Financial services company Norwich Union revealed last
week that a government-backed framework for managing IT staff
skills helped the firm save millions in training and staff costs
over the past two years.
Norwich Union said the Skills Framework for the Information Age has
helped it to reduce its dependence on contractors and has cut the
cost of training for permanent staff by 20% without losing
essential expertise.
The company is one of the first in the UK to roll out the
framework, which gives IT employers tools to assess the skills of
their workforce and to assess what training will be needed to
develop staff and meet the needs of future projects.
Gary Cannon, people development manager at Norwich Union Life and
Pensions, said, "Two-and-a-half-years ago we embarked on a big
change prog-ramme and the SFIA saved us a lot of time and
heartache. It allowed us to significantly reduce our reliance on
contractors, helped us save millions of pounds and a lot of time
and effort."
Norwich Union introduced the framework following a series of
mergers to bring IT staff working in different parts of the
business together in a single structure.
"Most of my team were from other sites, using other classification
systems. They used different language to describe their roles. Now
we do not have to argue over what we mean by a systems
administrator," said Cannon.
The system has simplified the way staff are appraised by managers,
and allowed staff to identify what gaps in their training they will
need to fill in order to take the next step up the career
ladder.
"We tended to reward people in terms of expertise and
personalities," said Cannon. "There was a tendency for people to
move up within the same specialisation. But the SFIA allowed us to
reward people who have a breadth of skills, which is so vital for
us."
The SFIA provided Norwich Union with a complete audit of its IT
staff's skills, which has allowed Cannon and his team to deploy
staff more effectively and reduced the time staff spend waiting to
be allocated to a project by 98%.
The firm has been able to replace contractors by identifying staff
with similar skills and has also asked contractors to provide
training in weaker areas.
Meanwhile, the British Computer Society has thrown its weight
behind the Skills Framework for the Information Age. It said last
week that it would adapt its industry structure model to the SFIA
standard, and base future products and services around the
framework.
SFIA user
group www.sfia.org.uk
SFIA benefits
- Reduced training costs of 19% per head
- Reduced dependency on contractors
- Reduced time IT staff are not allocated to a project by
98%
- Saved millions of pounds over two years.