Burnout in Quality / Compliance & Safety Managers

[Ghostdancer]

We often talk about fatigue of operating crew, and have started to consider fatigue risk management within Part 145 recently. I would be interested to hear if anyone considers themselves to be owning oversight of too many approvals when under resourced and if this affecting their decision making process within compliance and safety.

For myself, I’m responsible for five EASA regulatory approvals as compliance manager within an AOC structure, some military related approvals, an ISO accreditation and hold the safety Form 4 under OR.GEN.200 over a number of operating sites. The ability to manage at a high commitment level in today’s fast paced environment is dependent on both the competence and level of that resource provided to support the manager post. Most weeks I’m busting the European Working Time Directive in an effort to keep afloat.

[Burr Styers]

Hi GD,

I spent over 15 years working in Safety and Quality, after taking medical retirement from flying. I am now pretty much retired from aviation, and looking back over the last 15 years or so............I don't know how I held it together. The stress was enormous, tremendous responsibility....but with little authority, or resource. The expectation of employers on their Safety/Quality managers is getting out of hand. I still get daily job listings, and the trend these days is to bundle several positions into one hat i.e."We are looking for a Safety, Compliance and Security manager for our busy company". These are three seperate specialist areas, all of which require full time effort, not just one third of your working week !! How on earth do you prioritise your work load ? Don't forget the emergency response programme, oh that'll be the safety manager (again). Responsibility for the SMS on a daily basis also falls to the safety manager, could turn out that the safety manager is one of the biggest liabilities in the system.......due to work load. I had some good times, and worked on many interesting projects and investigations, but it will eventually wear you out, and leave you feeling very jaded, it did me anyway.

[Ghostdancer]

Thank you BS for your open and frank comments, much of which I concur. Seems I am not alone, shame the Regulators don’t seem to want to recognise the problem.