Ask a reviewer which finding annoys sites the most and unlogged training is a safe bet — because it's the finding you collect for work you actually did. The team read the VIRM update. They talked through the change at the toolbox meeting. Someone watched the manufacturer's video on the new system twice. The technical knowledge on the floor is genuinely current — and the training register says training stopped in autumn. (For where this sits among the other common findings, see common audit misses and how to avoid them.)
A reviewer can only assess what's evidenced. In a regulated system, real diligence that was never logged scores exactly the same as diligence that never happened.
Why this register, specifically, goes stale
Most QMS registers are tied to an event that forces an entry — a calibration has a due date, a complaint arrives in writing, a recheck has a 28-day clock. Training is different: at a working WOF site, most of it is informal and continuous. It happens standing around a hoist, in a five-minute toolbox conversation, in an inspector reading an amendment notice with their morning coffee.
Nothing about those moments says now go and write this in a register. The activity and the record-keeping are separated in time and place, and whenever that's true of any register, the record loses. The site's true position at review time becomes "our inspectors are across every change" — which is unprovable, and therefore, for audit purposes, untrue.
The bar for what counts is wider than you think
Sites under-log partly because they picture "training" as a course with a certificate. The competence a reviewer is testing is currency — that inspectors stay across the rules and technology they inspect — and the activities that maintain currency are mostly the everyday ones:
- VIRM amendment reads. Every amendment cycle should leave a trace in the register for every inspector it affects. The mechanics of turning an amendment into logged training are covered in turning a VIRM amendment into site practice.
- Toolbox discussions of a rule change, a failure pattern, or a technical bulletin — attendance, topic, date.
- Industry-relevant video content. A manufacturer's walkthrough of a new ADAS system or an EV platform is training; log it.
- In-house coaching — a senior inspector walking a colleague through an inspection area they see rarely.
- Formal courses and webinars, which sites do tend to log — they're the minority of real training, which is exactly the problem.
If an activity kept an inspector current, it belongs in the register.
What a defensible entry looks like
The training record sits among the registers every IO is expected to maintain (see the QMS registers every inspecting organisation must keep). An entry that stands up at review carries:
- The person, by name. Competence is assessed per inspector, so "whole team" entries are weak evidence — record who was actually there.
- The content — what the training covered, specific enough to map to an inspection area or rule change ("Nov 2026 frequency changes", not "VIRM update").
- The source — the amendment reference, the video, the course, the person who delivered it.
- The date, because the register's job is to evidence currency, and currency is a property of dates.
- Evidence of completion and understanding — a signed attestation, a short assessment, a supervisor sign-off. "Was sent the email" is not "read and understood it".
The test a reviewer applies
Reviewers read training registers backwards from today. The first question isn't about any individual entry — it's the gap between the last entry and the review date, laid against what's changed in that time. If an amendment landed three months ago and the register is silent, the site has evidenced its own miss. This is the same walk-through you should be doing yourself between reviews as part of internal self-assessment — read your own register backwards and see what a reviewer would see.
Closing the gap: make logging a byproduct
The fix is not "remember to fill in the register" — that's the system that's already failing. The fix is coupling the record to the activity so the log happens at the moment of the training, not as a separate chore afterwards:
- End every toolbox meeting with the entry. Topic, date, names — two minutes while everyone's still standing there.
- Treat every VIRM amendment as a training event by default. The read isn't finished until each inspector's confirmation is recorded — and where the amendment moves a pass or fail call, a confirmation is the floor rather than the ceiling. See evidencing inspector comprehension of a VIRM amendment.
- Log the informal stuff on the spot. If it was worth watching or discussing, it's worth thirty seconds of recording.
- Review the register monthly, backwards from today — the same way a reviewer will.
This is also a register where software earns its keep. WoFMate's QMS Compliance Centre keeps the training register per inspector, with entries carrying content, source, date and acknowledgement — and workflows that already require a staff acknowledgement, like policy read-and-understood sign-offs and accepted delegations, write their own training-record entries automatically. The register stays current because staying current is the path of least resistance.
However you keep it: the work is already happening at your site. Stop donating findings by leaving it unwritten.