Supporting employees to meet the standards

What are our standards? 

Our standards explain what we expect from our registrants and education and training programmmes. 

As an employer or manager of our registrants, it is important that you understand the standards we expect of them and know how you can support them to meet these standards. 

Why do you need to know about the standards?

We expect our registrants to meet the standards that apply to them, regardless of their working environment, level of practice, location or setting.

As an employer or manager, you will want to support your employees to meet their professional requirements, which includes meeting the standards set by their regulator. Understanding the standards will help you to develop and support your employees.

You will also need to address any concerns about your employee’s performance, conduct or behaviour. If that employee is a registered health and care professional, you will need to decide whether to refer them to their regulator. The standards will help you decide whether the concerns you have should be referred to us.

Supporting your employees to meet their standards as they progress in their career

As employers and managers, it is important to know how best to support your staff to develop and how to manage staff at different levels of practice effectively and safely to provide the best care for service users. This applies whether you are an HCPC registrant yourself or managing a team which includes HCPC registered professionals.

You can support your employees to meet their standards by:

• Using the standards and supporting guidance and tools in staff development and training events and performance meetings;
• Ensuring that your internal policies or procedures are consistent with the requirements placed on your employees by their standards; and
• Ensuring your employees understand and work within their own scope of practice, with clear evidence of any additional training or qualifications that evolve this scope to meet service user needs.

As your employees progress in their careers, they may move into more advanced levels of practice. The advanced levels of practice (enhanced/specialist, advanced, and consultant) are not formal regulatory terms but are increasingly used to describe the general career evolution of registrants in the health and care professions.

As practitioners develop, refine, and extend their skills and experience over time, they will reach a point in their practice where they can be considered to be working at one of the advanced levels of practice. You can refer to our guidance on advanced levels of practice for further information.

Scope of practice 

The registrants you manage must always work within their scope of practice. This is the areas of their profession in which they have the knowledge, skills and experience to practise lawfully, safely and effectively, in line with our standards. 

As they continue practising, registrants may broaden or extend their scope of practice and take on additional activities. You can support your employees to move into new areas of practice by enabling necessary training and support to ensure they can undertake the new activities lawfully, safely, and effectively. You can refer to our scope of practice FAQs and resources for more information.  

Individual scope of practice is also related to the generally accepted scope of practice for the profession. You can refer to the Shared Update on advanced levels of practice for more information and reach out to relevant professional bodies for more advice. 

As an employer or manager, you play a role in helping your employees identify their own needs and the needs of their service users. You can also support them to undertake appropriate training and CPD activities to improve their practice and help them work towards more advanced levels of practice. You can refer to CPD: how to support your employees for more information. 

Delegation 

The standards of conduct, performance and ethics provide the key safeguards to ensuring that registrants delegate activities safely and effectively:

You must only delegate work to someone who has the knowledge, skills and experience needed to carry it out safely and effectively (4.1)

You must continue to provide appropriate supervision and support to those you delegate work to (4.2)

You can refer to our information and resources on delegation for employers and managers and for registrants for more.

Supervision 

The standards of proficiency for our professions require registrants to:

Understand the need for active participation in training, supervision and mentoring in supporting the high standards of practice, and personal and professional conduct, and the importance of demonstrating this in practice (4.8)

For further information, see our resources for managers and employers on providing effective supervision, and for registrants on supervision.

Using the standards when you have a concern 

If you have a concern about your employees, the standards can help you to manage that concern or identify that it should be referred to us.

Please note that it is not necessary for you to be able to identify a breach of the standards in order to raise a concern with us. Not every behaviour, act or omission will be covered by the standards.

Please see our guidance on managing concerns about an employee for more information.