Defining ISO 9001:2015 Clause 7.2 Competence

In this article, I’m going to cover ISO 9001 Clause 7.2 Competence. I’m going to break this clause down and turn it into something you can all understand. You will then be able to apply this to your own organization's system and understand what the requirements will look like for you. No more guessing!

Ok, let’s get started! Let’s take a look at what Clause 7.2 wants us to do. First off, the clause states that the organization shall:

1. a) determine the necessary competence of person(s) doing work under its control that affects the performance and effectiveness of the quality management system and
2. b) ensure that these persons are competent on the basis of appropriate education, training, or experience

That’s right - it’s up to the organization to figure out what competence requirements are needed for the different roles relevant to the quality management system – well, quality in general which includes your products, services, and activities.

You normally see what these competence requirements are, documented in Position Descriptions or Job Descriptions. They could also be included in a training matrix or register. These requirements should be based on appropriate education or training requirements which could be licenses, tickets, certifications, or certificate-level training through to a degree level. These could also include on-the-job training requirements. These will be determined by legal requirements, industry requirements, and your own business requirements. As well as education and training, there may also be experience requirements which could be what the person comes to you with already OR it could mean that there is an element of on-the-job training to be completed before they are considered competent.

Then c)states that The Organization shall where applicable, take actions to acquire the necessary competence, and evaluate the effectiveness of the actions taken.

The note at the end of this clause actually states that Applicable actions can include, for example, the provision of training to, the mentoring of, or the re-assignment of currently employed persons; or the hiring or contracting of competent persons. So, now that you have established the competence requirements, whether it be by education, training, or experience individually or all together, you can still consider taking on board people to the business with some shortfalls to the competence requirements, however, you need to make sure that actions are taken to complete training, further study or on-the-job training or experience tasks – which could also include mentoring from another person in the business.

And then finally d)states that The Organization shall retain appropriate documented information as evidence of competence.

For any competence requirements that have been determined, you need to ensure that you have evidence that they have been achieved. Therefore, if you say that a Diploma or a license, or both are required for a particular job, ensure that you have collected and saved the documentation to prove that this has been met. If you also state that on-the-job training is required, ensure that there is a record of this as well.

To summarise these clause requirements, an organization needs to:

1. 1) Figure out what competence requirements are needed – base this on legal and industry education and training requirements as well as on-the-job.
2. 2) Make sure that these competence requirements are met, even if the organization has to support some actions to make sure they are achieved.
3. 3)  Retain evidence that these competence requirements HAVE been met by keeping a record of training completed, certificates gained, licenses, as well as on-the-job training records.

It’s pretty simple once you break it down like that.

Now that I’ve explained all of these requirements, can you see more clearly how you could action and demonstrate these requirements in your own management system?