The national IT skills framework helps firms to make the most of
existing skills.
Financial services company Norwich Union has saved millions of
pounds on recruitment and training costs by adopting an
industry-wide framework for assessing and managing the skills of
its IT staff, it said last week.
It is one of a growing number rolling out the Skills Framework for
the Information Age (SFIA), an initiative supported by IT's leading
professional bodies. The SFIAis designed to help companies to match
the skills of their workforce to the needs of the business. The
framework, which has been under development for the past five
years, aims to end the confusion that surrounds the way IT jobs and
roles are defined.
More often than not, IT departments have only a partial picture of
the IT skills at their disposal in the workforce. As a
result:
- Planning for future projects is difficult and staff may remain
under-used for some time before they can be found suitable projects
to work on
- Companies tend to compensate for their lack of hard information
by bringing in contractors with skills that may be already
available in-house
- It is harder for firms to plan their training needs, which can
lead to money being wasted on inappropriate courses
- Staff development can suffer when IT staff feel that they are
not being sufficiently stretched or learning new skills - unhappy
staff are more likely to leave.
Employers such as Fujitsu have tried to develop their own skills
frameworks to address these problems internally. The SFIA, however,
is an industry-wide attempt to make sure that all employers define
their IT skills in a consistent way.
As more employers adopt the framework companies can be increasingly
confident that the systems architect they hire from a rival firm
will have the skill sets they require.
Rather than focusing on technical knowledge, such as C++, .net or
Oracle database administrator skills, the framework aims to help
companies to assess the underlying skills of their workforce.
Ron McLaren is the operations manager of the SFIA Foundation, a
group set up this summer by the British Computer Society, E-Skills
UK, the Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers and the
Institute for the Management of Information Systems to promote the
framework. "The reason SFIA is successful is that it does not focus
on job descriptions - it is skills-oriented. It is all about
professional identity, what you are, and not what you happen to be
doing this week," he said.
Experience has shown that line managers can use the framework to
assess the skills of their staff through interviews and discussions
and to work out what further training or project work they need to
ensure their progress.
Norwich Union has used the scheme, for example, to redefine the way
it rewards its employees. It can now promote IT staff who develop a
broad range of skills, whereas previously staff came under pressure
to specialise in one area.
"We tended to reward people in terms of expertise and
personalities. 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 vital for us," said Gary
Cannon, people development manager at Norwich Union life and
pensions.
Rolling out the skills framework across an organisation requires
time, effort and planning. Companies need to allow time to train
their staff in how to use the framework and to map any existing
frameworks to the SFIA.
McLaren recommends that a company employing 5,000 people based in
the UK should allow a year. A company with 10,000 employees based
in a number of countries would probably need two years.
"In every organisation there will be some stimulus to cause people
to do this. Someone might be using it to straighten out their
salary policy: they might have a problem with people leaving or it
might be confusion about what people's jobs are or problems with
skills development," he said.
Organisations that have taken up the framework say they have seen
dramatic improvements. Norwich Union, for instance, said the
framework has helped to cut its training cost by 20% by offering
staff courses that better suit their needs and identifying project
work that will help IT staff to develop their expertise. The SFIA
has provided a complete audit of the company's IT skills and has
allowed Cannon and his team to deploy staff more effectively,
cutting by 98% the time staff spend waiting to be allocated to a
project.
Norwich Union has also cut its reliance on contractors by
identifying in-house staff with similar skills and training them to
take over contractors' roles - in some cases the contractors
themselves have provided the training.
High street retailer Woolworths has also used SFIA to streamline
the structure of its IT department and reduce its dependence on
contractors.
The Ministry of Defence is in the process of applying the SFIA to
thousands of civilian and military IT staff. The MoD believes it
will make it easier for managers to deploy staff where they are
most needed, and easier for IT staff to pursue their career
goals.
Interest in the framework has accelerated in the past year,
according to McLaren. Hundreds of firms in the UK and a number of
overseas organisations have downloaded copies of the framework from
the SFIA website, and 2,000 have registered an interest.
The British Computer Society threw its weight behind the framework
earlier this month, announcing that it would tailor its industry
structure model, used by BCS members for professional development,
to the SFIA.
A user group has also been formed that will provide advice to firms
interested in taking up the SFIA: about 60 have already registered
an interest in joining the group, which will allow members to offer
feedback and share their experiences.
For more information or to download a free copy of the SFIA
www.SFIA.org.ukHow the SFIA works
The framework itself looks like a two-dimensional grid with columns
that represent relevant skills for each job function, divided into
categories ranging from development and implementation to strategy
and planning or sales and marketing.
Personal skills could include factors such as the ability to work
without supervision or to communicate well. Business skills vary
from role to role but a systems developer, for instance, might be
expected to have skills in varying degrees in business analysis,
data analysis, systems design, database design and software
development.
The rows on the grid represent seven levels of competence, where
level one is the ability to follow instructions, ascending to
seven, the ability to set strategy, inspire and mobilise.