Improving performance through staff's skills

What problems result from poor use of staff skills?

• High staff turnover
• Late or over-budget projects;
• Inappropriately staffed projects;
• Gaps revealed by departing staff;
• Low staff morale

These can all be the result of poorly utilised staff skills. With increasing pressure on budgets, organisations must find new ways to raise productivity, refresh skills, and reduce costs.

Many organisations don't know the full extent of their staff's skills - leading to frustrated staff, inadequately resourced projects and wasted training budget. IT skills in particular are the least well described and rarely recorded. There are now some excellent frameworks covering everyday users as well as specialists such as IT professionals or Call Centre staff. Could a Skills Framework be the answer?

A skills framework provides a way of describing skills in a consistent language that everyone understands. We frequently find that different "groups", such as project managers, HR professionals, line managers and specialists, describe the same set of skills in widely differing ways.

A common description of both skills and skill levels allows an individual's skill levels to be recorded in precisely the same way that a job or project's skill requirements are. Gaps can thus be identified and the appropriate training or recruitment arranged.

A framework can range from a simple paper based record of skill descriptions, job requirements and employee capabilities, to software with powerful reporting capabilities.

What are the benefits?

The current trend towards re-aligning and training staff to the skills demanded by a vacant position is proving to be cost effective, and has been shown to engender better morale, staff retention and consistency of service.

A skills framework supports this approach by giving executives:

	A clear, well-structured view of their staff's skills;
	A tool for more accurate planning and management of resources;
	A tool for accurate development of careers, so improving retention;
	A better way of targeting training;
	A method of risk assessment for the loss of key skills;
	A tool for accurate and efficient recruitment.

Managers and executives thus can be confident of the true level of capability within their organisation.

They can use this information to assess reorganisations or their ability to change direction to exploit a new opportunity.

With a framework in place, skills become a more measurable commodity:

	Performance can be benchmarked and compensation aligned to skills
	Managers can build teams and quickly identify experts for critical issues;
	Career development and training can be targeted at the needs of the business;
	Over-capacity can be identified and resources re-assigned;
	HR can track and orchestrate the maintenance of an efficient workforce.

How do we work?

We start by helping you to articulate the nature of the problem, before defining the precise organisational needs. If a framework is the best solution then we help you specify the level of detail, the frequency of update, the "fit" to your HR processes and the ownership of the finished product, together with the most appropriate documentation. This is particularly important when using industry standard frameworks such as SFIA or Call2Contact, as the organisation's version must map into the standard, if the full benefits are to be realised.

Our experience shows that the most critical element in implementing a skills framework is the careful consideration of the users and uses to which it will be put. From this initial consideration, we have found that organisations fall into one of three broad categories - each of which requires a slightly different approach.

We help you arrive at what is right for your organisation through facilitated workshops. This is the most cost-effective support for you, with the fundamental benefit of achieving staff engagement and buy in, as well as ensuring a practical solution for your unique circumstances.

We always work with your managers, users, staff and unions to ensure a usable robust outcome. We are skilled in facilitating cross-functional workshops and visioning sessions. We have the experience to guide and advise on all aspects of development and deployment including communication strategy, using our Corporate Coach methodology. We can also help to define and configure software to support your framework.
 

The development of an IS Skills Framework, such as SFIA, can give employees a clear understanding of how they should develop their skills in order to further their career and will allow management to understand the overall skills profile within the organisation.


 

The Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA) can be successfully used as a template for your own detailed Framework. Equally any framework must ultimately be capable of direct linking to the other internal processes within your organisation. The SFIA framework links into the accreditation processes used by the British Computer Society.

 

The development of the Contact Centre Careers & Skills Framework for the call/contact centre industry will play an increasingly important role in the development and retaining of agents. As the most recent innovation of e-skills UK, it promises to join SFIA as being the de facto industry standard.

With the ValueAdding experience of both in-bound and out-bound call centres, together with our overall skills framework knowledge we bring a robust and pragmatic approach to implementation.

The Contact Centre framework can be successfully used as a template for your own detailed framework. Equally any framework must ultimately be capable of direct linking to the other internal processes within your organisation. The Contact Centre framework links into accreditation processes including a modern apprenticeship scheme.

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