7 Best Tips to Manage your Safeguarding with Credential Management

Collecting and maintaining the right credentials is essential for the safeguarding of any organization, especially in sports. A good credential management system can help you to develop and grow, knowing your members are in safe hands. If you don’t know already, credential management is the act of collecting and validating the credentials (background checks, licenses, certifications etc.) of coaches, instructors, volunteers, employees, or any other relevant personnel.

We all know about the importance of ensuring our members’ safety, and it’s in the best interest of all sports organizations to minimize risks, maximize their understanding of their member credentials, and ensure all credentials are managed efficiently and effectively. This is where a good credential management system comes into play.

Apart from ensuring the validity of documents, credentials can help you in many ways. If you’re organizing an important event, you might want to display the credentials of your coaches and instructors to boost participation, and create a sense of trust within potential attendees. If you’re organizing an advanced-level course, a certification may work as a prerequisite for another credential, allowing only qualified people to attend your course.

With that in mind, here are our 7 top tips for using a credential management system to safeguard your community:

1. Qualification Monitoring

Your credential system should help you complete the due diligence on your members. This includes collecting the proper paperwork from your members and establishing/verifying the expiry date of their credentials.

You might also want to set up a manual approval process for your safeguarding officers to check the necessary uploaded documents before issuing a valid stamp.

2. Data Capture

A good credential management tool should allow you to create as many fields as needed for collecting credential data. Many National Governing Bodies require additional compliance documents and information from their members – and your system should have all the features required to support your data collection efforts.

 3. Credentials as Prerequisites

You should set certain credentials as prerequisite conditions for other credentials. For example, a coach should ideally have at least a Level 1 Certificate in Coaching to apply for a Level 2 Certificate. A good credential management system will help you set smart conditions so that a person’s credentials are accepted only when they fulfill all the requirements.

 4. User Experience

Your system should be simple enough to be understood by all of your prospective users. It needs to be straightforward and easy to navigate. This will help your members get their admin done faster and encourage them to stay within your system. A smart and user-friendly system ensures members don’t have to jump through hoops to finish their work in time.

 5. Auto-issued Credentials

If you work at a National Governing Body, you or your colleagues will most likely organize and run courses to help get your members certified and as highly skilled as possible. For example, a member interested in being a lifeguard will definitely benefit from a First Aid course. Your system should support the creation of courses and automatically issue certificates once a member completes them successfully.

Did you know? We partnered with Learning Management System provider etrainu to support sports organizations in providing coaching, first aid and many other relevant courses. Read more about our partnership here.

 6. Email Management

A good email management service goes a long way in helping you stay connected with your sports community. You can compose, personalize and schedule various emails in advance, which can be automatically sent to members later. For example, reminders to your members before their coaching certifications expires to ensure they renew in plenty of time.

 7. Club Governance

As a sports organization, you must comply with a multitude of laws and regulations. This includes having qualified personnel, club accreditations, and insurance policies. Your credential management tool should support you in maintaining these policies as well – it does not need to be solely individual focused. It should help you paint a clear picture of all member, club, school and other credentials via a fully accessible slice and dice data reporting system.

At JustGo, we’ve considered all your credential needs and built a system in collaboration with over 100 NGBs to automate and manage your safeguarding. We also offer a myriad of exciting membership management features to handle your admin for you. We work directly with NGBs around the globe, and we would love to speak to you about how we can help you manage your safeguarding processes. To know more about our credential management feature, click here to learn more.

Don’t just take our word for it. Here’s what Francesca Carlo, Services Manager and Data Protection Officer at Scottish Swimming has to say –

“Scottish Swimming love the flexibility that credential management has afforded us. As one of the early adopters of JustGo in Scotland, this latest development has helped us take charge of our system, make any changes ourselves, and means the system now can be easily tailored to suit our needs. A great step forward.”

When you’re in charge of a large organization full of people ranging from ages 5-85, the safety of all your members lie in your hands. It is nearly impossible to track everyone’s qualifications and certifications manually. An automated credential management platform takes the burden off your shoulders by prompting your members to share their updated credentials and validating their documents.

At JustGo, we understand the necessity of a dependable credential management software. If you’d like to know more about our credential management features, please click the button below and we’ll get back to you!