At AAC, quality is not just the commitment and attitude we apply to meet the requirements and objectives of our interested parties, but also our commitment to identifying opportunities for streamlining work and its processes in order to reduce waste.  Such efforts can yield improvements that occur over a period of time or an improvement that is a “breakthrough” that can happen all at once. 

Continual improvement is ongoing to identify a positive change and involves the participation of those interested parties that the continual improvement opportunity represents.  The following diagram briefly illustrates the cycle for Continual improvement:

Benefits of maintaining and improving on a business culture that embraces continual improvement includes:

a) Streamlining of Existing Workflows/ Processes

The commitment here is to continually improve the way we work to service our customers both internally and externally.  This involves identifying our workflows and their relationships to other workflows.  Here we can then identify opportunities to lean out the workflows and remove bottlenecks that interfere with our ability to efficiently and effectively service our internal and external customers.  Ask yourself this question- Are there opportunities in your areas to streamline what you do and get the same and/ or a better result that makes the process more successful?

b) Reduction of Overhead and Project Costs

Its important for AAC to know the cost of the work that is carried out to service our members and those that wish to access the resources offered by the AAC.  Knowing the cost allows us to make the necessary improvements to be more competitive in the industry sector we represent.  With the market as competitive as it is, often what makes an organization more successful over its competitors is the relationship between workflows and cost.  By simplifying or streamlining our workflows, we are in a better position to be more cost-efficient thereby more competitive as an organization and more flexible at being able to provide value to its members based on the industry at the time.  Ask yourself this question- Are there areas where you see wasted that will reduce AAC’s advantage to be competitive as a non-for-profit organization?

c) Embrace Flexibility   

Although continual improvement processes are usually structured, understanding when there is a time to deviate from our structured practices when it is assessed that a less formal process is needed has to be considered.  Applying the same level of structured processes to a complex project compared to a simple project would reduce AAC’s ability to be flexible.  Ask yourself this question- Are you required to follow a complex process that should be simplified in order to be more flexible in your work?

Not meeting our requirements of our interested parties and AAC’s standards for the sake of doing it faster and cheaper cannot be justified.  To find those hidden elements of process efficiencies and opportunities for Continual improvement requires us to figure out ways to do “business as usual” while analyzing improvement opportunities along the way.

Working constantly and diligently to improve is one of the single greatest mindsets in which an organization can reduce wasted efforts and be more focused in our direction.  Examples of where AAC can research into workflows to determine if there are process improvements available:

1) Manual processes that could be streamlined by the introduction of and leveraging of technology.

2) Duplications in workflows that are not essential.

3) Current methods of providing training opportunities where using more current technologies may help streamline our ability to target larger industry representative groups while not increasing overhead costs.

4) Areas where there is a breakdown in communication and interfaces between groups that create opportunities for error and waste.

One thing is clear when it comes to continual improvement and that is it cannot be done successfully without the commitment of those who are in a position to identify and analyze opportunities in their own workflows.  Every member of the AAC has the opportunity to consult on and participate with continual improvement opportunities that will help propel this organization forward.

If you have ideas of where there are opportunities for continual improvement in our workflows, we welcome the input of the AAC membership.  Submit your ideas of things that you believe we can achieve in advancing our Association and add value to the membership base.

Very often when people talk about improving effective health and safety performance, the subject of adequate training often comes up as a necessary activity but one that, at times, is the least organized and consistent in a functioning health and safety management system.  We have often heard at one time or another the term “competency” which is defined by many as the need of a person to possess the following 3 elements: 1) be adequately qualified, 2) have suitable trainings, and 3) possess sufficient experience to be considered competent. 

Now with the changes that we are seeing in the Codes of Construction with the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the Canadian Standards Association (CSA), etc. we are also seeing this term now also include specific mention of competency to also include the understanding that competency includes understanding and awareness of responsibilities and accountabilities in relation to regulatory requirements. To that end, training is considered a very important activity to help elevate quality, health and safety, environmental practice, etc. as well as the competency of our resources.  It’s logical – in order to produce a quality product/ service, you need people who are competent to conduct the required activities in a safety and healthy manner.

That means we need to train people; however, just training people won’t do the trick. Most of us know that, because simply, in one way or another, we have tried that approach. So what is it that we need to know to make training more effective and to contribute to a company’s continued success in their dedicated industry?

Managing the Training

In order to answer that question, we first need to understand the levels of competencies and abilities we have with all areas that have a direct and/ or indirect impact on quality, and health and safety performance.  This can be achieved by understanding what our positions require to be successful and comparing what each person has in terms of documented evidence of training and competency. This will allow us to evaluate more closely whether or not a person is deemed competent in their role and all related processes that they are expected to be able to carry out based on their position.

After that, we will be able to identify how we can acquire those competencies, provide resources for the training, and at the end, evaluate the training to determine whether or not baseline competency has been achieved.  Training management can be realized through three simple steps:

Define Training Needs

In order to define the training needs that are required of a department within a company, we need to think about where we envision our departments will be in a few years and what we intend to plan on how to get there (i.e. new technologies to improve our internal processes, adding new products to what a company is able to offer in to their industry, trends in industry i.e. incident investigation information, etc.).  Setting up department goals and objectives lays the foundation for a roadmap to follow and be focused on. 

At the same time we need to know the current competencies of employees within our departments, so we can identify the gap in the existing and required competencies, and define the competencies that employees require to meet the goals and objectives for quality products/ services in a safe and health manner.   In order to be able to effectively identify the competence gap, we have to have various types of information available (preferably in written form). As an input for defining training needs, we can use:

The result from this step is an identified competence gap related to the training needs that will lead into a more focused competency development plan.

Plan the Training

The training should be planned based on the identified training needs and the competence gap. Training can be internal or external, through official education, training courses, workshops, on-the-job training, self-learning, online courses, etc. When planning the training, the required resources and constraints should be identified, as well as the criteria for evaluation of the outcome of the training.

Training requires resources, finances, time, and people. All of this should be taken into account when planning the training. A common mistake is that people neglect to take into consideration that for internal training, although you don’t need to pay a training provider, you have to give the employees time to perform any self-study on associated processes that they are receiving training on, or in the case of on-the-job training, time for the mentors to guide the trainees in a manner and pace that allows for greater opportunity of a more successful training experience. 

Rushing through training just for the sake of saying the training has been complete may not allow a person to achieve the necessary level of competency to provide as strong of a positive impact on health and safety performance.  Often this rush can partially be attributed to not being as organized in the planning of the training.

The main thing to keep in mind when planning the training is that it’s not enough just to send employees to be trained. We need to know – and they need to be shown – the bigger picture: why are they getting such training, where will their competencies fit, how will they contribute to the organization’s goals with the new competencies, what is expected of them, etc. Simply put, we need to communicate the training goal with the trainees in order to achieve better results from the training.

Evaluate the Training

In the end, the most important and most neglected activity is the evaluation of the outcomes of the training. The main goal of the evaluation is to determine whether the training goals have been successfully achieved and thereby being able to identify the achievement of competency.

Evaluation provides lots of information, but most important is whether goals have been reached – whether the competence gap that was earlier identified has been closed, and training objectives achieved. There are two types of evaluation: short and long term. For the real effects of the training to be evaluated, we need some time distance so we can assess if the employee is using the new learned skills and if those skills are making any difference in our respective departments. For example, short-term evaluation can give us input about the competence gap. We can easily calculate how many employees have participated in a course, and how many of them have passed the exam provided at the end of the course to give us a short term evaluation.

However, only long-term evaluation can give you input about the effectiveness of the training in relation to any established goals.  After some time we will be able to check the progress of an employee executing their gained knowledge and experience as a result of the training and be able see the concrete results created by the trained employees, and we will know how effective the training was.

Evaluation also offers information about the quality of the training itself and the training provider – was the training good; should we send more people to this training, self-study or on-the-job training; was it effective; if yes, should we reproduce it; if not, why not; etc.

Why Manage Training

One way to improve health and safety at a company is to assess the level of competency within each department and determine what can be done to elevate our performance through targeted planned training.

And, at the end, investment in training might create ROI (Return on Investment) much greater than anything else – so if we have a process that quality, health and safety depends on employees being able to execute on a consistent basis, we need to ensure we don’t neglect the value of ensuring proper documented training.

As a health and safety auditor, the question you may need to ask yourself any of the following questions:

In most cases, if there is a serious incident, competency is a default area for investigators to spend time in determining in their pursuit for all causal factors associated with the incident.  Not investing the appropriate time to plan, execute, and evaluate training hinders a company’s due diligence efforts.  What best practices do you have or have seen that would help companies and their efforts in establishing competencies?

The pandemic has spurred a slew of articles, podcasts, and panels examining the ways Plato’s observation that “necessity is the mother of invention” reflects the reality of how Covid-19 is impacting every aspect of our lives worldwide.

For those in the middle of this storm of change, many are looking for guidance to help them look at how to navigate emerging and shifting risks in real time and at record pace. The ability to refer to generally accepted guidance helps us draw on the experience of others who were involved in its development, and provides help identifying and assessing the new risk landscape.

There are many Standards Development Organizations (SDOs), governments, and subject-matter expert-based associations that are providing access to essential standards to assist companies and manufacturers to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. Standards and guidance documents can vary widely in price and historically many organizations may have been reticent to purchase these documents not knowing how applicable they may be to their operations until after paying. This free access is a tremendous help to organizations that are already facing additional costs.

Some of these SDOs have / or currently are, developing new or adapting existing guidance for some of the most Covid-impacted organizations, related topics, and products. This process often takes years, but it appears publishing these updates (either in draft or final form) fortunately has also been accelerating.

The Standards Council of Canada (SCC) and International Organization for Standardization (ISO) are examples or organizations that are offering free access / no-fee access (either as downloads or in read-only format depending on the documents) to many of current standards they compiled “to support global efforts in dealing with the COVID-19 crisis”. Below, please find links to some of these standards and guidance documents that may be local, regional, national, or international in scope.

Disclaimer: The AAC is providing this information for reference only. AAC is not recommending, advocating for or representing any of the above organizations and it is the responsibility of the user to ensure any documentation, standard or guideline is appropriate for both the jurisdiction, use and operations. Legal and subject matter advice should always be used before implementing any changes.