When the door on a Boeing 737 Max blew out mid-flight over Portland Oregon earlier this year, incident reports swiftly tilted in the direction of culture problems at the airplane manufacturer. A study subsequently conducted by the US Federal Aviation Administration cited a "disconnect" between leadership and employees around the safety culture formally emphasized in the ‘tone from the top’ of the organization, and a fear of retaliation that prevailed among those employees who felt that safety concerns needed reporting.1
“Boeing employees did not demonstrate knowledge of Boeing’s enterprise-wide safety culture efforts, nor its purpose and procedures,” the FAA found.2 Moreover, “Employees did not understand how to utilize the different reporting systems, which reporting system to use and when,” and many of them were unfamiliar with the details or expectations of the company’s “Reporting Culture” and its “Speak Up” program. It is perhaps therefore unsurprising that the FAA’s Expert Panel could not “verify whether safety concerns reported directly to the management chain were captured and resolved in a systematic manner.”3
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