Joint Effort

When I first was introduced to airline catering in 1981 until I retired in 2001, I witnessed some phenomenal changes within our company that impacted ramp safety. Management went from "my way or the highway" to a more softer manner of managing people, looking for ways to get the best from its people. This new style impacted ramp safety training and development and customers became more aware of how our ramp safety directly impacted their business. Also, the changing labor pool forced ramp training to take a closer look at how people learn.

Preventative Practices
Historically, operations looked to the past safety record for safety training direction. Management worked under the principle that the best predictor of a future event was a past act. Details were kept on accidents. Training was directed towards preventing those accidents from happening in the future. Most of the ramp audit forms reflected past problems. This type of management produced excellent training films focused on teaching new employees and existing employees how to avoid acts that had been costly to the company.

However, safety people are educated to look for the unsafe acts and unsafe conditions as well paying attention to the past accident rate. It was frustrating for our safety people at Dobbs International (now Gate Gourmet) in the 1980s to continually run into management resistance to allocate financial resources to fix an unsafe condition or unsafe act.

Towards the middle half of the 1980s, Dobbs International adopted a participative type of management style called the quality process, which looked at the cost of non-conformance and began to develop preventative measures to reduce cost. The idea of fixing something before it broke was right out of the safety textbook. This process reduced cost and streamlined many functions. A major change that continues today was the introduction of safety teams, called PRIDE teams (Personal Responsibility In Daily Effort).

Another new management practice was to install computers in the kitchens. Within hours of an incident, all the units would be alerted through the use of e-mail. Worker compensation was tracked as well as aircraft damages. These records were kept by airline and location and any manager could assess that information. Safety teams began to meet in each kitchen to talk about safety. This process encouraged employees to develop professionally to stretch their personal limits, to strive for error-free work. As more computers became available, the first-line supervisor could have direct contact with headquarter's safety. Headquarter's safety was charged with developing the training and producing the training videos. As the Safety Director for Dobbs, the quality process had taught me to think outside the box and to ask operations for their solutions to problems. Most importantly, I learned to shut up and listen. I also learned to seek forgiveness, not permission. The use of this type of autonomy as a management tool sometimes was uncomfortable, but it produced results.

Starts From The Top
One of the changes that occurred during my time in safety was that upper management began to listen. For the first time, the CEO asked what I needed to improve our safety record. One of the answers to that question was partly buried in the way we controlled the purse strings. Bridging ramps is a good example of safety equipment needed in all of the units. These are the ramps that actually act as the bridge between the aircraft and the catering truck. When visiting a unit, I would let them know of the new ramps under testing and they would be interested. The regional comptroller would see a request for ramps. The manager might be challenged by the comptroller about the need for ramps. The argument was, since there had been no bridging ramp accidents at that unit, why buy them or why buy them now? The comptroller's challenge usually made a timid manager stop the ramp order. The more aggressive manager would order them anyway or come up with creative ways to get around the "finance police." Towards the end of my safety time, I saw safety protective items, like bridging ramps, placed on the overall budget of the headquarter's safety department. Now, managers do not have to wait until there is an incident to order safety equipment. When a unit needs a bridging ramp, they simply order one.

Safety Network
When I took over the safety function there were no names of customer safety people for me to call. Slowly, this changed and I began to meet and listen to airline customers responsible for food on their aircraft. It did not take long before they would connect me with safety people in their company. Delta was the first airline to begin a safety partnership with its wing-side suppliers. Meeting quarterly, the "Under-wing Partnership Safety Leadership Team (UPSLT for short) came together and shared safety plans as well as talked about best practices. Continental started a similar team. United also understood ramp safety was an important key to their on-time performance goals and kept a close watch on what our catering safety was doing. USAirways worked closely with catering safety to help us design a safer ramp for employees on and under the bridging ramps. This cooperation between the two companies helped design a ramp that was also friendlier to all aircraft doorsills.

Catering Melting Pot
The employee base changed. In the early 1980s, California had the only catering units with ten or more cultures represented. By the middle of the 1990s, there was only one or two units that did not have ten or more cultures represented. With a larger population of employees speaking Spanish as their main language, the safety training had to be in Spanish. Some kitchens even translated some ramp training into other spoken languages. Training videos still focused on the past as unsafe acts to avoid, but the videos now included prevention of unsafe acts and conditions that lead to accidents. A video was produced as a silent movie so any culture in the kitchen could view it and come away with the modeled way to perform the functions. Daily shift briefings based upon current ramp training policies and procedures were developed and printed on a yearly calendar in Spanish and English. One day, a manager picked up the phone and talked to me about driver recognition. From that conversation we started a pilot recognition program in his unit allowing safe drivers to wear their numbers of safe driving years on their hats for all to see. It later became a company policy.

Our company learned an important truth from the quality process. If you want to know how to perform the job correctly and safely ask the people who already perform the function. Don't argue with them, just listen. They will tell you the best way to do the job safely.

Warren Morrison is recently retired from Gate Gourmet Americas, (formerly Dobbs International Services, Inc.), with over 20 years of service where he began as Training Coordinator, was promoted to Regional Personnel Manager, and ultimately served as Director, Safety.