What Is The Key To Assuring The Skillset Of Your Frontline Workforce?

In this series, we focus on helping the next generation of frontline leaders and workers with companies and operation businesses where safety and technical skills are required. So far, we’ve looked at two main issues:

  • In the US, there is a growing skills gaps between generations on the frontline, which is contributing to the rise in workplace injuries, illnesses, and fatalities.
  • Exclusively training frontline workers is no longer the most effective approach to preparing new hires, so we’ve explored competency programs as a potential solution.

Competency is generally misunderstood in the US, with most people equating competency with training and passing a knowledge test at the end of a course. If we observe nations who moved to a Competency Management System (CMS) program for workers, we get a clear understanding of what occupational competency is and how it is defined. Competency is a set of skills, with each skill requiring knowledge, understanding, and connection to individual performance and a means of improvement.

Looking at these other nations that have found success in implementing and maintaining their frontline competency programs, we find that their success has been in ensuring that their workplace assessors are:

  • Trained, qualified, and have verified ability as a workplace assessor, as well as maintain their qualification.
  • Independent of the individual they are assessing.
  • Only assessing individuals who hold the same type of job as the assessor previously held (e.g., an electrical assessor only assesses other electricians, a mechanical assessor, other mechanics).
  • Neutral and only assesses others against the requirements defined within a competency standard for a given job role to conclude a competency judgment.
  • Able to write the assessment summary in a legally defensible way, as well as provide the feedback to the person assessed in a manner that encourages them to continuously improve their knowledge, skills, and ability.

Failing to properly assess the competency of a workforce can lead to a whole host of issues including injuries, accidents, OSHA fines, loss of brand recognition, and loss of profits. Read our previous article on the cost impact due to lack of a fully skilled frontline workforce.

The workplace assessor is key to investing in and maintaining a quality competency program for your frontline workforce.

What does a Workplace Assessor Do?

To read the last article in this series, click here for the FULL article: What Is The Key To Assuring The Skillset Of Your Frontline Workforce

No matter your industry, we believe training and competency programs are key to the future for the next generation workforce in the US. If you do implement a CMS, we suggest you consider an off the shelf CMS enterprise software system that allows a structured competency program to be managed easily and provides management a snapshot to know at any point where their frontline stands with their knowledge, skills, and abilities.

If you need help, we have solutions that can help you manage your next generation workforce please contact us.  We exist to help you reduce risk, improve performance, and save lives. Give us a call.

 

 

Satisfied Clients

  • "CCS and in particular Daryl as Project Manager has helped us achieve a world class Training, Competency and Assurance program. CCS provided independent verification of competency for all our offshore technical personnel. This program was aligned with our training matrix and their team developed all our relevant position performance standards, implemented (candidates assessed as Competent or Not Yet Competent with gap closure plans) in less than a year."
    Alan Howells – Hess GoM Sr. Operations Readiness Manager at Hess Corporation
  • “Daryl expertly led a team that created the definitive leadership competency assessment tool and supporting documents in a large oil and gas company. The tools and documents were the best I had seen in that company and represented best-in-class thinking and practices regarding leadership in hazardous occupations.”
    Jim Wetherbee, Captain – US Navy (Ret.), former Astronaut, Director of Flight Crew Operations, and author of Controlling Risk in a Dangerous World
  • “As our workforce changes, I know we can trust CCS to deliver a training that (1) helps our assessors understand the importance of competence in our workforce and (2) empowers them to perform objective assessments over and over again.   I would recommend Competency Consultancy Solutions to handle any company’s competence assurance program and assessment needs.”
    Elizabeth Holcomb-Fairchild, Discipline Capability Manager for BP GoM Operations
  • “The reviews from our employees consistently noted Daryl’s professionalism and clear delivery of the program content. I recommend Daryl for any Operations or Safety training program design and delivery."
    Randy Robichaux, REM, CSP VP of Environmental & Safety Regulations at Denbury Resources
  • “I would like to take a moment to thank you and the Competency Consultancy Solutions team for your partnership over the past three years. This partnership has been instrumental on our journey to becoming a High Reliability Organization (HRO).”
    Barry Hollis – TD Williamson Pipeline Services Global HSE Director for TD Williams Pipeline Services
  • "It was an absolute pleasure working alongside Daryl Brister and the CCS team. With their years of experience designing and developing competency systems and competence standards, they were able to provide not only tremendous professional guidance on our budding competence assurance process but also allowed for a remarkable amount of work to be completed in a very limited amount of time. They brought expertise, focus, and enthusiasm to the project, which ultimately led to significant added value for our organization.”
    Beth Hattier Ed.D – Direct Energy Competence Assurance Process Manager for Direct Energy
  • "I have benefited from knowing and working with Daryl Brister for several years. I have especially admired his knowledge, skills, and mental attitude regarding leadership in hazardous environments.”
    Jim Wetherbee, Captain – US Navy (Ret.), former Astronaut, Director of Flight Crew Operations, and author of Controlling Risk in a Dangerous World
  • “CCS’ products help leaders realize the power of using effective leadership behaviors to influence and inspire people to conduct safe, compliant, and high-quality operations. I have worked in hazardous operations for almost forty years, and I have rarely met someone with Daryl’s knowledge, skills, and attitude for helping managers who are trying to be successful as they lead people in dangerous endeavors.”
    Jim Wetherbee, Captain – US Navy (Ret.), former Astronaut, Director of Flight Crew Operations, and author of Controlling Risk in a Dangerous World
  • “I have had the pleasure to work with Daryl and the CCS team in developing and implementing our qualified assessor training course.  Mr. Brister and his team are truly the best at what they do. Their knowledge, professionalism, and attention to detail are exactly what we needed and what we will need in the future.”
    Elizabeth Holcomb-Fairchild, Discipline Capability Manager for BP GoM Operations
  • "Daryl was instrumental in the development and success of our Safe Work Operations program implementation. Daryl was very open and collaborative in getting out our message and content consistently across the organization.”
    Randy Robichaux, REM, CSP VP of Environmental & Safety Regulations at Denbury Resources
  • “The training you created and delivered improved our organization’s technical skills and HSE culture. The Safety Culture Leadership course helped us focus on our operational leaders and core support staff - developing their knowledge and understanding about core safety competencies which are needed to drive positive culture change. In addition, The Safe Work Management course focused on our frontline workforce and developed their knowledge and understanding of proper hazard identification and how to use our Operational Risk Assessment (ORA) process.”
    Barry Hollis – TD Williamson Pipeline Services Global HSE Director for TD Williams Pipeline Services
  • “The review and analysis of our HSE data was key in helping us focus our teams on improving the key defenses. The analysis demonstrated that our investigation corrective actions needed to be focused more on engineering controls. Best of all, your team felt like an extension of our internal HSE team. Thank you for your partnership and I look forward to working with you in the future.”
    Barry Hollis – TD Williamson Pipeline Services Global HSE Director for TD Williams Pipeline Services
  • I just wanted to acknowledge Mr. Mitch, the assessor for Competency Consultancy Solutions, who conducted my recent competency assessment. Mr. Mitch was very professional, provided clear instructions on the assessment process, and the assessment felt non-biased during the evaluation. Of the few times that I didn’t understand what was being asked of me, he took time and repeated the questions. He did inform me that he was unable to coach or help me with the answers, and though he helped me understand the questions he was asking from the competency standard, he never tried to “coach” or help provide any answers. Thanks again Mr. Mitch and CCS!
    James “Jimmy” Myers, Lead I&E Technician – Murphy Oil GoM
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