Do you know what Industry OneCARD does? We deal with WASTE!
As a Tech start-up business, we are always asked ''What does Industry OneCARD do?
My answer is simple.
We deal with WASTE.
Waste of Time,
Waste of Productivity
Waste of Training
Waste of Opportunity.
Waste of your hard-earnt profit
Over the past decade as an enterprise training manager in blue-collar industries, I have mobilised employees to a large number of sites, both on and offshore and gained a unique helicopter view of issues relating to employee training and licence requirements.
The view was not pretty.
If you looked at each significant client, site or contractor in isolation, you could easily justify issues experienced were caused by a single identity.
Having a birds-eye view, I realised issues around the collection and maintenance of employee training records and licences are systemic and not attached to any client, site, contractor, management team, supervisor or demographics of an employee, it is widespread and growing.
Research into other industries found the problem was identical.
So, what is going on here?
There are a few impacting factors, which we will cover in our series of information and awareness blogs over the next few weeks, but the one that stood out and resonated with me as significant, was companies ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater’ when they introduced digital technology to babysit their employee skills matrix.
You might ask WHY … I did!
In Australia, all employers (big and small) have a legal responsibility to ensure they collect and maintain evidence of a trained and competent workforce.
The keyword is evidence! The grandfather clause used for decades ‘’I know Fred, I have worked with him for years’’ no longer is acceptable.
If you are using digital technology to manage your Employee Skills Matrix, instead of reducing risk to your business, you may be increasing the potential of non-compliance!!!! that’s a bit scary.
So why is something that has been sold to industry to make our lives easier, provide efficiency and more accessibility, and visibility, having the opposite effect?
Ironically. not having a trained and competent team to manage the data!
Using Digital Technology to drive efficiency is like buying a flash car with all the mod cons, bells and whistles but not knowing how to use the features or worse not knowing how to drive.
You will get to your destination somehow, the journey might take longer, and the car might not look too flash when you arrive, but hey, you got there. Yeah winning. NOT!
The data in your training management system might also be bashed and bruised and not looking to flash … but hey you are winning you have data or have you just created a more significant risk to your business as now you think you can drive!!!
Digital Technology is only half the solution, and for any training management system to provide data you can trust, then the information has to be entered by a person or team that knows how to drive and has been around the block a few times!
POOR DATA ENABLES POOR DECISIONS!
So how can you fix things?
Do not do a data dump from one failed system the next new shiny thing! You need to perform a data cleanse: Can be time-consuming, not much fun in the short term but worth it for the long haul.
Ensure the team responsible for processes and data entry are trained. Training management is a speciality field and data entry team need to be experts in the system AND with the complexities of the Australian Training Framework. You would not allow an untrained or temp employee enter payroll, but unfortunately, many companies don’t value the complexities of an employee skills matrix and that is precisely what occurs.
Review your processes and make the changes to ensure capture and maintenance of data is accurate and timely. No one likes old records unless you collect vinyl.
Give ownership to ONE that’s right ONE department. Many issues arise when records are being managed or miss managed across a layer of departments who all have a use and claim ownership. The data is being pumped into the system, so everybody is happy. Now take a close look at the data.
Audit your system, check data against requirements access to all the evidence and the evidence is in date.
Not sure how to do an audit?
Industry OneCARD™ have a free Employee Skills Matrix tool on our website.
Easy, but if you don’t have time or resources, then talk to us or reply to this email to organise for one of our experienced consultants to come to you and provide a FREE Employee Skills matrix audit.
Talking is free, Non-compliance is not!
Jump on our web site for other easy to use tools and helpful tips