Description of Job Responsibilities
Introduction
Many elements of a formal safety management system revolve around communication of policy and procedures. Communication across all levels of an organization is important. Posting the job description and responsibilities of key safety personnel is a great way to communicate the duties and responsibilities of all stakeholders. A best practices is to include employee safety accountabilities and safety responsibilities in each employee's full job description.
In addition, an SMS manual is the natural location to list employees' safety accountabilities.
Related Articles on Aviation SMS Manuals
Purpose of Posting Job Responsibilities
Posting job responsibilities in an easily accessible place, such as your Web based aviation safety management location ensures employees and other stakeholders understand what is expected of them. Everyone can also see what are the duties and requirements of managers. Why is this important? Communicating the job responsibilities to everyone helps diminish confusion arising when conflicting employees don't understand the authority, responsibility and expectations of the employee positions within the airport or airline. Managers may also use these items to assist in annual employee assessments.
Posting your safety job descriptions and responsibilities in your Web based aviation safety management software allows employees to reference this information in one centralized location. SMS Pro has a "Duties & Requirements of Key Safety Personnel" module for this purpose.
What are Job Responsibilities
Job responsibilities outline the authority, responsibility and expectations of all stakeholders. When creating your job descriptions of key safety personnel, managers often overlook the authority element. To be complete, for each job description, we recommend using a template for job descriptions and responsibilities. Whichever template you choose, ensure that the authority element is present.
Why Post Job Descriptions and Responsibilities
As an organization grows, the duties and responsibilities of employees and managers often overlap. When employees change job positions within the airline or airport, they are often tasked with additional responsibilities and may no longer have authority over certain areas previously under their control. Furthermore, not everyone may remember the authority and expectations a particular manager may have. When uncertainty exists, employees and managers can easily refer to the posted job descriptions.
Another great reason for posting job descriptions and responsibilities is to ensure employees understand what is expected of them. You can use these postings for routine employee reviews or assessments.
Who Prepares Job Descriptions and Responsibilities
Job descriptions can be prepared by anyone, but must be accepted and signed off by top management. Who drafts the job description and responsibilities is normally dependent on the position and the ultimate authority and expectations of the position involved. Higher levels in the position of the organization chart are normally supervised by the accountable executive, therefore, it naturally makes sense that the accountable executive is personally responsible in the acceptance of the job description, responsibilities and authority.
Descriptions and responsibilities for positions lower in the organizational chart are routinely prepared by staff managers or department heads.
How are Job Descriptions and Responsibilities Prepared?
Unless your position is highly unique, we recommend finding an online template to get you started on writing new job descriptions and responsibilities. If you already have a job description or template that almost matches the position in question, don't re-invent the wheel. Use the sample job description and tailor it to suite your airline or airport.
Online job posting sites commonly have very detailed job descriptions. They usually lack the "authority" and "expectations" elements, so don't forget to add these sections to your job descriptions drafts.
When are Job Descriptions and Responsibilities Posted?
The easiest answer to this question is: "whenever you advertise for a new employee." Hiring time remains the ideal time to either review your earlier job descriptions and responsibilities postings or to create new ones. Of course, when you have these posting in a "company public" location, they become available to all managers when hiring or reviewing employee progress.
Job Duties & Responsibilities in SMS Pro
Another requirement for an effective aviation SMS program is to communicate the job description and duties of key safety personnel. This element is a requirement and operators typically communicate the job descriptions and duties in their aviation safety manual.
SMS Pro™ puts the description of job duties and requirements in a module called "Duties and Responsibilities of Key Safety Personnel," or "Duties & Requirements" for short. Duties & Requirements allows operators to communicate clearly to stakeholders the key safety personnel SMS duties and requirements. This is not a difficult task for medium to large size operators because the description of job responsibilities is often in the job announcements.
Key personnel are employees who fill top management positions. They make significant contributions to decisions about company direction, provide leadership to employees, and provide expertise in their assigned positions.
As part of the management team, key personnel are responsible for participating in management meetings and often participate in Safety Committee meetings. They share feedback from operations within their expertise, often providing reports and statistics to the management team. By contributing ideas, they help formulate company goals and objectives, not only about safety, but often other key operational aspects as well.
Assigned to a top-level position in their field of expertise (such as CEO, CFO, or general manager), key safety personnel usually have authority to influence company operations.
Managers may also use this module as a training tool, requiring SMS Pro users to periodically review their duties and responsibilities, and sign off that they have reviewed. Managers can set a configurable time period for how often employees are required to do this.
SMS Pro Duties & Requirements module provides a mechanism to communicate the duties and requirements of key SMS personnel to stakeholders using the Web based safety software. Furthermore, by openly displaying the duties and requirements of key SMS personnel in SMS Pro, this information is made available to the entire organization and if desired, external stakeholders. This leaves no ambiguity as to what role assigned officers play in the organization's SMS program.
This module may be extended beyond SMS, such as QMS (Quality Management System) or security and compliance. The interface to manage the description of job responsibilities is almost identical to Policies and Procedures safety module. However, there are neither mechanisms to require periodic review nor an audit trail for this module.
More Information
Gain Operators Flight Safety Handbook 2001 (very good)