Eleven months ago, as the COVID pandemic took grip, business and general aviation, like many industries, had to adapt quickly. As an industry, we are used to change, and the flexibility that we offer our customers is a huge part of our industry’s value proposition. However, although we may be good at schedule changes, shift changes, work order changes and more, how do we react to and deal with changes in human behavior?
The challenges we face today as we punch out of this pandemic are different to those a year ago. At the start of COVID, we called on the need for compassionate and empathetic leadership, over-communication and honesty. As we weathered the pandemic, we as a workforce and as individuals changed. These changes, whether psychological, cognitive or physical cannot be ignored or forgotten. We can’t just pick up and continue where we left off without exploring these human factors and their impact on our operation’s safety and service. To do so could have detrimental consequences. No matter what impact the pandemic had on your operation, your customers, partners and team members have been impacted in some way and sensitivity and awareness of these changes and a strategy to mitigate them is necessary for safety and success.
There are challenges that we need to be aware of and strategize how to mitigate. Have you updated your SMS to reflect these?
Organizational Changes and Workforce Competency
During the pandemic, many companies made deliberate organization changes to limit unnecessary human interaction, including elimination of shift overlaps, reduced hours, adding remote working, creation of employee bubbles and so on. Some organizations even furloughed or laid off team members. To operate safely and provide exceptional service to our customers, we each have certain skills and competencies. Returning to normal capacity and operation is not necessarily straightforward. We need to pay attention to the possibility that routine tasks could now be unfamiliar and could degrade safety or service. For example, if for six or more months a line technician has not towed an aircraft, it would be prudent to take this cautiously and have at least one dry run. Trouble shooting and solving mechanical problems in-particular become tricky when you have been out of the loop or are unfamiliar with the history of an on-going issue. To mitigate potential competency concerns, some operations have flown check flights every month or so to ensure air and ground crews remain familiar with routine operations, as well as checking functionality of all systems. Although, functional check flights and simulations help keep these routine operations familiar, we must remain alert and aware that a return to normal operations will increase time pressure, distractions and workload for the whole team and increase the vulnerability to errors and deviations.
Mental Health, Well Being and Difficult Conversations
Although job competency and cognitive skills are a concern as we punch out of the pandemic, these can be taught and re-learned quickly. However, we can’t ignore the fact that people have become very polarized in opinions, beliefs and values during the last 12 months.
Bonding with your team, trust, compassion and credibility come from time together — water cooler chats, shared experiences, social interaction and just getting the job done. With physical distancing and lack of interaction, this common ground may have been lost and instead we may become more focused on our differences.
As we bounce back and operations pick up, the majority of people in our industry are anxious to get back to work. However, each person’s approach to returning to "normal" may differ. Some may have a fearless cowboy attitude, be keen to hug everyone or may even talk COVID down and call it over-hyped. On the contrary, others may be very cautious, wanting to keep their distance from team members or may still be mourning loved ones lost to the illness. Some may even carry a level of resentment if they had to continue to work on site while others were able to work remotely. These extremes are very real and a team which was close and high performing prior to the pandemic may struggle to return to that relationship level. In fact, I heard this week about a flight attendant whose operation just started back up and who is now refusing to fly with a particular crew because she finds their pandemic and political cockpit talk offensive and converse to her values.
These divides are a real concern, can have a significant impact on operational safety and cannot be ignored. Leaders need to have honest, transparent conversations with clear expectations and guidelines, while fostering a psychologically safe work environment.
No doubt a difficult conversation which many leaders are having today surrounds the COVID vaccine. Many organizations are stipulating requirements that all employees must be vaccinated. Telling your employees “if you want to work here, you must get the vaccine” is going to be difficult. Being prepared for rebuttal and having some solid explanation based around facts could make that dialogue easier.
Keeping emotion out of our jobs is challenging right now, but staying professional, serving our customers and keeping them safe is paramount through these demanding times.
Karen Davies has been with ServiceElements for six years and has more than 25 years of diverse aviation experience, including scheduling for a Part 91 flight department and customer service within a repair and overhaul facility. She has served on the NBAA Schedulers and Dispatchers Committee, holds an Aircraft Dispatcher License, is a Certified Aviation Manager and a Certified Coach and has a Masters in Project Management.
