Training Plan

As discussed in the post “CVs and JDs and Training Plans” the training plan takes the job description and then says what a given individual needs for training requirements. It does this by looking at the role on a job description and cross-referencing it with the training requirements for the role established by the process owner.

The functional manager is responsible for determining for any given job which roles within a process an individual has.

The process owner, for each process, then sets the training requirements for each role.

Take, for example, a job description that has these three job responsibilities

• Lead inspection readiness activities and provide support during regulatory site inspections
• Participate in the vendor management process including the creation and review of Quality Agreements with suppliers
• Write, review and manage approval of deviations, change controls and CAPA’s

Those three bullets contain a ton of job requirements that translate to roles in processes.

Process	Role
Inspection Readiness	Lead
Regulatory Site Inspections	Support
Vendor Management	participant
Quality Agreements	Author Review
Deviation/CAPA	Author Reviewer Approver
Change Control	Author Reviewer Approver

The functional manager when writing the job description should understand the exact roles in the processes. A good practice is to have a catalog as part of the process framework. For example, participant may not be the right role name and a more specific role should be used.

The process owner for each of those processes has (usually with help from the training unit) determined the right training for each role. These are usually made up of curricula with individual items.

It’s useful to think of these curricula as building blocks. For example, quality agreements, deviation/CAPA, and change control all have a technical writing curricula. The training unit can have a curricula for technical writing and add that to specific roles as appropriate.

The training plan is a key record, on which everything else hinges.

In an ideal world this should be automated. But in my experience it is manual as the job description is not functionality in the Learning Management System and it involves a degree of translation to build the training plan. This is an excellent opportunity for anyone who reads my blog that works for a company doing an LMS to wow me.

Changes to the job description drive changes to the training plan. As an individuals work changes, so to does the processes and roles they interact with. This is the responsibility of the individual and the functional manager is accountable.

Changes to the processes drive changes to the training plan. The process owner is accountable here.