Just Culture Implementation Roadmap
A Just Culture supports learning from all safety events in order to improve the level of safety awareness through improved recognition of safety situations and helps develop conscious articulation and sharing of safety information.
As such, Vietnam Airlines’ Just Culture implementation roadmap can be simplified as the following model:
Potential obstacles to achieving a Just Culture at Vietnam Airlines can be explored to be as follows:
- Legal aspects: for Vietnam Airlines, one of the main challenges of developing a Just Culture will be to change the legislation, especially because the changes are counter to societal expectations.
- Internal resistance: as one of the most senior and largest organisation in Vietnam, VNA will experience difficulties persuading senior management of the need for creating a Just Culture and to commit adequate resources. The CEO has also shared his acknowledgement of potential resistance within Vietnam Airlines, further commenting that these individuals also tend to be the‘smart’ ones.
- Choosing the right reporting system: Due to the low current number of reports across the organisation, Vietnam Airlines may need to survey the needs of potential users to better understand which reporting method would be best accepted. A system that is unclear could create distrust in the system, and the procedures to decide culpability must be clear and understood by all.
- Determining ‘champions’: this requires conscious and real commitment from Vietnam Airlines’ management and staff, as having sufficient resources and having the right people – who are well liked, well known and respected in the company – may prove to be difficult.
- Designing the perfect reporting form: Each organisation has their own way to collect information. Reporting forms which may be standardised among other airlines may not the best fit for Vietnam Airlines. It is important that reporting forms are kept simple, but with enough detail that useful analysis can be applied.
- Education of users and implementating the system: Every employee must be trained sufficiently on the reporting scheme and how to submit a report. This may be difficult in a large organisation with many subsidiaries like Vietnam Airlines, where information about the system may not be disseminated to a wide enough audience and a deep enough level within the organisation.
- Maintaining the ‘Culture’: Since trust between employees and managers must genuinely exist for reporting system to work, Just Culture must be open and people must feel able to trust the system. It takes time and persistence to try and change safety attitudes, and maintaining motivation throughout the organisation can be a challenge. CEO Thanh has already projected this to be a 10 year endeavour, not a short term issue.