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Staff at Boeing are still reluctant to speak up about safety problems, even after a door panel on one of its jets recently blew out mid-flight and hundreds of lives were lost in two earlier planes crashes, according to an experts’ report commissioned by the US Federal Aviation Administration.
The report, published last month, did not comment on these particular incidents. But it said that, while Boeing had taken steps to improve its safety culture, staff were still hesitant about voicing concerns because they feared retaliation. It noted that the jet maker’s “speak up” programme, which allows employees to report safety problems confidentially, suffers from workers not believing their anonymity will be protected.
The shortcomings in Boeing’s 737 Max aircraft programme have been hugely damaging to the company. The fatal crashes of a Lion Air flight in 2018 and an Ethiopian Airlines flight in 2019 led to Boeing’s 737 Max 8 planes being grounded for 20 months. The door-panel incident on an Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 flight in January this year was another big blow. A preliminary investigation found the aircraft had left the factory without four bolts that were meant to secure the door panel.
Persuading employees to speak up when they see something wrong is crucial if companies are to avoid disaster. But before the two crashes, Boeing workers had reason to believe there was little point in saying anything. One factory supervisor told his superiors he was worried about corner-cutting. “For the first time in my life, I’m sorry to say that I’m hesitant about putting my family on a Boeing aircraft,” he said, according to a 2020 congressional US transport and infrastructure committee report. He was ignored.
It is not just Boeing. It can be hard to speak up in any organisation. Being ignored is not the worst of it. You could be passed over for promotion — which is what the experts’ report said Boeing’s workers feared — denied a bonus, or even pushed out. As a whistleblower discovered at UK bank Barclays in 2016, your boss could try to find out who you are.
Nor are bosses the only problem. Staff who speak up have to deal with their colleagues’ reaction; they may worry about being associated with the problem-raiser. What if managers think they are troublemakers too? People who voice uncomfortable views in company meetings can find others avoiding their gaze.
Megan Reitz, an associate fellow at Oxford university’s Saïd Business School, says employees often fear raising their concerns, even in organisations with supposedly flat hierarchies and collaborative cultures. Leaders underestimate the challenge of speaking up, Reitz tells me, and even friendly bosses can be unaware that staff do not consider them approachable. “That people have power means they’re scary, no matter how they are as people,” she says.
A previous paper Reitz wrote with fellow researcher John Higgins in the Harvard Business Review found that even the supposedly welcoming phrase “my door is always open” contains a number of assumptions. “First, people should meet you on your territory, rather than the other way around. Second, you have the luxury of a door. Third, you can choose when to close or open it.”
So what can leaders do to encourage staff to come forward with problems? Reitz says framing questions in unthreatening ways can help. Instead of simply requesting feedback, ask for one or two things that could be improved. She adds that formal meetings are not usually the best places to do this as people feel guarded.
The FAA experts’ report quoted James Reason, a safety expert, as saying: “A safety culture is not something that springs up ready-made from a near-death experience; rather it emerges gradually from the persistent and successful application of practical and down-to-earth measures. There is nothing mystical about it. Acquiring a safety culture is a process of collective learning, like any other.”
This can be a particular challenge when a company makes significant job cuts, like Boeing did as a result of the grounding of the Max and the pandemic.
One of the report’s recommendations was that Boeing ensures every issue raised receives an answer. An employee frustration was that those who did speak up about a safety issue did not always find out what happened next. Boeing said: “We will carefully review the panel’s assessment and learn from their findings, as we continue our comprehensive efforts to improve our safety and quality programmes.”
Employees also respond to incentives. If leaders really want to hear what is happening in their organisations, they should reward people who bring problems to their attention. They should be lauded in company communications; given bonuses rather than being denied them. They could be saving not just the company’s reputation but its leaders’ too.
Michael Skapinker is an FT contributing editor and the author of ‘Inside the Leaders’ Club: How top companies deal with pressing business issues’