Having the policy is not the same as having the record

Here are the first two indicators for human resource management, exactly as the Guidelines set them out.

(1) The skills and knowledge required of each position within a provider are identified and documented together with the responsibilities, scope and limitations of each position. (2) Records of worker pre-employment checks, qualifications and experience are maintained.

Quality Indicators Guidelines, s 17 · open the instrument

The verbs change between them. The first says "documented", and it is about positions: what each role needs and where its limits are. You may well have that already, in a position description or an organisational chart.

The second says "records" and "maintained", and it is about people. It is a trail gathered as each worker was hired, and kept since.

The same split sits inside a single indicator a few sections earlier.

(3) Demonstrated continuous improvement in incident management by regular review of incident management policies and procedures, review of the causes, handling and outcomes of incidents, seeking of participant and worker views, and incorporation of feedback throughout the provider’s organisation.

Quality Indicators Guidelines, s 16 · open the instrument

Reviewing the policies and procedures is work on a document. Reviewing the causes, handling and outcomes of incidents is only possible if the incidents were written down when they happened, and if the review left a dated note behind it.

A policy is written once, by somebody who set aside the time to write it. A record is made in the middle of a busy week, by whoever was doing the hiring or dealing with the incident, into whatever folder was open.

One is an act of authorship and the other is an accumulation. The first survives a change of staff. The second often leaves with the person who kept it.

So a folder can look complete from the outside and still have a gap nobody has walked into yet. The only way to find it is to go looking for a specific record, about a specific person, on a specific day.

Do this before you open a single policy.

• For each of your three most recent starters, find the pre-employment check, the qualification and the note of their experience.
• For your last three incidents, find the record made at the time and the note of what was looked at afterwards.
• Where something is missing, write down what was different about that starter or that incident: who handled it, which week, which folder.

An item you find is one you can point to. A gap you find is a record that cannot be made after the fact, so the useful answer to it is a trail that starts now.

Start it with the next event of each kind. The next starter's checks go into one named place, filed on the day they are done. The next incident review gets a date, a name and a line saying what changed because of it. Three months of that is a record, and it is the half a policy cannot give you.