BAE Systems is preparing to use an industry-standard
skills framework to identify and plug gaps in the skills of 450 IT
staff charged with managing the company’s relationship with its
outsourcing suppliers, following a period of substantial management
change at the group.
The aerospace and defence company, which outsources its IT
systems to CSC and other suppliers, is poised to roll out the
Skills Framework for the Information Age over the next year as part
of a programme to improve the way it manages and develops the
skills of its IT staff.
Chris Coupland, director of IT and e-business at BAE Systems,
said the company decided in February to roll out the framework
after recognising that it needed to improve the skills development
of IT professionals retained in-house after outsourcing.
“We realised our retained IT staff had not necessarily had as
much career development and career change as they should,” he
said.
Implementing the framework will allow BAE to develop and train
its IT staff more effectively, and will help increase the job
satisfaction of its IT staff, said Coupland.
It will also help the firm ensure that staff have the skills to
manage the outsourcing agreements effectively, and help identify
any gaps.
“We have changed quite a lot of the scope of what we should be
doing as an internal, retained IT organisation in the context of
our outsourcing arrangement. That means that there are areas in
terms of business requirements, strategy and architecture, and
commercial skills where we are looking to extend and build
capability,” he said.
The company is halfway through a project to assess the skills of
its IT staff against the framework, which is designed to define
different roles within the company against a set of standard skills
definitions.
Coupland said the management time and effort involved in rolling
out the framework would pay for itself by improving the career
development of staff and raising job satisfaction levels.
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