This section holds all the defined Roles and Groups that are required to be fulfilled within an organisation to support the implementation of the Safety Management System.
Introduction
The following information is included:
- Role Summaries
- Safety Committees and Groups Structure and Terms of Reference
- Management of Employee Competence in SMS
What is a Role?
A Role is different to a Job. A Role can be seen as one or more activities that you are required to conduct as part of your job, for either all your time or part of your time. For example, a single employee in your organisation may fill multiple Roles or, vice versa, multiple employees may fill the same Role. The Roles are formally defined within the organisational processes. The links between Roles and Processes is described in each Role page. Think of Roles as a flexible way to allocate tasks to employees – this is important in organisations wishing to follow a Process Approach as outlined in ISO9001: 2015.
What is a Group?
A Group, also referred to as a Committee, is a formal meeting of management and / or general staff to provide oversight and decision making for safety or a specific element of the safety management system. Groups are also an important part of how Managers with safety accountabilities can demonstrate they are discharging the accountabilities appropriately.
Accountable Executive
Accountable Manager
Action Owner
Audit Manager
Audit Sponsor
Auditee
Auditor
Change Owner
Change Safety Specialist
Corporate Communication Focal Point
Designated Post-Holder
Employee
Independent Safety Adviser
Just Culture Peer Group Lead
Lead Investigator
Lifecycle Activity Manager
Notifier
Safety Competency Assessor
Safety Impact Assessor
Safety Improvement Coordinator
Safety Manager
Safety Performance Analyst
Safety Performance Coordinator
Safety Promotion Specialist
Safety Risk Assessor
Safety Risk Owner
Service Safety Specialist
SMS Coordinator
Strategic Safety Improvement Coordinator
Supervisor
System/Human Performance Specialist
Safety Committees and Groups Structure and Terms of Reference
The organisation has a set of Safety Committees and Groups to support the implementation and on-going oversight of safety management. The Committee and Group structure (shown in Figure below) has been organised to ensure safety is managed collectively at different levels of the organisation. This includes frontline management of day-to day safety issues, up to strategic safety planning at the Board level.
The Terms of Reference are structured using the SMS Core Objectives; ensuring that the systematic approach to safety management is reflected also in the responsibilities of each of the groups. The Terms of Reference for each group can be accessed below:
Board Safety Committee
Executive Safety Committee
Service Safety Action Group
Local Action Group
Just Culture Peer Group
Multi-Organisation Safety Group
Management of Employee Competence in SMS
To ensure the organisation meets its Safety Objective relating to competency, the organisation has a Competency Framework for Safety Management to ensure that all employees who hold SMS Roles that require a formal competence are training and supported and the competency assessed. The Competency Framework for Safety Management is defined here:
The assessment of competency is managed by the Assess Competency of Safety Personnel Process.
To support the Framework an SMS Learning Catalogue provides guidance on the learning activities available to support competency. Learning activities can include classroom training, computer based training, self-learning or on-the-job training. The SMS Learning and Development Catalogue is documented here:
