When you get an expert in, make sure they’re the real deal, and not a fake.

It’s easier than ever to get fake or near worthless competency certificates but in the same era, it’s now easier than ever to check if they’re genuine or fraudulent. Have you done all reasonable checking to ensure your expert you’ve hired is as competent and qualified as they say they are?

Also verification of competency should be done to cross check they’re able to deliver on the elements required, even if they’re qualified and experienced. A tip is to do some quick desktop exercises to prove they’re able to deliver on the expectations or take them into your workplace and see how they’re behaving in the natural environment. Do they look at home or like a fish out of water?

A few minutes doing this will save you hours or days of fixing the issues a biscuit creates…

#bondjamesbond

#biscuitscheesebiscuits

With the explosion of the vocational training system since the rollout of the TAA40104 Certificate IV in Training and Assessment and the subsequent ubiquitous RTO on every street corner and up every tree, it’s been kinda hard to trust many of the competencies people have.

The expectation for verifying someone’s qualifications isn’t just around earthmoving gear or limited to a mining environment. While the WA mining legislation has additional prescribed requirements for VOC’s to the WA OSH legislation, we all still have a duty to ensure someone is trained and competent. Technically making sure someone has a ticket or is qualified for the task is a start and may get through an audit that they are ‘trained’. But if they are involved in a serious incident, are they really trained adequately to the specific context of the work environment and many other requirements?

Throwing the whole Vocational system out and ignoring someone has a ticket is a common response, but that also can mean significantly ‘experienced’ workers without tickets may have learnt many bad habits or have missed some of the fundamentals they would have been taught on the nationally accredited sources.

The end goal is a competent workforce made up of team members who can reliably, effectively and safely do their job. Whether a butcher, baker or widget maker, we all just want to run our business without unexpected issues from competency related issues.

Check out the video below for what can happen when one of your team members isn’t competent to operate a vehicle….

Dog runaway car vid