1 INTRODUCTION
1.5 Theoretical framework
Figure 2 demonstrates the theoretical framework of this thesis. All four of the main areas of the framework are introduced separately. The theoretical framework places the master’s thesis into theoretical context and introduces the key terms and represents the association between them.
Figure 2. Thesis framework.
1.5.1 Obligation
The Finnish occupational Safety and Health Act sets the minimum requirements for employees’ health and safety at a workplace. In Finland, occupational health and safety covers health and safety at work, the terms and conditions of employment, mental wellbeing, the functioning of management and the organization, productivity and co-determination. (Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, 2016) The act is a general act which is specified by special Acts, such as the electrical safety, radiation safety, pressure vessels, lifts and chemicals, and international and European ground handling and aviation regulations.
The ground handling and aviation regulations are derived from multiple sources. The aviation transport umbrella organization IATA, i.e. The International Air Transport Association represents 290 airlines which accounts for 82 percent of global air traffic. IATA works with local governments and aviation associations to develop regulations e.g. Dangerous Goods Regulations (DGR). (IATA, 2019) The International Civil Aviation Organization ICAO works
Obligation to manage OHS risks
•Contractual obligations
•Non-contractual obligations
•Value creation
Risk management discipline and framework
•Occupational health and safety management
•ISO 45001 –standard
Object
•Defined Finnish ground handling work
Perspectives
•Safety culture
•Ergonomics
•OHS Management
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with 193 member states and industry groups to create and develop international civil aviation standards, recommended practices and policies (ICAO, 2019). The European Union Aviation Safety Agency EASA drafts implementing rules for European aviation and oversees national aviation safety agencies (EASA, 2019). In Finland the responsible body for national aviation safety is The Finnish Transport and Communications Agency Traficom.
The European Commission published a “White Paper” in 2011 which consists of 40 concrete initiatives for the next decade to build a competitive transport system in Europe. One of the main goals, alongside transport competitiveness and resource efficiency, was to be the world’s safest region in the civil aviation sector (The European Commission, 2011). In 2011, The European Commission also gave an declaration to the Council of Europe and the European Parliament about the measures necessary to achieve the goal. In addition to drawing up guidelines and instructions, there is a need to add weight to a systematic aviation safety risk assessment through a safety management system. In 2011, The European Commission published the first version of the European Aviation Safety Programme (EASP) which presents the structure of aviation safety management in the European Union area. (Traficom, 2019) The European Plan for Aviation Safety (EPAS) consists of identified key hazards in Europe, strategic safety goals and actions necessary to achieve them. The actions are directed towards EASA, The European Commission, the member states or other European stakeholders. Finland has included the actions, that are directed towards the member states, into the national plan for aviation safety (FPAS). EPAS also takes into account the global aviation safety goals which have been published in the Global Aviation Safety Plan (GASP) by ICAO. EPAS strategic priorities are based on the Commission’s aviation strategy and EASA’s strategy plan (EPAS 2019-2023, appendix D). Acts to improve European aviation safety in accordance with EPAS can be divided into five categories: safety promotion, focused attention topic, regulation, research and evaluation. (Traficom, 2019)
The Finnish Aviation Safety Program (FASP) covers a national aviation safety management system. It contains representation of aviation safety politics, context of regulation, processes and safety work. FASP appendix 1 is a Finnish Plan for Aviation Safety (FPAS) which contains key hazards in Finnish aviation, strategic safety goals and actions to achieve them. FASP with its appendixes also fulfills the obligation to create and maintain the ICAO’s State Safety Programme (SSP). FASP also refers to the Finnish Aviation Act. (Traficom, 2019) Aviation agents must take FASP into account in their operations (Finnish Aviation Act, 864/2014). The
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agents are responsible for their own safety and it is mandatory for the agents to take self-identified and national aviation hazards into account in their safety management system, and assess and mitigate the risks. The agents must execute the required FASP actions and document them. (Traficom, 2019)
In addition to the laws and regulations, employers also have non-contractual obligations. One of the most important ones is the Duty of Care, which comes from “tort law”. The goal of tort law is to discourage individuals from doing things that could hurt others. In a workplace, the duty of care means that employers have an obligation to protect employees and other stakeholders from hazards and risks existing at a workplace. The obligation is based not only on legislation, but it is also a moral and social obligation. (Whalley & Guzelian, 2017) Whalley
& Guzelian (2017: 107-116) argue that if you just focus on compliance with existing laws and regulations, then there is a high probability that your current actions will be viewed as negligent in the future at some point.
Figure 3. Legal, regulatory and other requirements for a ground handling organization.
Creating value for the company’s shareholders is the primary goal for limited and public limited companies. Therefore, the goal of the risk management is also to add value to the company. What this means in practice is the balancing of the potential for loss against the cost of controls (Stolzer & Goglia, 2015). In other words, risk mitigation is not in the company’s interest if the risk mitigation costs are higher than the potential loss. This is basically the starting point of financial risk management. However, a company needs to take their reputation risk and other risks into consideration when performing this kind of calculations.
The protecting of employees’ health and safety at the workplace is just as important a goal as the value creation is. A company has the social responsibility to pursue that goal by systematically and carefully implementing OHSMS. The social responsibility is based on
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occupational health and safety regulations, and on non-contractual obligations, such as the duty of care. A company needs to achieve an adequate level of health and safety to meet the requirements, and therefore the company cannot balance the potential for loss against the cost of controls in occupational health and safety management when fulfilling mandatory requirements. After contractual and non-contractual obligations are fulfilled, the company can balance the potential loss against cost of controls among occupational health and safety matters.
1.5.2 Risk Management Discipline & Framework
Occupational health and safety management and the ISO 45001:2018 standard are the logical choices for the discipline and method because it supports the goal of this thesis: Identify hazards and assess OHS-related hazards, risks and opportunities. Indeed, the ISO 45001:2018 is specifically designed to identify, assess and reduce workplace injuries, illnesses and fatalities at the workplace. In addition, it enables organizations to comprehensively integrate occupational health and safety management into business processes. (Sadiq, 2019) More comprehensive risk management systems/frameworks have achieved recognition among large enterprise companies, such as enterprise risk management (ERM), because the systems, and therefore the risks, are nowadays more complex and interdependent than before in a globalized and changing world.
1.5.3 Object
The first requirement of the ISO 45001:2018 standard is to identify OHSMS’s stakeholders.
With infinite time the OHSMS almost every stakeholder at the airport would be covered by the OHSMS in this thesis. Firstly, due to the constraints of the scope of this thesis, the relevant ground handling stakeholders must be framed carefully. Secondly, it must be considered that the work tasks in ground handling operations can be extremely diversified.
Ground handling operations as an aviation industry sector consists of multiple lines of work.
The safe movement of passengers, baggage and cargo through the terminals, the turnaround of the aircraft and the maintaining of aircraft service operations on schedule are the primary ground handling responsibilities. (Ashford, et al., 2013) Safety in general is the primary goal of aviation operations in order to avoid accidents and maintain a positive public image.
Employee safety, passenger safety and flight safety are also the overriding goals of the ground handling operations. Keeping to the schedule can be considered to be partially contradictory goal regarding safety, but it is still, a very important one. Keeping to the schedule is a vital issue for the ground handling company because the financial consequences of delays are
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significant for airlines and other stakeholders. Frequent delays caused by ground handling operations might lead to the situation where the airline changes a ground handling provider after the expiration of a contract. Then again, it is predicted that the importance of a ground handling company’s safety record might increase in the future during contract negotiations.
Ground handling work is a combination of independent work and teamwork. The work at the apron is performed in teams which usually consist of a group leader, a belt load driver, a conveyor belt driver and a crane operator. The supervision of work, operating from the office outside the apron, provides work tasks to workers at the apron and the safety manager oversees the overall operational safety. The de-icing service is performed further away from the apron.
The ground handling work includes a lot of driving between aircraft stands, and the traffic at the apron can be congested during rush hours. Even one aircraft stand can be really congested at any time of the day if there are cleaning services, fuel tank, aircraft service, ground handling activities and other stakeholders performing work tasks at the same time. Changes in flight schedules have a direct influence on ground handling schedules, making the work schedules unpredictable on some level. For example, if all of the passengers do not arrive at the flight in time, their baggage must be removed from the aircraft hold which delays both the flight schedule and the ground handling work.
Ground handling work is a physical job which puts employees’ physical health to the test. It is not always possible to perform the work tasks in a good physical ergonomic way, for example cramped aircraft holds extend the work. As a matter of fact, ground handling work can be compared to the work of a stevedore or warehouse worker. In addition to the physical stress, the work also strains employees mentally. Tight schedules, stress, shift work, and problems with cognitive ergonomics significantly influence the employees’ health and safety on all levels of the organization. Dangerous substances, such as the constant exposure to exhaust gases in the ramp, are a serious threat to the employees’ health.
Ground handling safety must have raised concerns at the European Union level as well because the industry is facing its biggest regulatory change since 1996. The reform aims to update ground handling safety regulation to meet present-day obligations. (Conway, 2018) On 7th March 2019 was the first EASA Conference on ground handling operations was held to prepare the implementation of the European roadmap on ground handling safety. The conference consisted of six main improvement areas: Management system, operational standards, ground support equipment, training, staff turnover and oversight. EASA will restructure the necessary
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requirements and non-regulatory activities to increase the level of ground handling safety.
(EASA, 2019)
Ground handling activities can be divided into two categories by the location where a ground handling activity is performed. Airside activities are work tasks that take place at the apron and include the supervision of those activities. Terminal activities are work tasks that take place inside the terminal and include the supervision of those activities. Table 1 below shows all of the categorized activities. As mentioned before, all of these activities are not included in this research. Only those activities that take place at the apron, the de-icing area, the supervision, and in the cargo and baggage terminals, and the transportation between these areas are included in this research. In other words, all of the activities taking place inside the passenger terminal are excluded from this research. Activities that are included in this research are marked with * in table 1. However, rather than researching these activities separately, the ground handling activities form a coherent whole which is researched as a whole.
Table 1. Rephrased ground handling activities (Ashford, Martin, & Moore, 2013, p. 154).
Terminal Airside
Cleaning of cockpit windows, wings, nacelles, and cabin14
External ramp equipment*
Passenger steps Catering loaders Cargo loaders
Mail and equipment loading Crew steps on all freight aircraft
1.5.4 Perspectives
Occupational health and safety management is a wide branch of science consisting of various factors affecting OHS. It is impossible to deal with all of the potential factors that emerge at the airport within the constraints of this thesis. Instead of this thesis being a comprehensive OHS hazard, risk and opportunity research, it focuses on only specific OHS factors.
Firstly, the researcher’s discipline, i.e. business science, limits the scope of this research.
Business science focuses on (OHS) management methods and systems, economic, cultural and psychological, and other organizational factors. Because of this, for example, fire safety, equipment safety and other technical safety factors are not specifically researched in this thesis as these factors are more related to technical science.
Secondly, consideration must be given to the fact that some of the OHS-related factors are more relevant in the airport environment and in ground handling industry than others. Ek &
Akselsson (2007) states that safety culture in a ground handling company operating in Sweden was good, but poorer than expected by the managers. Furthermore, Ek & Akselsson (2007) suggests that: “In future studies of safety culture aspects in ground handling companies, it would be interesting to determine what results would be found at an airport with several ground handling companies working in competition.” That being said, Helsinki Airport is an airport in which several GH companies operate. In addition, the NLR Air Transport Safety Institute (2010) identified potentials for improving OHSM-related factors in European airports.
Furthermore, it is relevant to reflect that the current GH OHSM processes are in accordance with the most updated OHSM standard, ISO 45001:2018.
Ergonomics is very important in ground handling operations because the work is physical and repetitive. The growing use of IT and data also causes challenges for cognitive ergonomics.
Organizational ergonomics must be taken into consideration because ground handling is a very competitive industry and economic factors have a significant influence on organizational structures which can cause stress for employees. Other environmental factors, such as physical,
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chemical and biological factors are important at the airport, but due to the limitations of what business science covers, these factors are not primarily within the scope of this thesis. The selection of these components is also a well-founded hypothesis of possible targets for development.
The factors that have an influence on occupational health and safety at a workplace are categorized in this thesis as follows: Culture, Ergonomics, Safety and Health Management, and Environmental factors. Ergonomics consists of physical ergonomics, cognitive ergonomics and organizational ergonomics. Culture refers to those aspects of the organizational culture which will have an impact on attitudes and behavior related to increasing or decreasing OHS risks.
Environmental factors contain the effects of physical, chemical and biological exposures at a workplace. Health and Safety Management refers to how the processes are designed, implemented and overseen.