TL;DR: RFSL Utbildning certifies organisations on hbtqi competence. A certified workplace used to receive a PDF, and the office struggled to say which workplaces held a certificate or how long each one remained valid. Its operations manager had been asking for a service like TRUE for years. Certificates now go out in batches, and the organisation can see whether the recipient opened the email, how many people viewed the certificate and how many downloaded it.
Being able to be yourself at work should be unremarkable. An hbtqi certification moves a workplace closer to that by raising knowledge, improving the working environment, and improving how the organisation treats the people it serves.
Alex Apelman is operations manager at RFSL Utbildning, which means the daily operational responsibility for the business. He meets clients in sales meetings, writes the contracts and books the trainers onto each programme.
A PDF. Every certified workplace got the same file, carrying nothing a third party could check and nothing that told the office what happened to it next. Apelman had wanted something better for years, which is worth saying plainly: this was not an organisation that needed persuading there was a problem.
“Before TRUE our hbtqi certified organisations received a PDF. I had been asking for a service like yours for a long time, because I wanted to secure how we and our certified organisations handle the certificate.”
Not the file. The record behind it. A certification with an expiry date is a claim about the present tense, and once the issuer cannot say with confidence who currently holds a valid one, the certification starts describing the past while looking like it describes today.
“Keeping track of which organisations had received a certificate, how long they were valid, and that the certificate was, in my view, not good looking enough.”
Alex Apelman, Operations Manager, RFSL Utbildning
That risk sits with the issuer, not the holder. RFSL Utbildning has spent years building what the certification means, and a register it could not answer questions from put that meaning at the mercy of whoever chose to display an old PDF.
The certificate stopped disappearing the moment it was sent. Batches go out in one action, and three numbers come back that the office never had before.
“It is very easy to send out several certificates at once, to see that the recipient has opened their email, to see how many people have looked at the certificate and how many have downloaded it.”
Alex Apelman, Operations Manager, RFSL Utbildning
Delivery stops being an assumption. Interest becomes something the organisation can measure rather than guess at. And a certified workplace that publishes its certificate is telling its own staff and its own clients what it has done, which is the entire point of certifying and the one thing a PDF sitting in an inbox never achieves.
It has to. Apelman describes autumn as their most intense period, with educators out giving lectures three to four days a week across the country. A certification process that needs manual chasing does not survive that calendar, and the question of who holds a valid certificate does not pause while the trainers are on the road.
Nothing right now. Asked what would make the handling easier, Apelman says no, not at the moment, and that they are very satisfied.
RFSL publishes its work, including its training arm, on its own site: RFSL. For how other certifying bodies handle validity and withdrawal, see certificate expiry and renewal management, or read Giva Sverige, which certifies the person rather than the organisation.
Organisations, on hbtqi competence. The certification raises knowledge, improves the working environment and improves how an organisation treats the people it serves.
A PDF. RFSL Utbildning’s operations manager says he had been asking for a service like TRUE for a long time, to secure how the certificate was handled.
Keeping track. The organisation struggled to know which workplaces held a certificate and how long each remained valid, and the certificate was not considered good looking enough.
Whether the recipient opened the email, how many people viewed the certificate and how many downloaded it. It can also send several certificates at once.
Alex Apelman, Operations Manager at RFSL Utbildning, who holds the daily operational responsibility for the business.
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