Recurrent SMS Training Challenges Addressed
All aviation service providers must provide SMS training to all employees commensurate with the role that they play in the aviation SMS program. In most cases, employees don't play significant roles in SMS programs outside of
- Hazard identification;
- Accident and incident reporting; and
- Participating in safety promotion activities.
Initial SMS training for most employees is automated by SMS Pro using the SMS Induction Manager. Managers confirm or reject employees performance on initial SMS training. Recurring SMS training does not have to be as rigorous or time consuming as the initial SMS training. This Safety Articles Training Library allows service providers to automate the recurrent SMS training.
Main Features of Aviation Safety Training Articles Library
From an end user's perspective, the employee is simply browsing and reading educational safety training articles written by subject matter experts. There are over 300 aviation safety articles in the library and the employee can browse the articles by pre-defined categories.
As employees read the articles, the library documents the date and time that the employee first read the article. Employees only get credit for reading the article the first time, thereby avoiding duplicate articles and encouraging employees to expand their SMS training.
Managers Can Participate By Promoting Aviation Safety Articles
When a manager finds an article that particularly resonates with the company, the manager can recommend the article in a couple ways:
- Highlight the safety article to alert other company employees that this is a good article; or
- Promoting the article via the Message Board, which is SMS Pro's electronic bulletin board.
SMS Admins have the ability to hide articles that may not be relevant to their organization. For example, if there is an article relating to airport security that is not pertinent to the operation, SMS Admins can hide it from being visible to all company employees, except the administrators.
Configurable Categories of Aviation Safety Articles
This safety article training library comes pre-configured with at least eight categories pertaining to aviation safety management systems (SMS). SMS Admins can extend these categories to include security, human resources, dangerous goods handling, etc. In addition to adding additional categories, managers can add educational training articles from other sources. All they need is:
- Article title;
- Short description; and
- URL to the safety article.
Reports Tracking Employee Recurrent Training Activity
One of the hardest challenges of managing employee training and qualification is to document employee training. This module not only documents employee activity, but allows managers to easy track which employees are not complying with the company policy regarding recurring SMS training.
There are two types of reports:
- User reports for the individual employee to monitor progress; and
- Company report based on the divisions
SMS Admins can configure guidelines or minimum number of safety articles that an employee must read each year. Since recurrent training requirements are typically reviewed on an annual basis, you may want employees to read one educational safety article per month. In this case, the minimum standard would be 12 articles per year.