Individual training records form an important part of demonstrating evidence of formal training (see last week's blog: https://www.penarth.co.uk/post/5-reasons-why-training-records-are-important). But it is important to have an overview of the skills of all of your team members. A training or skills matrix makes easier to demonstrate compliance to relevant legislation and Standards (for instance clause 7.2 of ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 45001 and ISO 27001) requires an organisation to "determine the necessary competence of persons doing work under its control" (which means you also need to think about subcontractors!)
This is where it can be useful to create a skills matrix. Typically, this will consist of a list of employees who can be grouped by job function (for instance, the skills and knowledge required by freight drivers will be different to the what is required by the organisation's compliance team). Remember to keep the list up to date as you become aware of the requirement for additional training (for instance, until 2018, many people hadn't heard of GDPR; now many organisations recognise the need for awareness training in relation to information security and the General Data Protection Regulations).
One way to develop a skills matrix is to create a simple spreadsheet. List all employees in a column, and all potential skills in a row along the top. Use the form to record who has what skills - and to identify where skills are missing or where qualifications have lapsed.
If you know how to use conditional formatting in Excel you can even make the spreadsheet work for you by colour-coding the status of each person's qualifications based on expiry date. (For instance, you might use green to denote that things are in date; amber to indicate that they are due to be renewed within the next two months or red for overdue). By using colours, it will instantly provide a visual indication of the state of the whole organisation's skills.
This knowledge can be used to contribute to your training needs analysis.
If you want more information about how to get the most out of your training matrix, call on on 029 2070 3328 or email us via info@penarth.co.uk
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