What is a training matrix?

What a training matrix looks like

Picture a table. Every row is a person. Every column is a piece of training: a course, a ticket, a licence, an in-house briefing. Where a row and a column meet, the square says one of four things: done and in date, done but running out soon, expired, or needed and never done. A fifth kind of square is simply blank, because that person does not need that training.

Three people and four courses already tell a story. Tom is driving on an expired ticket. Megan has been lifting for a month without manual handling training. Asha's fire marshal certificate runs out next month. Without the grid, each of those facts is sitting in a different folder.

Is a training matrix a legal requirement?

No. No regulation uses the words "training matrix". What the law requires is the training itself, and the matrix is the most practical way to prove you have given it.

Two duties sit behind it. Section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 requires every employer to provide the information, instruction, training and supervision needed to keep employees safe, so far as is reasonably practicable. Regulation 13 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 adds the detail: employees must be given adequate health and safety training when they are recruited and when they are exposed to new or increased risks, for example on changing job, getting new equipment or starting a new way of working. That training has to be repeated periodically where appropriate, and it has to take place during working hours.

HSE's guidance is that this covers everyone who works for you, including contractors and the self-employed, with particular attention to new starters, people changing jobs or taking on more responsibility, and young workers.

What goes in one

A matrix needs four things to be useful.

• Everyone who works for you. Employees, agency staff, regular subcontractors. If they do the work, they belong on it.
• Their role. The role decides what training is needed, which is what turns a list of certificates into a list of gaps.
• Every piece of training that matters. External courses and tickets, and the in-house ones too: induction, fire procedure, the briefing on the new saw.
• Two dates for each one. When it was done and when it runs out. Without the expiry date the matrix can only tell you about the past.

It is worth keeping the certificate number and the training provider with each record as well, because that is what a customer's auditor will ask for.

How to build a training matrix

1. List your roles, not your people. Start with the six or eight jobs in the business: labourer, supervisor, forklift driver, office staff.
2. Decide what each role needs. Work from your risk assessments. What could hurt someone doing this job, and what training controls it? Add anything a customer or an accreditation scheme asks for.
3. Decide how long each course lasts. Some have a fixed life, such as a first aid at work certificate (three years). Many have no legal expiry at all, and you set a sensible refresher period yourself. Our guide to how long training certificates last goes through the common ones.
4. Put each person in their role and enter what they already hold. Dig out the certificates. This is the slow part, and you only do it once.
5. Read the gaps. Every square that is needed but empty, or needed but expired, is a job to book.

If you want to start on paper, there is a free training matrix template in Excel with the formulas already in it.

Why most training matrices go out of date

Building a matrix is easy. Keeping it true is where they fail, and they fail in the same few ways.

• Nobody owns it. It lives on one person's computer, and they are busy.
• Nothing flags an expiry. A spreadsheet does not tap you on the shoulder. You find out the ticket lapsed when somebody asks to see it.
• Starters and leavers. A new person is added to payroll and not to the matrix. Someone who left two years ago is still on it.
• Roles change. A labourer starts driving the telehandler. The matrix still thinks he is a labourer.
• The requirement was never written down. The grid shows what people have, with no record of what they should have, so a blank square might be a gap or might be fine.

The fix for all five is the same: record the requirement against the role, so that the gaps work themselves out, and look at the matrix on a regular day each month.

Training matrix or skills matrix?

The two get mixed up. A training matrix records training that has been completed and when it expires: it is evidence. A skills matrix records how competent each person is at each task, usually on a scale, and is used for planning cover and development. For health and safety purposes it is the training matrix you will be asked for. Competence still matters, because a certificate does not prove someone can do the job safely, which is why supervision and checking sit alongside training in the law.

Keeping it in SafetyPro360

SafetyPro360 holds the matrix as live records. You set which courses each role needs, add your people to their roles and enter their training with the date it was completed. The expiry date is worked out from how long the course lasts. The matrix then shows every person against every course a role requires: in date, running out within 30 days, expired, or required and missing, and it can be filtered by role, and by site if you have more than one. The same gaps appear on your dashboard when you log in.

Questions people ask