SMS Key Element No. 6: Safety Performance Monitoring and Measurement

Measuring What Matters

Many flight departments believe they’re monitoring safety performance. Few truly are.

It’s not about having a dashboard, counting reports once a month, or tracking incidents on a spreadsheet. Real performance monitoring goes deeper. It asks whether your entire operation is aligned around the right metrics, the right behaviors, and the right decisions.

"If your SMS isn’t built to show whether it's working, it’s built to fail quietly."

Why Monitoring and Measurement Matters

Measurement isn’t an accessory to safety, it’s the engine that drives improvement. It shows whether mitigations are effective, whether decision-making is strengthening, and whether your strategy is more than a paper exercise. It forces clarity. Instead of relying on instinct, you begin managing safety with the same discipline you give to flight time, fuel burn, and on-time departures.

The best flight departments don’t treat measurement as a task. They treat it as a discipline. They ask:

• Are we measuring behavior or just outcomes?

• Do our indicators actually drive action?

• Can our team see in real time what needs attention?

  
  

If the answer is no, you’re not managing safety performance. You’re managing delay; delay in spotting risks, delay in responding, and delay in improving.

Where Most SMS Programs Get It Wrong

Most failures in monitoring start with good intentions:

• “Let’s reduce maintenance delays.”

• “Let’s increase reporting.”

• “Let’s make safety more visible.”

  
  

But these goals often collapse because no one defines success. They’re too vague, too optimistic, or disconnected from daily operations. As a result, teams collect data they don’t use — or worse, misinterpret.

Meanwhile, the real obstacles pile up:

• One department logs risks carefully, another doesn’t.

• Safety meetings happen, but nothing gets tracked.

• Corrective actions linger without ownership.

• Reports are filed, but no one reviews the trends.

  
  

That’s not just underperformance. It’s structural drift, a system quietly shifting away from its purpose because no one is watching the right signals.

What the Best Teams Track

High-performing SMS programs use performance data as a compass. Not just to react, but to navigate. They track:

• Lagging indicators such as incident reports, audit findings, or violation counts.

• Leading indicators such as pre-departure risk assessments, corrective action closure times, or participation in safety meetings.

  
  

But data alone isn’t enough. It has to be visible, relevant, and actionable. That means no hidden folders, no quarterly surprises, and no metrics that exist only for audits. The best teams tie safety performance directly to how the operation runs. It’s reviewed in safety meetings, reflected in management decisions, and reinforced in performance evaluations.

When that happens, measurement stops being a compliance exercise. It becomes a source of truth that shows whether your safety program is just collecting information, or actually changing outcomes.

"The best teams don’t measure safety for compliance, they measure it to change outcomes."

Final Thought

If your SMS can’t show whether safety is improving, it isn’t managing safety. It’s maintaining the illusion of it.

Performance monitoring isn’t about compliance. It’s about clarity. And in aviation, clarity is what keeps people alive.

If your team is ready for that kind of clarity, RISE can help. Book a demo or start your free trial and see how RISE makes safety performance measurable, actionable, and part of your daily workflow.