Document {{ORG_PREFIX}}-008
Competence, Training & Awareness Procedure¶
1. Purpose¶
This procedure defines how {{ORG_NAME}} decides what competence its work
requires, gets people to that competence, proves it, and keeps everyone aware
of what the integrated management system (IMS) expects of them. It
operationalises the capability and awareness commitments of
quality-ohs-policy: a policy commitment to safe, conforming work is only
credible if the people doing the work demonstrably know how.
The mechanism is deliberately simple for a ~25-person organisation: the Training Curriculum register crossed with each person's IMS Roles in the People register IS the competence/training matrix. There is no separate matrix spreadsheet to maintain, and no training paperwork beyond one self-service completion form.
2. Scope¶
This procedure applies to the whole workforce: anyone doing work under {{ORG_NAME}}'s control holds a People register row, employees and contractors alike as first-class rows, and every Active row is in scope. The matrix in §3.2.1 then decides what each person needs from the roles they hold; nobody is carved out on the grounds that their work sits too far from quality outcomes, health and safety, or the running of the IMS to matter. It covers:
- determining and providing the people the IMS needs (§3.1);
- defining required competence per role and closing gaps (§3.2);
- onboarding and induction before a new starter begins work (§3.2.3);
- bringing every person up to speed on the business they have joined and the work in front of them, and keeping that current as both change (§3.3); and
- identifying, keeping, and handing over organisational knowledge (§3.4).
It does not cover professional licensing or trade certification requirements imposed by law or by clients — those are handled as compliance obligations and verified through the relevant operational and procurement processes; where such a credential is a competence requirement for a role, it appears as a curriculum item here so the matrix stays the single view of who needs what.
3. Procedure¶
3.1 Competence determination¶
3.1.1 Determining and providing the people the IMS needs¶
{{ORG_NAME}} keeps the question "do we have enough of the right people?" explicit rather than assumed:
- The IMS roles the system depends on ({{ROLE_TOP_MANAGEMENT}}, {{ROLE_QUALITY_MANAGER}}, {{ROLE_OHS_COORDINATOR}}, {{ROLE_DOCUMENT_CONTROLLER}}, {{ROLE_WORKER_REP}}, and the worker roles that deliver the work) are assigned to named individuals via the IMS Roles field on their People register row. Every role must resolve to at least one Active person; in a small organisation one person may legitimately hold several roles.
- {{ROLE_TOP_MANAGEMENT}} assesses people adequacy, asking whether the organisation has the people, and the competence, that its in-scope processes depend on to run reliably, at least at each management review, and whenever work volume, service offerings, or staffing change materially. The outcome (no action, recruitment, re-assignment, engagement of contractors) is a resourcing decision recorded through the management review process.
- The People register indexes who fills each role and their engagement type (Employee or Contractor); it is an index of the current state, not itself evidence that adequacy was assessed — that evidence lives in the management review records.
3.1.2 Determining the competence each role needs¶
Required competence is defined per role, not per person:
- For each IMS role and worker/contractor population, the {{ROLE_QUALITY_MANAGER}} (with the {{ROLE_OHS_COORDINATOR}} for anything affecting OH&S performance) works out the abilities the role calls for, reading them off the hazards and quality risks of the work, applicable legal or client requirements, and the processes the role operates. The output lands directly as curriculum items (step 2).
- Each requirement is expressed as a Training Curriculum item whose Audience field names the roles that need it (options mirror People.IMS Roles, plus All / Worker / Contractor). Where what a person already brings, past work, formal study, or held credentials, meets a requirement without a deliverable training item, that is noted against the item and verified at onboarding (§3.2.3).
- The curriculum is reviewed at least annually by the {{ROLE_QUALITY_MANAGER}} and {{ROLE_OHS_COORDINATOR}} together, and whenever a change to services, equipment, hazards, or obligations alters the abilities a role calls for. [ORG-DECISION: the month of the annual curriculum review, e.g. aligned to the objectives-setting cycle.]
3.2 Training matrix¶
3.2.1 How the matrix works¶
The competence/training matrix is not a document — it is the join of two registers:
| Axis | Register | What it contributes |
|---|---|---|
| Items | Training Curriculum | Every training item: material link, Audience (which roles need it), Frequency (Onboarding / Annual / Biennial / On change), duration |
| People | People | Each Active person's IMS Roles and Engagement (Employee / Contractor) |
A curriculum item applies to a person when the item's Audience matches any of the person's IMS Roles, their Engagement, or is "All". A person is current on an item when they have a Training Log row for it inside the item's Frequency window. The Airtable views built on this join, and the monthly A4 automation that emails each person their outstanding items with the material link and completion form, are how the matrix is operated day to day — nobody maintains a matrix by hand.
3.2.2 Operating cycle¶
| Step | Action | Responsible role | Output / record |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Define or update curriculum items and their Audience mapping per §3.1.2 | {{ROLE_QUALITY_MANAGER}} (+ {{ROLE_OHS_COORDINATOR}} for OH&S items) | Training Curriculum rows |
| 2 | Keep each person's IMS Roles, Engagement, and Status current so the matrix join is accurate | {{ROLE_DOCUMENT_CONTROLLER}} | Updated People rows |
| 3 | Deliver training: self-guided pages under docs/training/, instructor-led sessions, external courses, or toolbox talks, per the item's material link |
Item deliverer (per item); each person for self-guided items | Delivered training |
| 4 | Capture each completion via the Training Completion form (Person, Item, Method, Attestation; Completion Date auto-filled) | The person trained | Training Log row |
| 5 | Chase outstanding items: A4 emails each person their overdue/ due items monthly; persistent gaps surface to the {{ROLE_QUALITY_MANAGER}} via the weekly A1 digest | Automation; {{ROLE_QUALITY_MANAGER}} follows up | Reminder emails; follow-up actions |
| 6 | Close competence gaps that training alone does not fix (§3.2.4) and evaluate effectiveness | {{ROLE_QUALITY_MANAGER}} / {{ROLE_OHS_COORDINATOR}} | Training Log notes; CAPA where raised |
| 7 | Snapshot the Training Log quarterly, and after each completed onboarding, into docs/records/training/ |
{{ROLE_QUALITY_MANAGER}} | docs/records/training/YYYY-MM-<slug>.md |
Delivery methods in step 3 correspond exactly to the Training Log Method
options (Self-guided material, Instructor-led, External course, Toolbox talk).
Self-guided pages live under docs/training/ (e.g. the IMS induction, hazard
and incident reporting, document lifecycle for authors, and emergency response
basics pages) and are maintained pages, not controlled documents.
3.2.3 Onboarding and induction¶
No one starts work under {{ORG_NAME}}'s control before their induction hook is complete:
| Step | Action | Responsible role | Output / record |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Create the People row (Name, Email, Engagement, IMS Roles, Start Date, Status: Active) before day one | {{ROLE_DOCUMENT_CONTROLLER}} | People row |
| 2 | Verify any prior education, qualifications, or experience claimed against curriculum items, and record the verification | {{ROLE_QUALITY_MANAGER}} ({{ROLE_OHS_COORDINATOR}} for OH&S-critical items) | Training Log row(s) with Method and verification note |
| 3 | Person acknowledges the document set applicable to them (per the acknowledgement campaign mechanism in document-record-control-procedure) |
The new starter | Policy Acknowledgements rows |
| 4 | Person completes every curriculum item with Frequency = Onboarding that applies to their roles — including the IMS induction covering the awareness topics in §3.3 — before starting work | The new starter; {{ROLE_OHS_COORDINATOR}} for site/hazard induction elements | Training Log rows |
| 5 | Confirm all onboarding items and acknowledgements are logged, then snapshot the person's completions into docs/records/training/ |
{{ROLE_QUALITY_MANAGER}} | Post-onboarding snapshot record |
Contractors follow the same steps; the curriculum's Contractor audience determines which items apply. [ORG-DECISION: whether a contractor's equivalent training from their own employer may be accepted in step 2, and on what evidence.]
3.2.4 Closing competence gaps and evaluating effectiveness¶
A competence gap can surface from the matrix (overdue items), onboarding verification, internal audits, incidents, nonconformities, supervision, or a planned change. When one is identified:
- From the moment the gap is known until it is closed, work that depends on the missing competence runs under the supervision of a person who holds it, or does not run at all.
- The {{ROLE_QUALITY_MANAGER}} (or {{ROLE_OHS_COORDINATOR}} where OH&S performance is affected) picks the fix that matches the gap: sometimes a resourcing decision that moves the work to a person who can do it or brings such a person in, sometimes tighter supervision of the work, sometimes pairing the person with someone experienced, and sometimes a curriculum item and its training delivery. Training is never assumed to be the answer.
- Once the fix has had time to bite, the same role checks that the gap has actually closed, by observing the work, reviewing outputs, or a knowledge check suited to the item, within [ORG-DECISION: effectiveness-evaluation window, e.g. 3 months], and records the judgement in the Training Log row's Notes (or in the corrective-action record where the gap was raised as one).
3.2.5 Competence evidence¶
The Training Log is the live index of completions; the evidence is the
snapshot records committed to docs/records/training/ (quarterly, plus
post-onboarding), produced by tools/snapshot_register.py training and
append-only per document-record-control-procedure. Certificates from
external courses are attached to the Training Log row and referenced from the
snapshot. Honest status: docs/records/training/ stays empty until the first
snapshot has actually run — an empty folder means this procedure has not yet
produced evidence, and this document does not claim otherwise.
3.3 Awareness¶
Work at {{ORG_NAME}} passes through several pairs of hands before a client sees it, and most of it happens where no manager is standing over it. A person who cannot say what the business has promised its clients, what it is chasing this cycle, or what the job in front of them can do to somebody makes work for everyone downstream and takes chances nobody sanctioned. So every person on the People register, employee and contractor alike, is brought up to speed in the order below, starting on their first morning (§3.2.3) and kept current for as long as they work here:
| Delivery vehicle | What each person comes away knowing | Where it is evidenced |
|---|---|---|
First morning: document acknowledgement (per document-record-control-procedure) |
The quality & OH&S policy, read end to end and acknowledged before the person does anything else, together with the rest of the document set their roles put in front of them; the same acknowledgement runs again on each major revision, because a promise nobody has read since it changed is one nobody is keeping | Policy Acknowledgements register; acknowledgement campaign snapshots |
| IMS induction (§3.2.3), taken to working depth by the role-specific curriculum items | What the policy commits {{ORG_NAME}} to and what those commitments ask of this person; the current IMS objectives that touch their own job, refreshed whenever objectives are set or changed; the hazards of their own work and the controls that hold them; how to raise a hazard, an incident, or a nonconformity, and the stop-work right set out below; where their own work makes a job succeed, and what comes back when it does, in work that runs to plan and rework nobody has to do; and what a missed check costs the client who receives the work and the colleague who takes the next step | Training Log (induction item, plus each role-specific item) |
| Site and task induction before the first job, with the hazard and incident reporting training page behind it and task briefings whenever the work changes | The hazards in the work this person is actually going to, the controls that are meant to be holding them, how to tell when one has stopped working, and how to raise a hazard, an incident, or a nonconformity; and {{ORG_NAME}}'s standing rule that anyone may stop and remove themselves from work they believe presents a serious and immediate danger, and report it, with nothing held against them for doing so [ORG-DECISION: the wording and delivery of this stop-work rule for the organisation's actual work, confirmed at instantiation] | Training Log |
| Role-specific curriculum items (§3.2.1) | The same ground taken to working depth for the processes, equipment and clients the role actually deals with, so the person can run their own work without someone checking every step | Training Log (each role-specific item) |
| Toolbox talks and job debriefs | What the last few weeks have taught {{ORG_NAME}}: every incident investigation that closes gets a talk to the crews whose work it touches, covering what happened, what sat underneath it, and what has changed since; and, drawn from jobs the crews have actually run, what the shortcuts cost when someone takes them, in rework, in money, and in people getting hurt | Training Log (Toolbox talk rows) |
Awareness items are curriculum items like any other, so currency is chased by the same A4 automation and evidenced by the same snapshots — there is no separate awareness register. The {{ROLE_WORKER_REP}} is a standing channel for workers to flag awareness material that is unclear or missing.
3.4 Organisational knowledge¶
3.4.1 Where the knowledge lives¶
{{ORG_NAME}} gives the know-how its work runs on a named home, so it survives staff turnover:
- How we run the system — the controlled documents under
docs/, the templates undertemplates/, and the guides and training pages. - How we do the work — [ORG-DECISION: where project/delivery knowledge is held — e.g. the project filing structure, engineering/service records, code repositories, client-specific runbooks — named explicitly so it is findable, not tribal].
- Who knows what and who has done what — the People, Training Curriculum, and Training Log registers.
Each home is kept as current and as reachable as the work that draws on it
needs: the repository is readable by all workers (per the access
arrangements in document-record-control-procedure), and anything that
exists only in one person's head is by definition not yet organisational
knowledge; the fix is to write it into the appropriate home above.
3.4.2 Retaining knowledge when people leave¶
Before a departing person's End Date:
- The {{ROLE_QUALITY_MANAGER}} and the person identify what they know that the organisation would lose — in-flight work, client context, undocumented know-how, workarounds.
- Anything load-bearing is captured into its proper home (a controlled document via the document lifecycle, a training page, or the project files) or handed over in a briefed session with the person taking the work on.
- The {{ROLE_DOCUMENT_CONTROLLER}} sets the People row to Inactive with the
End Date, and revokes access per
document-record-control-procedure.
3.4.3 Reviewing knowledge against changing needs¶
When management review, a planned change, a new service offering, or a recurring nonconformity opens a gap between what {{ORG_NAME}} knows and what the work now demands, the {{ROLE_QUALITY_MANAGER}} decides where the missing know-how will come from: a new curriculum item and its training, hiring or engaging someone who holds it, external advice, or a subscription to authoritative guidance. The acquisition then routes through §3.2, where it becomes a competence requirement.
4. Records and Registers¶
| Activity | Register (index) | Record (evidence) |
|---|---|---|
| Competence requirements per role | Training Curriculum — items × Audience | The curriculum register is the documented determination; changes are visible in its history |
| Role assignment and people adequacy | People — IMS Roles, Engagement, Status | Management review records (adequacy decisions); the register itself is an index only |
| Training completions and gap closure | Training Log — one row per person per completed item | docs/records/training/ quarterly snapshots (tools/snapshot_register.py training) |
| Onboarding | Training Log + Policy Acknowledgements | docs/records/training/ post-onboarding snapshot per new starter |
| Awareness delivery | Training Log (induction and toolbox-talk items) | docs/records/training/ snapshots; policy awareness additionally via acknowledgement campaign snapshots under docs/records/acknowledgements/ |
All records follow the append-only doctrine of
document-record-control-procedure: the commit is the evidence, corrections
are new records, and registers are never the proof that something happened.
5. Exceptions¶
An exception to this procedure — for example, an urgent engagement that cannot wait for a scheduled instructor-led item — is requested from the {{ROLE_QUALITY_MANAGER}}, who assesses the competence risk with the {{ROLE_OHS_COORDINATOR}} where OH&S performance is affected, and refers it to {{ROLE_TOP_MANAGEMENT}} for approval. An approved exception must name the interim control (typically supervision by a competent person per §3.2.4) and is valid for at most [ORG-DECISION: exception validity period, e.g. 30 days] before re-review.
No exception is available to the onboarding hook in §3.2.3: no one starts work before their applicable onboarding items and acknowledgements are complete.
6. Related Documents¶
quality-ohs-policy— the policy this procedure implements (implementsfrontmatter); the awareness topics in §3.3 exist to make its commitments real for every person.document-record-control-procedure— the acknowledgement campaign mechanism used at onboarding, the append-only records doctrine, and repository access arrangements.schemas/registers.schema.yml— the specification of the Training Curriculum, Training Log, and People registers and of the Training Completion form (a schema, not a controlled document).docs/training/— the self-guided training pages (maintained pages, not controlled documents).
7. Revision History¶
| Version | Date | Author | Description of Changes | Reviewed By | Review Date | Approved By | Approval Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0.1 | 2026-07-16 | {{ROLE_QUALITY_MANAGER}} | Initial draft | — | — | — | — |
8. Document Control
| Document | {{ORG_PREFIX}}-008 |
|---|---|
| Type | Procedure |
| Version | 0.1 |
| Status | Draft |
| Owner | {{ROLE_QUALITY_MANAGER}} |
| Reviewer | {{ROLE_OHS_COORDINATOR}} |
| Approver | {{ROLE_TOP_MANAGEMENT}} |
| Next Review | 2026-08-15 |
| Classification | Internal |
Held in the document frontmatter, mirrored to the Document Register.