Hello there,

I have a question regarding timescales of corrective actions.

In our first ISO 9001 under a new auditor we recieved a NC for 6.2.2.c as we do not currently evaluate the effectivness of training.

Our proposed CA to this is for the person and their manager to review the effectivness of their training at their annual appraisal, we chose this method as it is more likely to be done consistently than if we had a 3 or 6 month review after training had taken place.

This NC was raised in November 2007 and our appraisals are done in Decmeber or January so there will not be any objective evidence for our corrective action until December 2008, and our next audit is scheduled for November 2008, we have annual surveillance audits.

As we are not going to have objective evidence for our registrar to review until their 2009 visit I am unsure how they are likely to view the CA.

I don't personally see an issue with it as it is unfortunate timing, if our audits were scheduled in June we would have had objective evidence before their next visit, but I am interested to hear the opinions of persons here on this.

:thanx:

Alex

Welcome to The Cove, Alex! :bigwave:

I share your concern, as I also grapple with issues that take a long time to resolve. But once the structure of the fix is put in place, the CA could be closed. I invite others to disagree and describe why.

There will be differing opinions about the timeliness, as you suspect. Some will view that as too much time gone by until the effectiveness of the fix is evaluated. There are two sides to the argument: True effectiveness in training would indeed be better known over time. However, if an employee was still incompetent, one would arguably want to know sooner and address the gaps.

That is why I suggest you ask for some specifics regarding this evaluation my managers:

What criteria will they use, and what available guidance helps them to know it?
1) What will help ensure this evaluation process is not subjective in nature? That is, will competence be measured by events or customer service evaluations, or will will this be based on the manager's judgment?
2) How will the employee review show this evaluation has been done, and its outcome?
3) What would the manager do if he/she decides more training is needed, and what process is available to the manager to follow?
4) What would a lack of effectiveness look like in the time frame between training and the employee review? That is, what impacts would it have and how could the manager tell?
5) If the manager decides in the near future that correction is needed as #4 describes, how does he/she activate remediation as described in #3 and how will he/she decide when he/she is satisfied?

I wouldn't close out the CA until all these questions are satisfactorily answered, because these describe the actual process, include planning for contingencies and attempt to take the subjectivity out of employee reviews.

Welcome Alex,

I am looking at your question from a different angle and therefore have a different opinion.

I think you should not mixed up 'evaluation' of training with annual 'appraisal' - even if it is being carried out by the same person.

Evaluation of training should be carried out as soon as practical after the training - usually within 3 months. If the evaluation is negative, then further training or alternative actions need to be taken. You don't wait till the year end appraisal to talk about training. Can you remember what happened? Don't let training fall into the same criticisms as year end appraisals (halo effect, etc).

Once you decouple the two and have a practical guide for evaluation of training, the issue of timescales for action should not arise.

1) What will help ensure this evaluation process is not subjective in nature? That is, will competence be measured by events or customer service evaluations, or will will this be based on the manager's judgment?


It is more likely to be based on the person undergoing the training judgement. We are a R&D company in the telecoms industry over 95% of our training is technical training for our design engineers. For anyone else to evaluate if the training is effective would be very difficult and it's really personal to the engineer if it covered the areas that they needed to cover.


2) How will the employee review show this evaluation has been done, and its outcome?


The manager would be expected to note comments that the engineer has made regarding the training.


3) What would the manager do if he/she decides more training is needed, and what process is available to the manager to follow?


Once again this is really the engineers decision. if they need more training or help to understand it there is a mentoring scheme available and regular peer review of work happens as well for all employees.


4) What would a lack of effectiveness look like in the time frame between training and the employee review? That is, what impacts would it have and how could the manager tell?


Lack of effectivness would be indicated by delays to projects. There are regular project review meetings and if a project is being delayed it would be investigated. Lack of competence would be identified at this stage


5) If the manager decides in the near future that correction is needed as #4 describes, how does he/she activate remediation as described in #3 and how will he/she decide when he/she is satisfied?


The employee would be requested to take part in the mentoring scheme at this point, though usually most new employees sign up the mentoring scheme when they start. Once training and mentoring options have been exhausted the disciplinary process would start.

In some ways we constantly monitor the effectivness of training. If our engineers don't understand the training they wouldn't be able to perform their jobs and this would be noticed quickly at regular project review meetings, and even if they got through this the products we design wouldn't work.

A much harder issue for us is getting the engineers and their managers to take time out to actually have a meeting and document how effective they have found the training.

We had a hard enough time actually getting management to carry out appraisals for their staff and getting them to review training with their staff after 3 months is likely to be an even bigger struggle. So we have chose to incorporate the review of training into the appraisal as this is how we are likely to get the best response so that we have the objective evidence for the external auditor to review.

I have to disagree with some of these posts, as I think there's a tendancy to be myopic in approaching this issue. Training is evaluated on an on-going basis; even if the evaluation is not intentional, its being done. The trick is to address how its documented.

Consider the following examples:
- quiz scores/results;
- student's end-of-course scores;
- course critiques;
- skill and/or need assessments;
- customer feedback;
- NCR/CAR data;
- peer reviews;
- supervisory reviews;
- annual appraisals.

This is the short list that immediately comes to mind. Each of these could be considered input used to evaluate the skill, knowledge and ability of the employee. I'd don't think we need to split hairs between reviews, appraisals, etc., because they're all parts of the employee assessment process.

What I'd typically do if I had a nonconformance in this area is to do an interim training assessment for all affected personnel. This could simply be documented as "the following employee has been evaluated and is considered qualified for the tasks they are performing. No additional training is required at this time".

Just my thoughts. Please feel free to disagree.

Mark

I thought N/C's had to be closed prior to the next surveullance audit. I thought that N/C's needed to be closed in X amount of time after the audit. This posting seems to imply that the registrar will not check on the status and completion of the corrective action until the next surveillance audit.

I bet your organizaiton is covertly evaluating training effetiveness via general business indicators like internal and external rejects, complaints, etc.

Evaluating training effectiveness does not have to be an individual thing. Traininig effectivenss and a subjective opinion from an individual as to whether or not they liked the training may be two very different things. I would look at how effective training is as a process and how the company is performing instead of asking each individual if the training was effective.