Prevent RCA Skill Erosion

A client recently professed to me that the main struggle his organization is experiencing with regards to their root cause analysis program is that their Sologic-trained Facilitators have experienced what he referred to as “RCA skill erosion”. They became too busy to perform many RCAs, and too much time had passed since their last one. Like an unsharpened chef’s knife, their RCA skills became dull and they were struggling to work through RCAs they were now trying to complete. 

This is a situation I’m seeing more often since the recession hit - most companies have downsized significantly and passed more responsibility to the remaining employees. The priority has shifted from learning from mistakes and preventing incidents, to simply getting things back online and moving on. Everyone is overloaded with work, and management is no longer mandating effective RCA.

So how can this situation be prevented?

The most effective way to prevent RCA skill erosion is to plan ahead. Before you train your people in any RCA methodology, have a structured plan for how and when they will be expected to use the process. We recommend that each trained employee conduct an RCA within two weeks of finishing class. Ideally, each person entering class will already have an assigned RCA that they are expected to complete immediately after class.  If that isn’t possible, we recommend choosing a relatively small and simple problem. Some also find it useful to have facilitators work in pairs. This will help build confidence and reinforce the training you have invested in. 

An alternative option is to schedule an additional day immediately following the training class, which is dedicated to working current problems within your organization.  This not only builds facilitator skills, it immediately delivers solutions that create a return on the training investment (client data indicates the average RCA saves over $25k/yr!).

Another way to prevent skill erosion is to set formal threshold criteria that clarifies when an RCA is required.  Create a rotation of facilitators so that the work is evenly distributed and each person has opportunities to grow their skills. Don’t be afraid to have your team work RCAs in different functional areas, or to act as participants in RCAs being facilitated by their peers.

Sologic offers a number of ways to help keep your RCA skills fresh:

• Free webinars – visit our webinars page for a current list of topics and to register.
• Online training – this is great for people new to RCA, or those who want to refresh their skills: Learn more on our eRCA Fundamentals page.
• Sologic mentor program – a low-cost way to leverage Sologic expertise for help with investigations or to answer RCA-related questions.  Learn more and submit your request on the 1-on-1 RCA Mentoring page.

What To Do Once RCA Skill Erosion Has Begun

Learn more about Sologic RCA