• Need to significantly improve the professionalism of Business Change & IT workforce
• The organisation wanted to up-skill and re-skill many of their technical people
• This would bring about higher performance and maximise employee engagement
• The organisation was split geographically and had a varied interpretation of roles
• Inconsistency in skills and roles led to inefficiencies in resourcing
• The people management skill of line managers was low and many people managers were external contractors

Overall Approach

• Identify the target benefits from implementing a Skills Management framework
• Identify implications for the workforce from the future operating model of the organisation
• Agree design principles with key stakeholders
• Research external and internal best practice and incorporate into the principles
• Identify key professions and assign lead people from each profession
• Define small number of professional roles for each profession.
• Map these roles to an industry standard Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA) as well as key behavioural competencies and functional BC & IT skills
• Automate skills assessment for efficiencies of collation, assessment and use of the data to provide business insights
• Utilise the skills data collated to drive business decisions re BC & IT skill development

Success Factors

• Speed of implementation
  • Initial implementation followed by continuous improvement
  • Benefit and risk-based approach to skills assessment to ensuring appropriate quality
• Credibility of data - to enable it to be used to drive business decisions
• High levels of engagement to gain commitment from stakeholders

Summary of Deliverables

• Approx 40 professional profiles covering 7 professions
• Guidance notes for assessors (individuals, managers, moderators)
• Skills (SFIA) database populated
• Moderation approach defined and documented
• Amended people management and budgeting processes
• Skills development plan

Challenges Faced

• Many managers needed to be brought into the assessment. Mixed quality of managers and their ability to assess technical skills of some of their direct reports.
• How to moderate and calibrate skills assessment
• How to select a manageable number of skills for the framework
• Feedback to individuals had to be handled sensitively
• Data protection issues
• Fears form individuals about how the data would be used
• Focus of role profiles - current v aspirational

Benefits Achieved

• Consistent skills & competency framework enabled a number of high quality people management processes such as career development, recruitment & resourcing
• Generic role profiles enhanced flexibility of staff and enabled more efficient resourcing
• Role profiles generated higher performance by making clearer expectations for all professionals
• Greater data-driven insight to skills in the organisation supported recruitment and skills and capability development
• Tracking and skills development over time and linking to improved organisational performance
• Savings in budget by identifying common themes and smarter sourcing

Peter Leather is a specialist in developing the capability of Business Change & IT organisations and he is a recognised expert in implementing SFIA.

Do you want to know more about implementing SFIA? Are you looking for SFIA implementation support either in the UK or internationally? Follow this link to learn more about successful SFIA implementations.