System Features
SkillGuard is the most powerful, comprehensive and feature-packed mobile workforce management solution available.
It holds all the information needed to confirm whether an individual should have “authority to work” and this decision is enabled in real-time 24/7 to ensure effective, productive and safe working across all of your projects and sites.
Usually, with our clients, their workforce is a combination of some directly employed staff with the majority – sometimes all – being sub-contracted. Traditionally this has posed a challenge for clients, needing to verify worker information across their broad supply chains. This is one of the areas where SkillGuard excels. Among much else, it securely stores extensive and continually updated worker records and is designed to manage the movement of the supply chain across your projects and sites, maximising efficiency and safety, whilst enabling cost savings across the board.
The solution includes either physical or virtual smartcards, mobile apps and other trusted technology to provide our gold standard, secure solution.
Accessed via the internet, the SkillGuard database is powerful, flexible and comprehensive. SkillGuard gives you complete visibility of your workforce including: job roles, qualifications, competencies, training, primary and secondary employment, associations through the supply chain, work crews, site-based events, recent shifts, hours worked, occupational health status, work restrictions – and so much more.
Read on for brief summaries of just some of SkillGuard's features:
Powerful, centralised cloud-based database
SkillGuard combines a powerful, secure database and a high capacity, encrypted individual smartcard (physical or virtual) providing a single, transferable record for every worker. This ensures up-to-date, real-time validation of an individual’s authority to work today, helping to maintain - or exceed - safety targets.
SkillGuard is scalable with no limit on the number of individual records held or how much information can be stored against them, enabling our clients to manage their entire workforce in one trusted system. This is why SkillGuard is the leading system for enterprise-wide solutions and is the technology of choice for major clients requiring the power and flexibility that SkillGuard delivers.
Physical and virtual smartcards
The online SkillGuard database integrates seamlessly with an individual’s physical and/or virtual smartcard, which is the cardholder’s portable passport to work. Easily kept up-to-date, it is used to authenticate the individual at project or site level - regardless of how often changes are made to any of their details.
Smartcards store an individual's information in a secure and encrypted chip and can be updated with ease. This ensures that the card is kept current, confirming the individual’s authority to work today. Smartcards can be checked in a variety of ways using our range of integrated apps (iOS and Android) and other card checking solutions, removing the need to make phone calls for verification. Also, not only are these checks made in real-time but all card read activity is logged for audit purposes, protecting you – the client.
As the cardholder’s portable passport, this updated information travels with the worker, making it straightforward for trained, qualified operatives to gain access to site quickly. Our solution also reduces duplication of data, as the individual’s record moves with them from site to site, project to project, thus there is no need for unnecessary and costly repeat inductions and other training.
Competency Management
SkillGuard holds extensive information around a worker’s competency – their ability to perform their particular tasks effectively. This comprises full records around their national qualifications, as well as awards from major contractors, project and site events – all of which combine with other worker data, such as occupational health status, to provide real-time authority to work.
Competency data can also be mapped into job roles, enabling our clients to perform instant and powerful sweeps across the system finding perfect matches, as well as near matches for skills forecasting and planning.
Qualification updates can be entered by authorised users (including training providers if required) in seconds and surfaced immediately onto the worker’s card when checked. Employers acting as principal contractors are able to create competencies and enable them to be delivered on site as a site-based event which is awardable through the SkillGuard app.
There is also a verification option for clients. This enables the supply chain to upload their workforce’s training credentials but these will not be valid on the system until verification is completed by a trusted third party on the system.
Dedicated IOS and Android Apps
The SkillGuard app makes it easy for your workforce’s smartcards to be checked and authenticated wherever they might be. With it, your card checkers are able to determine each worker’s authority to work with no extra technology required – no need for phone calls or additional computers, card scanners or access control systems to be assured that everyone in the team is safe to work.
As well as the SkillGuard app being the perfect choice for any defined or closed site, it is also the ideal solution for projects where the workforce are active across large or open locations, as the app simply travels on the card checker’s smartphone.
The technology is best-in-class, as we use high-security, high-capacity smartcards and have built our solution around the way many of our clients work – including harsh or remote locations where mobile comms cannot be relied on 24/7. This means we offer two ways that our cards can be read – either using secure QR code checks when mobile comms are available, coupled with the smartcard’s NFC capabilities even when all comms are down, so cards can always be checked.
Both our Android and iOS apps are NFC enabled.
Targeted Messaging to Your Workforce and Supply Chain
SkillGuard’s integrated Messaging module transforms the ways in which you can communicate directly with your workforce. It works by sending messages to your workers’ smartphones - whether directly employed or simply within your supply chain - via our Vircarda high-security e-card wallet. This allows you to communicate directly with the individuals that make up your workforce, whether the message is for all your workers or a targeted group. Messages can be created and sent in a matter of minutes, you simply need to create your message - including any links, images, buttons or downloads - select your audience, then send or schedule the message.
Of course, being part of SkillGuard, this state-of-the-art functionality is coupled with full audit, enabling you to track and report on engagement and audience penetration. The safety benefits are enormous, for the first time, you can target key messages and be certain of who has received them and registered their contents.
Management of Payment Online
One of a number of configurable settings that are agreed when your system is first mobilised, SkillGuard manages payment of worker and contractor subscriptions online, which is essential if your SkillGuard implementation requires the passing on of costs through the supply chain. Our integrated subscription and payment functionality makes this simple - whether charging for annual worker and/or company subscriptions - plus there are other payment trigger options too.
As well as managing online payment instantly and securely, there is a Pay on Account setting for major suppliers to your organisation. Payment receipts and other order confirmations are auto-generated, making the entire subscription, payment and charging process simple to manage.
Linked Schemes
As the global leader in mobile workforce solutions, we bring our major market presence to you as an additional service.
Many operatives, especially those with in-demand skills, work across sectors or industries. All of our clients hold and manage their own set of records for their workforces, using their instance of SkillGuard to manage their specific access rules and agreed criteria for authority to work. Our market presence means that a substantial percentage of operatives have active records in a number of SkillGuard systems. Our Linked Scheme approach enables us to marshal this data across our SkillGuard implementations to help keep everyone safe.
Upon arrival on site, a worker’s card is checked. Our Linked Scheme capability will flag when workers last worked and how much rest they have had (including travel time) even if their most recent work was for a different client and SkillGuard scheme.
This unique Linked Scheme functionality extends opportunities to protect workforces and help keep them safe, whilst still allowing each of our enterprise clients to manage their own business rules, without compromise.
Card Swipes, Shift Views, Muster Lists and Management of Fatigue
SkillGuard manages a wide range of card swipe activity logs including every swipe in and out (and much more besides). This enables our clients to report and analyse on shift activity across the entire system, as well as granular views per site and project, which also allows filters to be applied for even more detailed breakdowns.
Together with shift analysis, the system also presents access denied actions (whether these are automatic from SkillGuard because the worker does not have authority to work today or logged by the card checker), as well as delivery of all site-based awards such as inductions or toolbox talks, delivered and recorded electronically.
Recent shift activity (even if on other sites) is also presented when the operative’s card is swiped at the start of shift to provide the site manager or card checker with further fatigue-related data.
Swipe data can be viewed either in a table format or using our geomaps to give you geographical insight into the distribution of your workforce. You choose whichever presentation style you prefer.
Again, SkillGuard delivers at the highest level to provide our clients with the data they need to help protect themselves and their workforces.
Integration Points - API and Physical Access Control
SkillGuard is a powerful, freestanding solution to manage mobile workforces. There are also integration points and opportunities to connect to other systems for clients who wish to use these.
These include:
Our SkillGuard API enables clients to access our two-way industry-standard API to seamlessly transfer and update workforce data to and from third party systems.
PAC: SkillGuard manages all the rules on access that makes it best in breed for access control. For clients with physical access control measures on site (such as turnstiles or barriers) we can assist with the integration of our solution.
Comprehensive Reporting Suite
SkillGuard’s comprehensive reporting suite provides feature-rich metrics across the board. It enables high level “client-focussed” analysis, as well as more detailed views for contractors in charge, employers, project and site administrators.
Reports can be created, saved and scheduled to run at specified times and circulated automatically to a defined audience.
mySkillGuard
Individuals can securely access their own information through the private mySkillGuard portal, which enables any recordholder to view their record.
The mySkillGuard portal encourages workers to share responsibility in managing their competency validity and ability to work, as well as ensuring their details are current.
The worker can also report any errors or omissions in their data and maintain their own email and mobile number.
mySkillGuard provides the transparency that individuals want when it comes to knowing what data is held about them and is available to them at any time without the need to make a request to their employer.
Your Data and Security
At Reference Point, security and data protection are embedded in everything we do. We are ISO 9001:2015 certified, which underpins our company-wide Quality Management approach for the provision of IT solutions, design, development, and delivery.
In addition, we are ISO 27001:2013 certified, which demonstrates that we have met the rigorous standards in how we manage, maintain and process information in a way that ensures confidentiality, integrity, security, and accessibility of data.
Download the SkillGuard datasheet to find out more:
