Did you know that 85 per cent of SME’s are non-compliant with their Employee Skills matrix? To meet legislation requirements, a company must have “Evidence of a Trained and Competent Workforce”. Try standing in front of a coroner and explaining how you “thought” the person had the training!
The majority of company directors and operators have no idea that they are putting employees and their business at risk, as there is often a disconnect between what they think is happening and what is actually reality.
Poor processes, untrained data entry staff and confusion as to what is evidence are some of the common contributing factors that impact on fundamental lifeblood of a company – employee competence.
What are SMEs doing wrong?
Here are the key reasons why businesses may not have employee training qualifications up to date:
- Training record management is not core business for most businesses.
- Reliance on a digital system which is often a plugin to another system which is being used and maintained by untrained employees.
- No one source of truth, with responsibility for the records covering multiple divisions from receptionist, recruitment safety, HR, and operations.
- Invalid data entry, incorrect evidence, wrong documents, filed under wrong names, PFD with multiple tickets on one page with many of them expired, no names, no dates, or a combination of all the above.
- Time-poor employees.
- No documented mandatory matrix requirements for each Job Description, therefore inability to track or measure compliance.
- Australia’s complex training framework and the variables in documentation supporting training and licences.
Any one of the above could cause noncompliance and the fines and penalties are significant.
The solutions
Ok, so what can you do?
- Ensure the company has documented the mandatory requirements for each employee’s job description including;
- Legal requirements of licences and mandated training.
- Company inductions and safety training.
- Client training and any site access.
- Validation of Competency (VOC) for plant and equipment.
- Supervisory and management training if required.
- Self-audit the training and licence records, and match the evidence to the mandatory, check currency, and then identify gaps in evidence.
- Depending on company size, appoint one department or one person to be the “One Source or Truth” to manage the collection and maintenance of employee’s records.
- Alert your employees to their duty of care to provide the company with updated licences and records (as they can get fined alongside the employer) and provide them with process and who is responsible.
- Review internal documents to ensure all in-house training, inductions and VOC and recorded and the evidence saved is valid.
If you find all the above overwhelming, and you have no time to attend to your Employee Skills Matrix and the lack of visibility and accessibility of employee records keeps you awake at night, then you might consider engaging a virtual training team.
A virtual training team provides an interactive platform, training professional, data entry and monitoring of your compliance to provide peace of mind and keep employees and your business safe.
This year, COVID-19 has taught business many things and one of the few good changes is that “Virtual” is now a mature and accepted business practice.
Kareena Waters, Founder, Industry OneCARD
