Living Out Safety Risk Management: From Process to Practice
Safety Risk Management (SRM) is often introduced as a five-step process:
Hazard Identification
Risk Assessment
Risk Control or Mitigation
Monitoring and Measurement
Continuous Improvement
For many aviation leaders, that sounds like a compliance exercise—something to do when updating manuals, responding to audits, or closing out an investigation. But what if we flipped the narrative?
What if SRM wasn’t just a series of steps, but a daily practice—a culture that breathes safety into operations, decisions, and strategy?
This week, we explore how to shift from process to practice, and how platforms like Wombat Safety Software can help teams live out each part of SRM continuously.
🚧 Step 1: Hazard Identification → Hazard Awareness
What it is:
Recognizing anything that has the potential to cause harm or loss. Hazards can be physical, operational, environmental, or organizational. They can also be visible, hidden or emerging.
Why it matters:
If we don’t spot the risk, we can’t manage it. Yet many hazards go unnoticed or unreported due to normalization, inattention, or lack of an easy reporting method.
From Process to Practice:
Make reporting frictionless: Use Wombat's mobile features to let employees submit a quick hazard report in less than 60 seconds.
Incentivize participation: Celebrate “Good Catch” reports in newsletters or team meetings—focus on awareness, not just outcomes. Do your team members know where to look and what to look for? Register them for our next HIRA and Safety Case course today!
Create visibility: Use live dashboards or digital signage in crew rooms showing recent hazard trends or near-misses submitted.
⚖️ Step 2: Risk Assessment → Risk Thinking
What it is:
Evaluating how likely a hazard is to cause harm, and how severe that harm could be. Often visualized using a risk matrix.
Why it matters:
Poor risk assessments lead to poor decisions—either overreacting or under-responding.
From Process to Practice:
Use collaborative assessments: Ensure risk is assessed by those closest to the work. Involve subject matter experts. Wombat can enable multi-role input—engaging maintenance, airside ops, safety, and leadership.
Ask better questions: Go beyond “What’s the probability?” to “Who could this impact?” or “How might this affect our operation at 2am during a snowstorm?”
Document your thinking: Wombat’s workflow, comment fields and audit trail can help explain why a risk was scored the way it was—this builds consistency and helps in later reviews.
🛠️ Step 3: Risk Control/Mitigation → Risk Shaping
What it is:
Deciding how to reduce the risk—whether by eliminating the hazard, substituting safer equipment, adding controls, or increasing awareness.
Why it matters:
A beautiful risk assessment without action is just paperwork. Mitigations must be practical, implemented, and effective.
From Process to Practice:
Build a controls library: Use Wombat to record which mitigations were used, by whom, and whether they worked. Create a “greatest hits” list of proven interventions.
Test control effectiveness: Periodically reassess whether the risk score has dropped post-control—Wombat can provide the evidence to show this over time.
Design with users: Get frontline feedback on new controls before rolling them out. If it’s clunky or unclear, it won’t last.
📊 Step 4: Monitoring and Measurement → Meaningful Metrics
What it is:
Tracking the effectiveness of risk controls, spotting trends, and ensuring compliance with safety processes.
Why it matters:
Metrics show whether we’re improving—or just going through the motions.
From Process to Practice:
Track more than numbers: Don’t just count reports. Look at time-to-close, repeated hazards and incidents, risk score reduction, and frontline engagement.
Visualize data: Use Wombat’s dashboard tools to create simple, real-time visuals.
Close the loop: Regularly share “what we learned” from metrics in toolbox talks, stand-up meetings, or monthly newsletters.
🔁 Step 5: Continuous Improvement → Embedded Improvement
What it is:
Reviewing SRM activities to identify opportunities for learning, efficiency, or better risk reduction strategies.
Why it matters:
Without continuous improvement, SRM becomes stagnant and reactive instead of dynamic and proactive.
From Process to Practice:
Create feedback rituals: Dedicate 10 minutes each month to reflect on “What worked? What didn’t?” in your safety strategy.
Act on input fast: When feedback loops show a gap, close it quickly—and document it visibly in Wombat.
Tie improvement to objectives: Align SRM learnings with corporate goals—whether it’s safety performance, cost savings, or operational resilience.
🧭 Final Thoughts
Transforming Safety Risk Management from a process into a practice isn’t just about culture—it’s about capability. When your people are equipped with the right tools, empowered to speak up, and supported by leadership that sees SRM as a daily habit, safety becomes more than a priority—it becomes part of how work gets done.
At Acclivix, we believe that technology like Wombat, combined with targeted training and leadership alignment, can help make this shift a reality.
If you're ready to move beyond compliance checklists and build a truly embedded SRM practice, we’d love to help you get there.
👉 Reach out to start a conversation about transforming SRM in your organization.
Let’s take the first step—together.