BCS career development scheme cuts staff turnover and absence
- Posted:
- 16:49 25 Sep 2003
- Topics:
- IT Workforce
IT staff turnover and absence have been cut at Bridgend
County Borough Council since it adopted the BCS career development
scheme.
Bridgend Council's IT department joined a list of nearly 50
organisations which have achieved the BCS information systems
quality at work award after introducing the society's career
development framework.
Four years ago the department lost several key staff, leading IT
director David Sutherland to launch an initiative to "grow his own
staff".
"We lost an awful lot of our organisational knowledge," Sutherland
said. "Many of those who left were our most experienced staff, so
we looked very carefully at how we were going to replace them and
develop the overall team."
He decided to create a culture that fostered staff retention and
development and increase the department's appeal to prospective
recruits. He also encouraged the skills development of existing
staff to meet the council's needs.
Offering individual career development programmes and introducing a
scheme enabling staff to move quickly through the ranks if they
gained qualifications proved to be great attractions.
In the two years since the career development framework was
introduced, only one person has left the department; in the two
years previous to the scheme, five people left. Take up of the
scheme has grown from 22 staff to 56, including administrative
staff in the IT department.
The council's IT staff are now better trained than before and
employees are progressing through the grades as a result. Sickness
levels in the department are less than half the average of other
council IT departments.
Another major benefit highlighted by Sutherland is that the
professionalism and profile of the IT department have been
raised.
"The attraction of the BCS approach over other models was the
opportunity to introduce professionalism to the IT department,
similar to that in other professional groupings in local
government, with direct links to chartered status," he said.
"External validation of the scheme was also an important
factor."
Even so, Sutherland said gaining staff acceptance of the formal
career development scheme was challenging until staff saw the
benefits in action.
"Acceptance grew with the introduction of a new career grade
structure, which is unique in our local human resources
arrangements. Staff are accelerated through the grades, which are
based in part on the career development framework," he said.
Rory Simmonds, Bridgend's career development framework
co-ordinator, said, "The most significant result is that a formal,
online system for staff development is provided, under which they
are regularly reviewed. Staff cannot ignore it and its external
validation is credible evidence to others of its success."
