their safety roles.

Leadership engagement and accountability to ensure values, principles, and behaviors are reinforced in communications, modeled as an important discipline, and actions are taken to address unsafe outcomes.

Consistent and reliable safety outcomes aligned and integrated with organizational goals. Safety is just one outcome among many, and all goals work together to ensure the organization can achieve its vision-mission.

• People first: care and concern for the wellbeing of people as the most important part of success
• High reliability: activities and missions are carried out with minimized exposure to unnecessary risk
• Organizational Credibility: continuous improvement allows us to cooperate with industry partners and share what works

Reporting Culture

Reporting is vital and foundational to an ideal safety culture. Encouraging consistent and continuous reporting instills trust and reduces fear of speaking up. People should have confidence that important information is both heard and acted upon. People should never be afraid to speak up – it could save a life.

The characteristics and behaviors of the ideal reporting culture include:

• Awareness of safety issues that should be reported  
• Encouragement to report safety issues 
• Positive tendency to report safety issues

Just Culture

In just culture, we treat each other fairly, and it is the opposite of blame culture. Consistently encouraging the right safety behaviors and correcting poor safety practices is the key to upholding the ideal just culture. Focusing on “who is responsible” reflects a blame culture, while working to discover underlying contributing and causal factors and correcting them reflects just culture. 

The characteristics and behaviors of an ideal just culture include:

• Understanding acceptable and unacceptable behaviors 
• Positive acknowledgement for raising safety concerns 
• Cooperating fully in safety reviews and know they will be treated fairly 
• Accountability for truly negligent actions (deliberate disregard) 

Learning Culture

In an ideal learning culture, information is shared so people can learn from their experiences and the experiences of others. Learning is also the key to continuous improvement, both personally and organizationally. Encouraging people to talk about their experiences, including what they learned from them, helps others improve their performance which also improves safety.

The characteristics and behaviors of an ideal learning culture include:

• People learn from errors and adjust behavior willingly
• People observe leaders model learning and personal accountability
• People share information about successful outcomes and learning experiences

Flexible Culture

In an ideal flexible culture, people and the organization adapt to unforeseen circumstances. No one can predict how every situation will turn out, but when people can adapt quickly, they can deal more effectively with new or changing conditions. Encouraging people to keep safety top of mind in all missions and activities and to quickly address safety concerns in the moment, helps with continuity and resilience.

The characteristics and behaviors of an ideal flexible culture include:

• People apply risk management routinely to activities of all types
• People adapt easily to changing demands and unforeseen developments
• People manage safety “obstacles” that impact operational continuity

Engaged Culture

An ideal engaged culture simply means that everyone does their part. Without every member’s participation in our safety practices, we leave gaps in the safeguards that keep people and resources safe. When everyone embraces safety as a personal value, they support the ultimate outcomes with safety integrated as a thread that weaves through all of them – not a standalone outcome that is separate or an added burden.

The key to engaged people is engaged leadership, and every member serving on a command team, or any other safety leadership role must do their part for safety to work and for these outcomes to be achieved. Let’s look now at how leaders can engage people to continue improving our ideal safety culture.

Curiosity: the willingness to learn and seek understanding by asking questions

Asking questions leads to discovering underlying factors, including what thinking and mindset led to decisions and actions which, in turn, can lead to improving knowledge of “the right things” and a corresponding change in behavior. When we aren’t curious, we miss opportunities to learn from the factors that could better protect our people and preserve our valuable resources.

Cooperation: working together to improve operational and safety outcomes 

By working together, we engage with others in ways that invite people’ perspectives and contributions, creating a sense of common purpose and aligned actions that reduce the potential for injury, illness, or damage. When member contributions are valued, personal accountability is more of the norm. When we don’t invite member cooperation, behaviors and actions may not align, resulting in breakdowns in openness and communication.

Openness: sharing information and feedback to help people grow and improve

By openly sharing information and feedback, people feel valued by CAP’s leaders which can lead to increased member satisfaction. Safety leaders who embrace openness share information that can help increase member awareness of safety issues and ways to prevent them. When withholding information or feedback, people are reluctant to engage and ask questions and may withhold relevant safety information or behave in non-ideal ways regarding safety best practices.

Reflection: Asking, “What worked? What didn’t work? What could we improve?”

Reflecting on what worked and didn’t work leads to incremental improvements that help us become more proactive, meaning we become more adept at identifying factors before they become safety occurrences. When we move from an activity or an occurrence without reflection, we miss opportunities to gather relevant information in the moment while it is as available and as accurate as possible.

Assertiveness: Confidently speaking up to address safety issues 

By speaking up when something isn’t right and not waiting for someone else to, everyone holds safety as a personal value and is willing to be accountable for upholding our ideal outcomes, of which safety is one. When we act courageously and speak up, even if it means disrupting an activity to do so, we demonstrate high integrity.

Safety performance

Improved safeguards means we reduce the potential for people to get hurt; when we educate and develop people, we reduce the chance of human error causing a mishap; and when you are vigilant and consistent in asking “What can go wrong?” (rather than “What went wrong?”) and “What can we do about it?” (rather than “How could we have prevented it?”) you are practicing proactive safety risk management

Operational Readiness

We prepare people for the inevitability of change and improve their response to change, making them more effective in their choice of action; as a result, people become more agile when facing challenges; and we reduce the rate of damage to equipment, making it more available for missions and activities.

Organizational Credibility

We reduce the costs of injury and damage, not just to CAP, but our people, our donors, our sponsors, and our partners; we maintain public trust and confidence so they will call on us to serve; and we increase our ability to sustain the service we provide with minimal interruption.

Member Wellbeing

A safe place to participate is less stressful and provides a high confidence that people can do so and still go home unharmed; and because of this, people are more apt to participate fully, learn more easily, and develop more efficiently.

Safety policy

Leadership’s commitment to safety within the organization, the regulations that define requirements within the program, and the roles and responsibilities that carry them out

Safety Risk management

The application of formal and information risk management processes for documenting hazards, assessing risk, and implementing controls

Safety Assurance

A thriving reporting culture that reports safety occurrences; a process for discovering what happened, what may have contributed, and what actions would mitigate the occurrence

Safety Promotion

Individual awards, group awards, and continuous communication of safety concerns and areas of focus

Identifying hazards

Possible sources of injury, illness, or damage

Assessing risks

Figuring out which hazard sources must be addressed to keep people and equipment as safe as reasonably possible

Developing and Implementing controls

Making sure the right tools, processes, actions, and people are in place to protect people and equipment from the sources of injury, illness, or damage

Evaluating effectiveness

Making sure the controls are working as expected, and making necessary adjustments

Safety Assurance

Report safety issues

Use the information to discover contributing and causal factors

Make changes to address those factors