SRCF / use it today

Use the framework today

SRCF is designed to be useful before it is institutional. The register is a Working Draft — clearly labelled as such — but the structure is stable, the IDs are permanent, and these uses are free to everyone today under the public licence.

Useful today — not after the standard-setting is finished

If you are a practitioner — your route, four steps

Growth becomes a route, not a hope

From where you are to where you are going — using only what is published today.

Pick the destination

Choose the role profile you are aiming at, or the next one on your path — R1-CORP to R2-LEAD, R1-CORP to R5-QUALITY. Role profiles →

See the gap

Work through that profile's table: every row names a unit, its target level and the evidence expected. Where you sit below the target level, that row is your development plan — specific units, specific levels. Role profiles →

Close it unit by unit

Seek the work, projects and learning that build those units, and ask for them by name rather than by job title.

Evidence every step

Each unit names the outputs and evidence that demonstrate it. Collect them as you go and the record builds itself out of work you already do.

Take it to your manager. A development conversation anchored in named units and target levels is one a manager can act on.

Your self-assessment stays with you — you complete the workbook on your own machine and the Secretariat receives no results. Expect to find gaps you did not know existed: that is the plan, not a verdict. A self-assessment is your own view of your own capability — it is not an assessment and confers no SRCF status.

Free for everyone — including internal corporate use

Read and reference

The full register is free to read: 9 domains, 81 units, definitions, role profiles and calibration rules.

Self-assess against a role

Pick your role profile, work through its units and target levels and mark where your evidence is thin. The Self-Assessment Workbook (XLSX, v1.1) is free and available now.

Write better job descriptions

Build role requirements from the role maps — unit by unit, with evidence expectations attached. Worked example below.

See the whole team at once

Everyone's level against their role's targets on one matrix — it answers four questions: where the gaps are, where one person is a single point of failure, what the next hire should cover, and where training budget belongs.

Map a curriculum

Map courses and programmes against unit IDs and spot the gaps between teaching and the job.

Cite stable IDs

Every object has a permanent ID — A.1, A.1-K01, DEF-A01 — safe to cite in internal documents.

Worked example — hiring a reporting lead

R2-LEAD, Sustainability Reporting Manager or Lead, has unit A.3 — “Determine applicable reporting requirements and document the reporting basis” — as role-defining at Level 3, Advanced Practitioner.

So the vacancy names A.3 at Level 3 as work the seat must be able to do, not a credential to hold. The interview asks the candidate to defend a real applicability decision: which entity, which period, which exemptions, what they escalated. And you know what proof to ask for before the offer, not after — at Level 3 the role map expects a complex case or verified portfolio, supplemented by oral or observed defence, and the unit's illustrative evidence names the artefacts: an applicability assessment memorandum (A.3-E01), an assumptions and decision log (A.3-E03), an observed defence of an applicability conclusion in a complex case (A.3-E06). The register sets the bar itself: calibration rule CAL-EV-02 asks for at least two evidence dimensions at Practitioner and Advanced, recording that “self-assessment and course attendance are supplementary, not primary evidence of competence” (CAL-EV-02).

The judgement stays yours

SRCF does not assess, certify or rate candidates, and nobody holds an SRCF level. The register gives you the questions and the proof to ask for; the decision is the employer's. Every line here is register content — check it on the R2-LEAD role map and unit A.3. These mappings are Working Draft and still subject to employer and Technical Council validation — if you hire against them, tell us what held, through the Employer Evidence Panel.

For the people who sign off the budget

Capability is an internal control

Three domains your risk register will recognise. The register is a Working Draft — but these are the parts of it a control function reads first.

Controls, Evidence and Assurance Readiness

Being ready for assurance is a competence of the preparer: evidence discipline, working papers, and demonstrable review and sign-off, built before independent assurance begins rather than during it.

Analysis, Connectivity, Disclosure and Publication

Claims discipline as assessable capability: substantiation, overall impression, comparative claims, control of greenwashing risk, and the correction of information already published.

Professional Integrity, Judgement and Collaboration

Conduct as a control. The register marks certain behaviours non-compensable: fabricated evidence or a misleading approval is not offset by technical strength anywhere else.

For a CFO or an audit committee, a competency register is how “are our people up to this?” stops being answered with an org chart.

Where this stops

SRCF describes the competence of the people who do the work. It is not a disclosure standard and not an assurance service, and using it does not make an organisation, its controls or its report assurance-ready, approved or certified. Independent assurance remains separate.

Working packs — available now, free

Three workbooks turn the register into instruments you can run this week. The Self-Assessment Workbook — six role sheets, target levels, an evidence column that keeps the rating honest. The Team Capability Matrix — 81 units against each role's target level, one column per team member, gaps visible in a single sheet. The Curriculum Mapping Workbook — 81 units with coverage and assessment columns, so the uncovered rows become the gap analysis.

How to get them

Free for personal and internal organisational use and for independent academic reference. Open the card that matches you on the home page — a work email unlocks all three. Official or SRCF-branded delivery, official courseware, assessment products, software integration and any status claim need a written licence; see below.

v1.1 Working Draft — not approved content · free under the SRCF Public Reference and Adoption Licence v1.2 · the reference statement is included inside each workbook. Using a pack confers no SRCF status.

In preparation — the applied toolkit

Six further instruments extend the working packs into a full applied toolkit. They are in preparation, not published. Register interest and you will get them on release:

Employer hiring scorecard

Reporting team capability review

Evidence-ready disclosure checklist

Data collection and controls template

Materiality process capability rubric

AI-assisted reporting governance checklist

Get the toolkit on release

Toolkit releases go to the participation tracks first — register on your track or subscribe to updates on the get involved page.

What needs a licence

The trigger is the activity, not commerce: teaching about SRCF — even in a fee-charging programme — independent curriculum mapping and bespoke client advice are free. A written licence is needed for official or SRCF-branded delivery, official courseware, substantial reproduction, assessment products, software and API integration, translations for publication, and any “based on / aligned” status claim. Full terms on the licensing page.

One hard rule, already in force

No course, service, software, assessment or organisation may describe itself as SRCF-certified, accredited, approved or endorsed unless the exact claim has been granted in writing under a published scheme (Public Reference and Adoption Licence, clause 8). Framework alignment never certifies or assures a corporate report.