The bottom line is — a high performance workforce gives you a significant advantage in achieving organizational success. Research predicts a minimum of 5% productivity improvement all the way up to 35%. As a way of visualising this — the minimum 5% improvement is equivalent to your people having an extra 2 hours productivity per week.

Building a High Performance Workforce

Research from the Corporate Leadership Council concludes that to build a high performance workforce — organizations need to think beyond the typical performance management system. A high performance culture is much more than filling in appraisal forms and following a performance management process. It is not a quick fix and it requires commitment to creating a sustainable approach to performance improvement. It is a culture that goes beyond short term metrics and one that must include a range of organizational, managerial and individual principles.

1. Organizational Principles:

The Performance Management System — Ensure all employees understand what is expected of them, what the expected standards of performance are and how these will create organizational success. Provide feedback from multiple sources — not just from the direct manager.

A High Performance Culture — Encourage the taking of risks aligned to organizational objectives. Remove the fear of failure. Ensure good communications and allow a free flow of business performance information. Differentiate between good and poor performers.

2. Managerial Principles:

Interaction with employees — Help your people find solutions to business problems; coach them don’t tell them. Provide the resources needed by the team to be successful. Set clear and consistent expectations. Do not chop and change plans and priorities.

Formal Reviews — Emphasize the positive. Only discuss performance weaknesses when you also have specific suggestions for improving performance. Formal reviews should also discuss your employees’ long—term career aspirations.

Informal Feedback — Specific, timely, accurate, balanced feedback from a knowledgeable source is the most powerful driver of high performance.

3. Employee Principles:

Day to day work — Take time to match people to their roles. People who understand and enjoy their work perform better. Provide the big picture - explain how roles and current assignments contribute to your organizational success.

Opportunities — Provide people with opportunities which enable them to utilize their strengths. Training provided should be relevant to their assignment and their role. Timely training and on-the-job coaching provides the best learning.

Implementing a High Performance Workforce

The good news is that these principles are simple to understand. Both managers and employees can intuitively understand the connection to improved performance. Done effectively the benefits of high performance workforce can be achieved without the need for huge capital expenditures, high-profile change programmes and major upheavals.

However simple should not be confused with easy. To execute successfully; the organisation’s leaders must position high performance as a key priority. They have to insist that line managers (not HR) become the champions of high performance activities.

The first step is for the managers of other line managers to hold line managers accountable for performance improvement in their staff. This starts by including performance management-related goals into managers’ own performance expectations.

What is a High Performance Workforce?

In a high-performance workforce - people at every level and in every function are clear on the connections between their work and the success of the organisation. This means everyone is focused on the right priorities, they know exactly what they have to do and they are clear on their accountability for delivering the right results. They are enthused and engaged and they are in the right role to give their best. They are ready and willing to develop the necessary skills and behaviours to achieve business success.

The bottom line is - a high performance workforce gives you a significant advantage in achieving organisational success.

Building a High Performance Workforce

Research from the Corporate Leadership Council concludes that to build a high performance workforce - organisations need to think beyond the typical performance management system and instead include a range of organisational, managerial and individual factors.

1. Organisational Factors:

The Performance Management System - Ensure all employees understand what is expected of them, what the expected standards of performance are and how these will create organisational success. Provide feedback from multiple sources - not just from the direct manager.

A High Performance Culture - Encourage the taking of risks aligned to organisational objectives. Remove the fear of failure. Ensure good communications and allow a free flow of business performance information. Differentiate between good and poor performers.

2. Managerial Factors:

Interaction with employees - Help your people find solutions to business problems; coach them don’t tell them. Provide the resources needed by the team to be successful. Set clear and consistent expectations. Do not chop and change plans and priorities.

Formal Reviews - Emphasise the positive. Only discuss performance weaknesses when you also have specific suggestions for improving performance. Formal reviews should also discuss your employees’ long-term career aspirations.

Informal Feedback - Specific, timely, accurate, balanced feedback from a knowledgeable source is the most powerful driver of high performance.

3. Employee Factors:

Day to day work - Take time to match people to their roles. People who understand and enjoy their work perform better. Provide the big picture - explain how roles and current assignments contribute to your organisational success.

Opportunities - Provide people with opportunities which enable them to utilise their strengths. Training provided should be relevant to their assignment and their role. Timely training and on-the-job coaching provides the best learning.

How can SFIA help build a high performance IT workforce?

SFIA provides a number of features which will help you build a high performance IT workforce. It doesn’t do it all - but it can certainly help.

1. Organisational Factors:

• By linking SFIA levels to professional role descriptions you provide a common and consistent language of what is expected from each individual
• SFIA describes industry best practice. This greatly helps with the perception of fairness. i.e. we are asking you to perform to the level expected by your industry

2. Managerial Factors:

• The SFIA descriptors provide an ideal format to ask for and to provide structured 360 performance feedback
• By referring to the SFIA skill level descriptors when setting objectives for roles and assignments - managers can simply set clear and consistent objectives
• Suggestions for performance improvement can be made very specific with the help of the SFIA skill and level descriptors to aid as examples
• Longer term career aspirations can be enabled by looking at the full range of SFIA skill and level descriptors. It provides a great tool for opening up conversations on what career opportunities are available and what employees are interested in pursuing
• Fair and accurate feedback is far more likely when employees, managers and peers are working to a common reference framework

3. Employee Factors:

• SFIA provides an excellent framework to both identify and articulate employees strengths and preferences
• SFIA provides a framework to identify the types of assignments or job opportunities which will make the most of peoples’ strengths and stretch individuals leading to higher performance
• By using SFIA as a common reference - it is far easier to identify skills gaps against current or future roles. This in turn allows the individual and organisation to plan and schedule job-specific training and coaching which in turn drives higher performance.

What should you do next?

If you are already using SFIA to support some of your people management processes - have a look at extending its use to building a high performance IT workforce. If you are not using SFIA yet, but you are interested in building a high performance IT workforce - have a look at SFIA and the benefits it brings in managing and developing your IT workforce.

What support is there for SFIA Users?

SFIA is owned by the SFIA Foundation. SFIA is an open-source skills framework. It can be downloaded for free from the SFIA website. There is a worldwide SFIA User Forum which is a growing community of SFIA users exchanging experiences and knowledge in order to help each other implement and make the most of SFIA. The User Forum also has a broader interest in developing the capability of Business Change and IT professionals whose roles and careers are covered by the SFIA framework. SFIA users or potential users can join at the SFIA User Forum.

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.

The Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA) provides the most widely accepted description of IT and IT-related skills in the world today. Although created and maintained in the UK it has been accessed by approximately 15,000 organisations from more than 100 countries. It is used in a range of industries and covers the private, public and not-for-profit sectors. It has been translated into Japanese, Chinese and Spanish.

2. How do I get hold of the SFIA Framework?

The framework is owned by the SFIA Foundation. SFIA is an open-source skills framework. It is open to use by anyone and is free of charge if it is used as a skills management tool within an organisation. It can be downloaded from the SFIA website.

3. What does the SFIA framework look like?

The framework is a large matrix with 2 dimensions. The first dimension is levels of responsibility and the second dimension is skills.

4. What is a SFIA Level of Responsibility?

SFIA describes 7 levels of responsibility. They each describe 4 key dimensions of responsibility: autonomy, influence, complexity and business skills. The levels are numbered and labelled for ease of reference

• Level 1 - Follow
• Level 2 - Assist
• Level 3 - Apply
• Level 4 - Enable
• Level 5 - Ensure, advise
• Level 6 - initiate, influence
• Level 7 - Set strategy, envision

5. What are SFIA skills?

SFIA describes 86 skills. Each skill has an overall definition and then a more detailed descriptor for which ever of the 7 levels that skill is recognised. There are a total of 295 descriptors. 3 examples of the skills described in the framework are Project Management, Enterprise Architecture & Quality Assurance.

6. What is the scope covered by SFIA skills?

The skills cover mainstream IT, user IT and also the interface of IT and business. The 86 skills are grouped into 6 categories: Strategy & Architecture, Business Change, Solution Development & Implementation, Service Management, Procurement and Management Support and Client Interface. They provide definitions for all skills needed by people and organisations involved in delivering and exploiting IT systems.

7. Why do organisations use SFIA?

Organisations use SFIA to improve their people management processes and to help solve critical business problems impacting their people. SFIA can support people management processes such as organisation and role design, training and development, career development, workforce planning, recruitment and performance management. Typical business problems helped by using SFIA are IT out-sourcing, mergers and acquisitions, transformations of IT organisations and talent management in IT organisations.

8. Is SFIA up to date?

SFIA’s aim is to reflect current IT practice not to dictate it. To this end it is produced collaboratively by the industry for the industry. In this way it stays relevant, practical and useful. The framework is constantly revised and updated. Version 4 was published in December 2008.

9. What support is there for SFIA Users?

There is a worldwide SFIA User Forum which is a growing community of SFIA users exchanging experiences and knowledge in order to help each other implement and manage the Skills Framework. It also has a broader interest in developing the capability of Business Change and IT professionals whose roles and careers are covered by the SFIA framework. Users can join at the SFIA User Forum.

10. When spoken; SFIA is usually pronounced like the girl’s name ‘Sophia’.

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.