INTRO

The VET system of qualifications and national units of competency ensures that trainees are trained to a benchmark standard against each unit. However, the VET system is only able to guarantee that an operator is competent at the time they were assessed. As we all know, skills and knowledge degrade unless they are constantly being applied. In the case where workers are not constantly applying their skills in a work context, we recommend re-sitting (refreshing) the course in question. This allows us to fill in knowledge gaps, and bring the worker up to date with changes to legislation, technology or best practice. Most sites in Australia will not deem a worker current against a unit of competency if it is older than 24 months. In the instance where a worker is constantly applying their skills at work, there is a greater likelihood of them retaining the majority of required skills and knowledge against the unit. In this case, we do not need to re-train the worker and can simply challenge test them and perform a Verification of Competency (VOC). Increasingly, employers in Australia are determining that undertaking a VOC process with their workers is a time-efficient and cost-effective method of ensuring that the individual can demonstrate “current competency”. Not all VOC’s are created equal. Because VOC sits outside the VET system and its regulator ASQA, there is no guarantee that a quality assurance process has been applied to any given VOC process. Here at Pinnacle Safety and Training, we believe that any VOC must be held to an equal standard to the VET unit of competency. This is why all our VOC programs are mapped back to the unit of competency, and then contextualised to the actual worksite where possible. In cases where sites have a well-developed VOC checklist for a given skillset, we are pleased to assess against this.