Teamwork at 35,000 feet: Enhancing safety through team training

Abstract

The aviation industry has been commended for its ability to maintain a high level of safety despite operating in a mission critical, high impact work environment. This commitment to mindfulness and safely has led to the aviation community's transition to a high reliability organisation (HRO). A key factor in this transition was its commitment to team training and belief that collaboration among crew-members can be used as a key strategy by which errors can be managed. This recognition led to the development of a highly successful team training program (i.e., crew resource management, CRM). CRM's touted success within aviation has led to its adoption by many industries outside CRM. Therefore, it becomes important to delineate how aviation made this progression through the use of CRM as well as identify areas that have posed key challenges in making this transition. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is twofold. First, to review how aviation has used CRM to become a mindful HRO. In doing this, we briefly review the theoretical drivers behind CRM. Second, to provide principles concerning how organisations outside of aviation can use lessons learned within aviation to move towards becoming an HRO. In highlighting principles we also identify those areas that continue to pose challenges in aviation's quest to maintain HRO status and continually improve.