ISO 9001:2015 7.2 Competence

[Mikey324]

For some jobs, like the industry I'm in, you have a relatively low chance of hiring someone with previous experience. As golfman says, you set the min requirements to try and give you the best shot of getting an employ that you can train them to be competent. Its your job to get them there. In the real world you may need to hire someone who doesn't meet you min requirements right now. I cant see any compliance issue so long as you are training them to meet and exceed min required competency. No 3rd party auditor can dictate what you can and can't do. You have to do whats in the best interest of tour company.

 

[normzone]

[mikey324], I have been in similar positions. Out of curiosity, what is the industry / position you would find this applicable to?

You have to hire a qualified brain surgeon or programmer, but you can train somebody who is a good fit on the team for many other skillsets.

 

[Mikey324]

[mikey324], I have been in similar positions. Out of curiosity, what is the industry / position you would find this applicable to?

You have to hire a qualified brain surgeon or programmer, but you can train somebody who is a good fit on the team for many other skillsets.

i'm in the steel industry. we don't really find operators, we have to find a good candidate and make them an operator.

 

[Johnnymo62]

An ex-Quality Director I knew took the reverse tack. She documented that if an Oeprator wasn't written up for goofing up their job, they were not incompetent, therefore competent.

 

[Big Jim]

Baloney. Their procedures allow them to deviate from the "job description," whatever that is. We have no idea whether their "descriptions" even address competency vs. background. As long as they evaluate their employees' competency do to the job at hand and have records of that evaluation, they should be good.

The standard is clear. The standard trumps their procedure. In other words if the procedure is in variance with the standard there is a problem. The organization has to define the competencies in some manner or another. If they choose to accept a candidate that doesn't match they have a problem unless they go back and redefine their requirement.

The standard would mean nothing if anyone could choose what to or not follow.

 

[Mike S.]

The standard is clear. The standard trumps their procedure. In other words if the procedure is in variance with the standard there is a problem. The organization has to define the competencies in some manner or another. If they choose to accept a candidate that doesn't match they have a problem unless they go back and redefine their requirement.

The standard would mean nothing if anyone could choose what to or not follow.

The OP said their procedures covering competence said that "managers can consider other criteria or referrals and might hire someone without minimum requirements described in the job description".

Sounds to me like they list multiple ways to determine competence, which IMO is perfectly reasonable. How does that not meet the standard's requirements?

 

[RoxaneB]

Job descriptions are merely guidelines on what an organization is looking for, but they merely state qualifications...not competencies.

Like Mikey, I come from a steel industry background. Our operators needed a high school diploma - that's a qualification. Whether or not they were good operators, this was determined by the process outputs - as long as any nonconformances or defects were within our statistically determined range, they were competent. Those who were not competent required some special attention - sometimes training, sometimes moved to a new position, sometimes shown the door.

Now I'm in healthcare. We have RNs, RPNs, PSWs, HSWs, DWS, and Therapists galore. In the clinical training room beside me, they've been doing IV restart training for the past couple of days. The nurses are all qualified RNs or RPNs, therefore qualified. However, many haven't done an IV restart in years (or only on dummies in school), therefore their competency is lacking...hence the current round of training going on.

Let's look at ISO 9001 certification. How many of us know of a company that has that lovely piece of paper up on the wall, but we all know their system is...to be polite...lacking? They've met the requirements of the standard, but their rates are horrible, their processes inconsistent or unreliable?

As far as I'm concerned, hire whomever you want for a job. Some jobs may require specific qualifications. This qualification, however, by no stretch of the imagination, says that the individual is competent.

 

[Mikey324]

Agree! Sometimes the area you are in makes a difference. I would love to have a pool of candidates who already meet requirements. That's not the case though. My opinion is set your min requirements at a realistic level. Don't tie your own hands. You need a training program robust enough to create the operators you need. At the end of the day its the organizations job to make a competent associate, whether they are assembling a part, running a press, or building a space ship.

 

[Jim Wynne]

The standard is clear. The standard trumps their procedure. In other words if the procedure is in variance with the standard there is a problem. The organization has to define the competencies in some manner or another. If they choose to accept a candidate that doesn't match they have a problem unless they go back and redefine their requirement.

The standard would mean nothing if anyone could choose what to or not follow.

The "requirements" in job descriptions do not mean that any person who meets those requirements will be competent. In fact, in nearly all cases training will be necessary for even the most qualified candidates. Furthermore, the "requirements" in job descriptions are not evidence of the fact that a person who doesn't meet them is incapable of competency on the job. Some requirements might have nothing to do with competence. The only way to verify competence is observation of job performance and results.

 

[John Broomfield]

I trust that we would want our surgeon to be competent:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1964676/pdf/rcse8805-429.pdf

Because it costs a lot to train and assess surgeons a lot of emphasis is placed on selecting only those of us who have to potential and commitment to become and remain excellent surgeons.

Hence, surgeons are serious about excluding those who would risk their reputations.

I guess that our “suck it and see” approach merely reflects much lower costs of failure. But recruiting someone who is unlikely to become competent wastes the training budget and plays havoc with the life of the unsuccessful recruit and their family.

By carefully defining the abilities, skills and knowledge required to do the job well we can save money and avoid disrupting the lives of our recruits.