e-competence assessment

[Alison Wright]

We're embarking on a project to develop shared competence assessment tools across our region.   So far, we have developed a region-wide Statutory and Mandatory Training Framework which defines learning outcomes and refresher intervals in nine essential skills areas.  All our hospital Trusts in the South Central area have signed up to the Framework.  We are now progressing the next step, which is to create online assessments for each of the nine skills areas, for staff to undertake prior to refresher training.  Should a staff member pass an assessment they will not be required to undertake the training.  If they're unsuccessful then they will need to attend classroom/eLearning.  

 

The goal is to avoid unnecessary retraining of already competent staff.  

 

I'd be interested to hear from anyone that has done/is planning to to do this and share experiences.  Both from public or private sector.

 

Alison

 

 

 

[Barry Sampson]

Hi Alison,

This is something that we did back when I was at B&Q. Initially we had introduced a very training driven approach, but after about 12 months moved to the kind of assessment driven approach you are talking about.

It got a very positive reception from managers and staff, a more muted reception from many trainers and stubborn resistance from some SME's who insisted that their subject area was so complex that it had to be retrained each year (we ignored them!). I think the lesson here is to preempt the objections of those with vested interests.

Broadly it worked well, but eventually we removed e-assessment from everything other than compliance training and moved to a model of work based observation and assessment by line managers. This kept the focus on performance rather than knowledge and moved the responsibility for people performance back to managers where it belongs. Ultimately this enabled us to map all of our training against NVQ.

Barry