Community Guidelines

1Our values

These guidelines are based on our core values of Honesty, Fairness, and Respect. We hold ourselves to them in all our business dealings, and we expect the same of everyone who uses our websites.

• Integrity: We conduct our business with honesty and integrity, avoiding any conflicts of interest.
• Professionalism: We provide services of the highest quality and maintain a standard of professional conduct.
• Confidentiality: We respect and protect the confidentiality of our clients' information.
• Respect: We treat all clients, partners, and employees with respect and dignity, fostering an inclusive environment.
• Compliance: We comply with all applicable laws and regulations in the jurisdictions where we operate.

2Where they apply

Everything you write, upload or do on icompetent.com and corp.icompetent.com: your profile, photo and trainer details, company pages, reviews, comments, forum topics and replies, training requests, quotes and questions, messages to our team, and the chat and whiteboard of the live classroom.

3What is welcome

• Questions about a course, a training or your work.
• Honest reviews of a course, a trainer or a training company, good or bad.
• Sharing what you have learnt and how you do things at work.
• Polite criticism of a course, a service or an idea, with your reasons.
• Help and answers for other members.

4Language and communication

• No foul language. No swearing, profanity, obscene words or rude gestures, in any language. That includes disguised spellings, symbols or emoji used the same way, and words in an image.
• Stay on the topic of the course, the training or the discussion.
• Write normally. No writing in capitals to shout, and no posting the same thing again and again.
• Be polite in every message, to members, trainers, companies and our team.

5Respectful interaction

Treat every member as you would a colleague at work. Disagree with the point, never with the person: criticise a course, a training or a service, never the people. Accept that others may see a question differently, and leave a discussion that is going nowhere.

6Harassment, bullying and hate speech

• No threats, insults or bullying.
• No repeated messages to someone who has not answered or has asked you to stop.
• No posting someone's personal details, photos or private messages.
• No joining in against one person.
• No hate speech: nothing that attacks people for who they are.

7Discrimination and offensive material

Nothing that demeans or excludes anyone for their race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, sex, age or disability, and no offensive symbols or images. Trainers and training companies treat every learner equally: they never refuse, mark down or treat a learner differently for any of these reasons.

8Decency

No sexual, immodest or violent content. Nothing that promotes alcohol, gambling or drugs. A course may cover such subjects only as something the learner has to recognise and handle at work.

9Honesty

No false claims about your qualifications, accreditations or experience, no fake reviews, no fake or second accounts, and no pretending to be someone else.

10Accurate information, above all on safety

Much of what our members discuss affects safety at work. Do not present a guess as a rule, say where a figure or a requirement comes from, and say so when the rules differ from site to site or country to country. Our team removes advice that could get someone hurt, and misleading claims about courses, certificates or accreditations.

11No spam, advertising or self-promotion

• No advertising, links or offers where they were not asked for.
• Trainers and training companies do not promote their own services, or another platform, in forums, reviews or comments. Their trainer page or company page is the place for that.
• No attempt to take a deal outside iCompetent. Our websites remove email addresses, phone numbers and web addresses from training requests, quotes and questions.

12Other people's rights

Do not share other people's personal details, confidential information, or material you do not have the right to use. Our Copyright and Takedown Policy explains how to report copied material.

13Your profile photo

The photo on your account shows on your member profile, your freelance trainer page, your reviews and forum posts, and in your organisation's workspace on corp.icompetent.com. It must be:

• Head and shoulders. Your face and the top of your shoulders, filling most of the frame.
• You, alone. A recent photo of you, looking at the camera, with your face clearly visible.
• Business attire. What you would wear to meet a client: a suit, jacket, shirt or blouse, or the formal business dress of your country or culture.
• Modest. Clothing that covers the shoulders and chest.
• Plain background. A plain or neutral background, in good light and in focus.

14Photos that are not allowed

• Other people, including children, or animals in the photo.
• Casual or sports wear, T-shirts, swimwear, or revealing clothing.
• Sunglasses, masks or anything else covering the face. A religious head covering that leaves the face visible is welcome.
• Logos, text, watermarks, contact details or QR codes.
• Cartoons, avatars, drawings, AI-generated images, heavy filters, or a photo of someone else.
• Alcohol, smoking, weapons, rude gestures, or anything else these guidelines rule out.

15Photos from Google Sign-In

If you sign in with Google, the photo on your Google account is used until you upload your own. It has to meet these guidelines too: if it does not, upload one that does from your account settings.

16Pictures on a training company page

• Logo: the company's own logo, not a photo of a person.
• Cover image: a training scene, a classroom or the company's premises. People in it must have agreed to appear, and it must meet the two sections above for dress and content.
• No text over the image, no prices or offers, and no other company's brand.

17Freelance trainer and company profiles

These apply to your trainer details and public trainer page if you are a freelance trainer, and to the public page of a training company you manage.

• Your real name, as on your identity documents.
• Only qualifications and accreditations you hold, and courses you can deliver yourself.
• Only languages you can teach in, and places you can really deliver.
• Experience described as it was, with no inflated titles or years.
• A bio about your professional experience, a few sentences long, with no email addresses, phone numbers, links, prices or offers: clients reach you through iCompetent.

18Trainers and learners

• A trainer never contacts a learner outside iCompetent: no email, phone, messaging apps or social media, during or after the training, and never asks a learner for their personal contact details. A learner who wants to reach the trainer does it through us.
• A trainer never asks a learner for a good review, and never offers anything in return for one.
• A trainer keeps every learner's details and results confidential.

19Changes our team may make

Our team may edit, shorten, hide or remove any field of a profile or company page that does not meet these guidelines, such as a photo, a bio, a job title, a course or a city, or take the page off the public list until it does. We tell you what we changed and why.

20Proof

We may ask for proof of a qualification, an accreditation or your identity. If it is not given, we may remove the claim or withdraw your approval. We show the bodies that accredit a company's courses as the company tells us; we do not check or certify accreditations.

21In the live classroom

• Joining. Join with your own iCompetent account. The room opens on the days of the course, once the trainer opens it. The lobby checks your camera, microphone and connection; some company networks block live calls.
• Behaviour. Treat the trainer and other learners as you would in a meeting room. With your camera on, dress and choose your background as you would for a business meeting.
• Whiteboard. Learners may draw on the whiteboard only while the trainer allows it.
• No recording. We do not record classes, and the whiteboard and chat are not stored. Nobody in the class may record, photograph or share the class without everyone's agreement.
• Attendance. The trainer marks attendance, and a certificate of attendance is issued from those marks. If a mark is wrong, tell us and our team can correct it.

22Reporting a concern

If you see something that goes against these guidelines, tell us from the contact page on icompetent.com, with a link to it if you can. We look into every report, tell you when we have dealt with it, and do not share who made it.

23What we do

Reviews and comments are checked by our team before they appear. Anything else, including a photo, can be edited, hidden or removed by our team at any time if it breaks these guidelines; a removed photo is replaced by a plain placeholder until you upload one that meets them. Depending on how serious it is and whether it has happened before, we then:

• remove the content and tell you why;
• warn you;
• limit what you can post or upload, or take a trainer or company page off the public list;
• close your account, as section 4 of our Terms of Service allows.

Something serious, such as a threat or hate speech, can lead straight to closing the account.

24Asking us to look again

If you think we got a decision wrong, reply to our message or tell us from the contact page. Someone in our team who did not make the first decision looks at it again and answers within 30 days.