How Does One Know If An Organization Is Applying The Non-Punitive Policy
Great insight on Non-punitive policy by CatalinaNJB
That an organization has a
non-punitive policy is an organizational and senior management statement of accountability and a commitment
of support for improved job-performance. In many organizations, personnel
job-performance has reached its limits with little, or no room for
improvements, until there are unexpected and major quality flaws or improper
customer services discovered. Sometime these events are named “mistakes” which
initiate the process of learning-stagnation and there is no further action to
learn from this “mistake”. Applying the non-punitive reporting policy is a
policy to learn from mistakes and train for improvements.
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With the stroke of a pen the reactions
to future events are set.
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A safety management system should include
any requirements for an effective and continuous improvement of the SMS system.
A non-punitive policy is a system-design regiment to be included as any
additional requirements for the safety management system. This requirement is not
a specific non-punitive policy design requirement, but it becomes an
operational performance criteria for the SMS to function effectively. When assessing the performance of an SMS, there
is a requirement to apply a policy for the internal reporting of hazards,
incidents and accidents, including the conditions under which immunity from
disciplinary action will be granted. Immunity is for a person to be protected,
or exempted from something, especially an obligation or penalty.
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| Data is formatted to comprehensive information |
This requirement to include a policy
where there is immunity from disciplinary actions is applicable to the
organization itself, or to the senior management team and is not applicable to
employees of the organization. However, the non-punitive policy the organization
develops becomes applicable to their employees in just-culture environment as
an occurrence reporting tool, and applicable to the management to ensure this
policy is applied as intended.
There are several tools available to
analyze operational data either to confirm that the policy is applied as
intended or to discredit opinions of an effective policy. One of these tools is
to analyze identified training and training records for the person who
submitted a report. After the airport, or airline received the report they applied
their non-punitive policy to the contributor’s behavior. An organization may
have a check-box marked on the paper-format report form, or in electronic
format that the non-punitive policy was applied, but these check-box tasks does
not qualify as data to confirm, or discredit that the policy is applied. Check
boxes are not direct-data, but indirect-data as triggers for further actions.
The confirmation of applying the non-punitive policy is found in the training
records.
CatalinaNJB
