• SFIA has been around for a number of years now and is being used in lots of organisations worldwide. This means the benefits of using SFIA are well known and well established.
• However; achieving these benefits is not always straightforward - there are many organisations whose efforts have stalled or are not achieving the expected benefits.
• There are some clear best practices emerging and issues which you will encounter have probably been seen and tackled successfully elsewhere.
• As the SFIA framework is free; it is tempting to download the framework and take a do-it-yourself approach. Beware – this can lead to costly, time-consuming mistakes and blind alleys.
• An experienced and accredited SFIA consultant will help you answer these questions & successfully realise the benefits of SFIA.
• Peter Leather is a specialist in the capability of Business Change & IT organisations and a recognised expert in implementing SFIA and skills frameworks. He is a SFIA Accredited consultant with many years experience using SFIA. He also leads the SFIA on-line user forum with members from over 40 countries worldwide.

Click here to view find my Professional Profile on LinkedIn Peter Leather’s Professional profile on LinkedIn

Common Challenges when implementing SFIA

An experienced and accredited SFIA consultant will help you answer these questions & successfully realise the benefits of SFIA.

Planning to Implement SFIA

• What approach to use?
• What resources do you need for the project?
• Should you use pilots or phasing for implementation?
• How to engage all stake-holders and build commitment?

Building a Business Case:

• What are the target benefits?
• What financial savings can be made?
• How can SFIA improve workforce capability and workforce productivity?
• How can SFIA support talent management?

Prioritising:

• How many SFIA skills do we need? What about technical specialisms e.g. Java?
• How do we prioritise skills to be developed? By individuals? For our workforce as a whole?
• Which people management processes & activities deliver the most value?

Integrating:

• With HR and people management processes
• With other skills & competency frameworks e.g. in-house, business wide, behavioral competencie
• With best practice frameworks such as ITIL & CMMi

Providing support:

• For line managers to support their people: e.g. to perform effective skills assessment, to provide constructive feedback, to support performance improvement, to coach and develop their teams
• For individuals: to assess their skills, to manage their personal development and plan their career paths
• Process owners and supporting roles such as HR, Learning & Development

Developing Role profiles:

• How many do you need?
• The benefits of generic professional roles versus specific job descriptions
• What information is required? Ho do you keep role profiles simple and useful.
• Linking to SFIA and using a common language.
• Identifying organisational specific knowledge, skill behaviours to supplement role profiles.
• Linking to process definitions such as those used to support ITIL & CMMi.

Developing Career paths:

• How do you communicate and publish career paths?
• Mapping learning and development options to career paths.
• Developing clear criteria and assessment processes for promotions and career progressions.
• Implementing talent management activities to support careers for all levels.

Skills assessment and skills moderation:

• How do you ensure skills are assessed fairly and consistently?
• What are effective moderation techniques?
• Do you moderate skills assessments using line managers, peers or expert panels?

Organisation Design & Workforce Planning:

• How will you group functions and skills?
• Which skills will you out-source and which will you retain?
• How do you build future capability?

Services we offer to support SFIA Implementation:

• Process support to HR & IT managers e.g.
  • designing key processes e.g. performance management, career management, skills assessment, workforce planning & development
  • exploiting the benefits of using the world’s leading IT industry skills framework (SFIA)
  • developing implementation plans to help you develop a robust plan designed to optimise the benefits of SFIA
  • developing templates and exemplars
  • providing Quality Assurance on your implementation plans to identify risks and issues to successful implementation
  • SFIA framework support
• Coaching & mentoring e.g.
  • supporting key players (HR and/or IT managers) in the skills and behaviours needed to drive forward development and implementation of the plan
  • providing expert support and guidance based on personal experience and our knowledge bank
• Consultancy support e.g.
  • producing role profiles,
  • workshop facilitation,
  • project management,
  • analysis of data and critical insight,
  • presentation of findings
  • identification of effective workforce development solutions such as training, mentoring, peer support, use of contract / interim staff to transfer knowledge
• Please contact us here.

Cost Effective Support for International SFIA Users

• As the use of SFIA spreads rapidly beyond the UK – we are increasingly being used internationally to advise and support organisations in their use of SFIA.
• If you do not have local experienced SFIA support in your country or region - we can provide you with support from a distance. This is likely to be the most cost-effective way of kick-starting your implementation of SFIA.  The lessons learnt from previous implementations in the UK will save you time and money.
• We can focus on supporting you via implementation planning, building a business case and providing templates and exemplars. We also provide telephone coaching to provide ongoing expert support and guidance to your implementation managers.  Our Quality Assurance service will improve your plans and your deliverables. If appropriate we can also travel to your location to provide a short period of focussed on-site support.
• Please contact us here.

About Peter Leather

I am a specialist in developing the capability of Business Change & IT organisations and I am a recognised expert in implementing SFIA and skills frameworks.

I have operational and strategic experience of implementing SFIA over a 5 year period at Norwich Union. This was a large, complex multi-site organisation with c.1500 professional staff across varied disciplines and skills. We utilised SFIA as one of the components needed to implement a significant transformation in the workforce including outsourcing & off-shoring, redundancies, recruitment, up-skilling, re-skilling, productivity improvement and cost savings.

My key selling point as an accredited SFIA consultant is my operational experience in using SFIA (deployed across 1000 people).  I have hands on experience from introducing the framework (the easiest part) to using the framework to improve the workforce (the hard part!). As Head of Professional Practices and Skills - I had strategic and operational responsibilty for workforce development across our IT and Project Management workforce.

I am a trained coach and I have experience of coaching and mentoring a number of managers who are new into a role of leading workforce development initiatives.

Click here to view find my Professional Profile on LinkedIn Peter Leather’s Professional profile on LinkedIn