How to Determine the Necessary Employee Competence

[somashekar]

How are people determining necessary competence.
Is it just education + experience, or something more
As this determination is to be done in advance before selecting the personnel, is a document kept where minimum competence at various levels are listed.
Any tips about how competence determination can be audited and responded to when audited.

 

[db]

Re: Determine the necessary competence... How ?

I tell my clients to ask what is expected of the job, work or position. For example, consider a fork lift driver. Why do you have a fork lift driver? "Well, umm to drive a fork lift?" No, it is to move product. The fork lift is just the tool used to move the product. But we do have some expectations on the job. The product must be moved from designated point "A" to designated point "B". It must be moved in a timely manner without damage to the product, to the fork lift, to other product, equipment, facilities or people. The fork lift driver must be able to operate the forklift accordingly. You might also have expectations on how the fork lift driver interacts with others, and the ability to follow general company policies and procedures.

One of the easiest ways to record all of this, so you don't forget is through a job description. Although documenting this information is not normally mandated, it could be required in 4.2.1 d). Lack of documentation may make discussions with auditors a little bit more complex, but it could still be done.

 

[Ajit Basrur]

Two threads have great info -

Determining Competence - What is the best way to determine employee competence

How Can I Evaluate and Document the Competence of an Employee?

 

[kgott]

How are people determining necessary competence.
Is it just education + experience, or something more
As this determination is to be done in advance before selecting the personnel, is a document kept where minimum competence at various levels are listed.
Any tips about how competence determination can be audited and responded to when audited.

Somashekar; far be it for me to be giving you advice, usually its the other way round but I'll venture into it anyway seeing to few have responded so far this time.

'Determining necessary competence' is to first define what it is that a role must be able to do. That means what the role does; must first be defined.

Having defined what the role has to do, the competence standard for each requirement of the role must be defined using a performance criteria. e.g., the role must be able to do xyz in abc period of time to xyz quality, using an approved safe work method and be able to do the task in xyz period of time, incident free.

Verification of competency starts at the recruitment stage. The role is described in the advertisement and where claims made in a resume or statement of training are verified through checking.

Verification continues through the recruitment stage by asking questions which reveal skill and experience.

When hired, the persons competence is again verified though surveillance of their work or preferably by observing the person perform the task using the performance criteria. The final stage is a record of the persons competence to perform all the various components of the role.


So you our audit trail is:
the company recruitment procedure
the job advertisement
records of resume and evidence of competency submitted by the candidate
the job description
the record of interview
the task performance description and the task performance criteria
the evidence of competence.



Hope this helps

 

[Wes Bucey]

It is important to realize the concept is
"Competence of an employee at a particular task"
NOT the general competence of the employee at all tasks.

kgott has most of the basics:

In everyday terms, this is the order most well-run organizations use:

1. identify a task
2. establish criteria for task to be accomplished by the worker to produce a conforming product or service
3. determine whether outside or inside staff can accomplish the task without additional training (a "practical exam" actually performing the task OR a certificate from a recognized authority that the worker can perform the task)
4. if training is necessary, provide the training (outside, formal inside training, or on-the-job accompanied by experienced, already competent worker)
5. evaluate the training - can the worker actually perform the task alone after training?
6. if training doesn't result in competence, consider first changing training, THEN replacing worker (different people respond better to different training methods)
7. schedule periodic evaluations to determine task is still being performed competently
8. maintain records of tasks, employees trained and deemed competent, and of periodic evaluations

Many organizations omit the periodic re-evaluation of competence - most times it isn't important, but managers must evaluate the risk if the training "wears off" because it is a "sometime thing" versus a continual regular task being performed.


There was a time 50 years ago, that I was a star chemical analyst in my grad school courses. Recently, I went into a modern lab and didn't even recognize half of the machines and instruments. I would certainly need retraining and evaluation if I had to work in such a lab today.