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A competency standard that is focused on the
business mission and anchored in the lived
experience of competent personnel can serve as a
valuable tool for helping an organisation achieve
its goals. The following points briefly describe
the benefits an organisation can experience by
using such a competency standard.
Driving becomes mission critical
Most ambulance personnel regard pre-hospital
emergency clinical care as critical to their
mission. They tend to concentrate exclusively on
this aspect of their work role. So much so, that in
many cases, driving becomes a side issue -
something one must do to get to the patient. Yet
driving, too, is mission critical - inappropriate
driving can make achieving the mission impossible,
or at least put an avoidable strain on the
organisation.
Figure 1 lists six conditions that most
ambulance personnel agree are critical to achieving
their mission (or fulfilling their purpose).
The Driver Competency Standard specifies a
manner of driving that meets the mission critical
conditions. Thus, when personnel drive to the
standard they help the organisation achieve its
mission.
The effects of appropriate driving are mostly
subtle. They emerge in cost savings, improved
safety and possibly the occasional compliment. When
personnel do not drive to the standard they make it
harder for the organisation to achieve its mission.
The effects of such driving can be dramatic - a
crash while responding to an emergency - but mostly
the costs are hidden. For example, a passenger may
feel high levels of stress or attending crew be
given a poor ride but they say nothing, vehicles'
components may be damaged but repaired without
question, a member of the driving public may be
forced to compensate for an ambulance being driven
poorly but never report it. Looked on in this way,
the Driver Competency Standard is an important
management tool that can be used to guide, measure
and adjust ambulance personnel's driving.
Solves the problems of not having an explicit
written standard
When an organisation has no defined and
documented standard for a job or role, it may end
up having several standards - all carried around in
the heads of individuals such as trainers,
assessors and team managers. In this situation no
one can be sure that what they carry in their head
is the same as what's in another person's. This
makes communication and agreement difficult.
Ensuring that everyone knows and complies with 'the
standard' is extremely difficult because people
could be striving to achieve different and even
competing objectives. With a documented standard in
place, the organisation has the potential to get
everyone to work in the same direction. Think of it
as everyone reading from the same sheet of music.
This leads to the next benefit.
Various personnel can do their jobs
better.
Here are several examples of how a competency
standard can help people do their jobs better. For
a more detailed description go to the section
titled 'Using the standard'.
- Individual drivers can know precisely
what the organisation expects of them when they
drive its vehicles.
- Trainers and assessors have a
precisely defined goal for training activities
and a similarly clear benchmark for
assessing.
- OH&S managers can use the
standard to help them communicate and evaluate
workplace safety.
- Fleet managers, as they monitor
operating costs, can establish whether
unacceptable expenses occur when people do not
drive to the organ-isation's standard. The
standard can help them give personnel objective
and constructive feedback.
- Crash investigators can use the
standard as a tool to help them work out what
went wrong. They can use the standard to tailor
remedial training programs.
Promote transparency and fairness
By having a published standard for a job or role
the organisation can com-municate to its people
what it expects of them in that job or role. In
turn, the personnel can know what the organisation
expects of them in a particular role. When they are
assessed at the end of training or in the
workplace, they know in advance what the benchmark
will be.
This means that everything is out in the open;
there are no secrets or tricks. Everyone can have a
clear picture of the chosen standard rather than
individuals having their own construct or idea of
how the role or job should be performed. The system
is said to be 'transparent' - it's clear.
Ultimately this is fair too, because everyone is
trained to the same standard and assessed against
the same standard.
Sets goals rather than processes
When an organisation adopts a competency
standard it is emphasising what it wants people to
achieve and do in the workplace rather than the
process of how they get there. A competency
standard specifies competence only, rather than how
people become competent: in other words, it
concerns itself with results rather than process.
An organisation using a competency standard is more
concerned with determining whether a person can and
does perform to the standard rather than whether
they have attended or participated in particular
training activities.
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