It takes a lot of skilled people to make up a rail workforce – and each one of those people has a critical part to play in maintaining safety on the railway.
So, when your staff are spread across the network, carrying out complex, safety critical tasks, you need to be sure everyone is keeping their knowledge fresh and their skills up to date. In rail, there’s no room for error when it comes to assessing staff competency.
That’s why most rail businesses have processes in place to check that everyone has the skills, knowledge and understanding they need to do their jobs effectively.
However, it can be challenging to perform accurate, evidence-based assessments of every member of staff while they are working on the trains, in the control room, or beside the tracks.
Assessments on the go
Many rail operators have made the process of assessing staff competency more streamlined by ditching clipboards and paper, and moving to tablets. This makes it much easier for assessors to see how staff members are performing while they are carrying out various tasks.
By going digital, assessors no longer have to make handwritten notes and key them into the system later on. Entering assessments straight into a device avoids the frustration of losing a vital sheet of paper, forgetting to assess a certain skill, or struggling to decipher notes which were made in a hurry during a howling gale.
Using a competency management system like RailSmart EDS can save time for your assessors and make their assessments more accurate.
Evidence of a job done well
As well as being accurate, assessments have to be backed up by cast-iron evidence to show your staff are following safe working practices, and keeping their skills up to date.
In recent years it’s become a lot easier for assessors to capture that evidence digitally while they are with the employee. That might typically involve taking photos of an engineer using the wheel lathe, a video of a maintenance worker driving a forklift or an audio recording of a train dispatcher at work.
Rather than having to film or record evidence during the assessment and attach it to an employee’s file when they are back in the office, assessors can upload the evidence straight away. You therefore have an instant record of a staff member demonstrating their knowledge and using their skills.
A true assessment of staff skills
Checking that staff have essential safety critical skills couldn’t be more important, and many operators are looking at how to ensure they maintain high standards of assessment. One way they do this is by verification. This involves independently checking that assessors are carrying out assessments in the right way – identifying skills gaps correctly and providing evidence of competency.
With more specialist staff in the sector than ever before, verification has become a hot topic in rail.
However, it can be difficult as well as time-consuming to verify assessments when you’re having to check each individual’s assessment against multiple skills within multiple criteria, especially if they are held in different parts of your IT system.
Assessing the assessors
To help our RailSmart EDS customers, we came up with some ideas about how we could develop verifications in the system, and we invited customers to share their own views at our user group.
We’re now making it easier for verifiers to access the information they need about an individual employee’s assessment, without having to open multiple pages in the system and search under different headings for different criteria.
Instead, verifiers will be able to open one page and see, for instance, how a train driver has been assessed on carrying out external checks, knowledge of train dispatch procedures, and management of dangerous goods. All the competencies are there, with all the evidence attached.
This will save valuable time for verifiers, allowing them to focus on staff learning and development.
The advantage of a more streamlined verification system is that rail operators have much more confidence in their assessment process. The system helps to check the assessors are making a range of balanced judgements, and that employees are receiving a fair assessment.
There are no short cuts when it comes to safety, and verification provides an extra layer of certainty for rail businesses by making sure their skilled teams are performing well in their safety critical roles.
To find out more about the new verification features in RailSmart EDS, get in touch or book a demo.
