Competency assessment program for companies of 100 workers or fewer

A competency program is how a company proves its workers can do their tasks safely without supervision. It answers four questions for every worker: what does their position need, have they been trained, has someone watched them do the work, and when are they checked again.

Most small companies already do some of this. A new hire shadows an experienced hand, a supervisor decides when they are ready, and tickets sit in a filing cabinet or an online training system. What is usually missing is the written standard and the record: what exactly was checked, who checked it, on what date, and what happens when the task changes.

That record is what a prime contractor asks for after an incident, and what a COR or SECOR audit samples. Our program gives you the standard, the forms and the register, so the checks your supervisors already make are written down and count.

Training is what a worker has been taught, and it is usually proven by a certificate. Competency is whether they can do the task safely on your site, with your equipment, and it is proven by someone watching them do it.

A worker can hold a forklift ticket from a course and still not be ready for your forklift in your yard. Alberta's OHS Act describes a competent worker as adequately qualified, suitably trained and with sufficient experience to work safely without supervision, or with only a minimal degree of it. Each of our records follows that same order: Part A confirms the qualification and training, Part B is the watched demonstration, and Part C is the decision.

It fits on one page, and every line is something the assessor can actually see. Our records are grouped by what is checked: before starting, doing the work, and finishing. They do not quiz the worker with written questions; one line asks them to explain why the key steps matter and what to do in an emergency.

Where a hazard on the task is severe and rated High, up to three key steps go in a box at the top marked "Must be Competent on every line to pass". On a ladder, that is keeping three points of contact and tying off a harness where fall protection is required. A worker who misses one of those lines is not yet competent, however well they did the rest.

Most companies reassess every 3 years. You choose your own interval when you start, and it prints on every record and sets the due date in your register. Whatever the interval, a worker is also checked again when they are given a new task, when the task or its equipment changes, and after an incident.

With the Hazard and Competency Program there is one more trigger. When a reviewed hazard assessment changes a must-pass step, the record gets a new revision and every worker signed off on the old one shows as due again.