6.2.2 e - Minimum education requirements for workers? Some never went to school!

D

dbulak

How does one handle the issue of education--6.2.2 e? Should there be minimum education requirements for workers? Some people never went to school.
 
B

Bill Ryan - 2007

The standard says that you maintain records of education, training, skills and experience. Do you use apllication forms asking for schooling level completed? If the employee filled it out as "No schooling" - there's your record. If your company has no minimum schooling requirement, I don't see a problem.

IMO - "Training, Skills, Experience, ...." are all "subsets" of the term "education". Your training records, mentoring programs, anything you do to enhance the emplyees ability to perform tasks associated with his job, would all be "records of education".

Bill
 

Randy

Super Moderator
Bill Ryan said:

IMO - "Training, Skills, Experience, ...." are all "subsets" of the term "education". Your training records, mentoring programs, anything you do to enhance the emplyees ability to perform tasks associated with his job, would all be "records of education".

Bill


6.2.2 Competence, awareness and training
The organization shall
a) determine the necessary competence for personnel performing work affecting product quality,
b) provide training or take other actions to satisfy these needs,
c) evaluate the effectiveness of the actions taken,
d) ensure that its personnel are aware of the relevance and importance of their activities and how they contribute to
the achievement of the quality objectives, and
e) maintain appropriate records of education, training, skills and experience (see 4.2.4).


The key word in all of this is "Competence". What you need to do is to be able to show that employees are competent based upon the totality of their education, training, skills and experience. Training, skills and experience are not subsets of education, they stand alongside education as equals with respect to the standard. Don't get all wrapped around the axel trying to educate or prove education, but rather look for methods of verifying competence.
 

Mike S.

Happy to be Alive
Trusted Information Resource
I have to agree with Randy on this one. In some jobs, a person may have only a 5th grade education, but he may be more competent at that job than a Ph.D. Competence is, IMHO, indeed the key.
 
M

M Greenaway

Indeed Mike, as is matching the right skills to the right jobs.
 
Randy said:
---X---
The key word in all of this is "Competence". What you need to do is to be able to show that employees are competent based upon the totality of their education, training, skills and experience. Training, skills and experience are not subsets of education, they stand alongside education as equals with respect to the standard. Don't get all wrapped around the axel trying to educate or prove education, but rather look for methods of verifying competence.

Right... If it was all down to formal education, few of our older blue collars would be able to keep their jobs. But they do, and the fact is that they actually run a good part of the show... The competence is obvious.

/Claes
 
L

Link Xue

I think

Education level low doesn't mean lower competence at all, to an employee the competence just mean that he/she is competent to the current job
:)
 
Z

zhugxian

Training

Dear ALL,

First of all, develop your Training Needs Analysis for all staff whose work can create impact on quality along the Standard reuqirements for education, knowledge, experience.

e.g Production Operator:
set your organisation criteria for it
education: minimum have vocational trade certificate
knowledge: know how to repair motors (3-Phase system);
experience: 2 years of it

The above is your organisation needs and having the above, you have demonstrated that you have defined competence required in your orgnanisation.

you can built on this later when the need arises.
 
N

Neil

Well having had ISO9002 for 14 years and QS9000 for three we have just managed to fail our transition audit. The clause that did the damage was 6.2.2. The registrar was only interested in looking staff competence this audit. Part of this requirement is fulfilled by biennial performance evaluations. One of the managers had neglected to do his evaluations and the HR Manager was aware of this but had not acted upon it (despite warnings that competence was going to be an issue this time round). If you can't be good, at least you can be is a horrible example :ko:
 
D

db

Neil said:
Well having had ISO9002 for 14 years and QS9000 for three we have just managed to fail our transition audit. The clause that did the damage was 6.2.2. The registrar was only interested in looking staff competence this audit. Part of this requirement is fulfilled by biennial performance evaluations. One of the managers had neglected to do his evaluations and the HR Manager was aware of this but had not acted upon it (despite warnings that competence was going to be an issue this time round). If you can't be good, at least you can be is a horrible example :ko:

The important thing here Neil, is that there was a failure in the system, and nothing was done. Even with TS performance evaluations are not required. They are just one way of meeting 6.2.2 c). But you call for bi-annual performance evaluations, and someone in the organization did not follow your own rules. This was further complicated by not acting on it, despite knowing about it. It sounds to me like a complete breakdown in the system.

BTW, the fix is not in performing the evaluations, that just addresses the symptom. The fix must be related to why no one reacted to the manager who failed to meet the requirement.
 
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