How Does One Know If An Organization Is Applying The Non-Punitive Policy

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.

With the stroke of a pen the reactions to future events are set.

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.

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.    

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