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Ensure You Have the Right People With the Right Skills in the Right Positions: Utilizing the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA) David White Director, IT Common Sense
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TA B L E
O F
LEARNING TREE INTERNATIONAL
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C O N T E N T S
Introduction ........................................... 1
What is SFIA? ......................................... 2
The Benefits of SFIA ............................. 2
Using SFIA .............................................. 2
Life Cycle Interventions ....................3-4
About Learning Tree ............................. 5
About the Author ................................... 5
Introduction In 2015, approximately 364,000 organizations in the U.K. were asked to compare the skill levels of their IT staff with the skills required by their business. 50% of those organizations reported skill gaps among their staff. When translated to dollar value, misalignment between expected skills and actual skills is extremely costly. In a 2013 Australian study, researchers found $28,000 AUD, on average, of missing value per employee in terms of skills relative to job expectations. Considering the average value of skills provided, and the difference of putative and actual salaries mentioned in the study, the savings would be $45,100 for each employee aligned to their job role. With an organization of 1,600 IT staff, for example, the savings would be $72 million per year. There is an effective solution to identify and address this global pandemic of skill gaps — it’s all about having the right IT team with the right skills. However, the first and most important step to building the right team and achieving your business goals is to know what skills your team needs and already has. Thankfully, there is a tool that can do that — SFIA.
SFIA (the Skills Framework for the Information Age) is a standardized and internationally recognized framework for defining IT roles and skills, and levels of those skills.
Utilizing SFIA
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What is SFIA?
Using SFIA
Designed by leading IT industry bodies, and regularly updated by IT skills professionals with real-world experience, SFIA is a practical resource that can be leveraged to manage your IT hiring, training, development, and organizational structures. Now on its sixth release, SFIA provides a matrix of 97 skills, each at up to seven levels of responsibility.
SFIA can help throughout the Employment/Employee Life Cycle (ELC). Employers can use the ELC to consider the appropriate interventions that need to be taken to manage their staff at all stages. SFIA also helps each employee plan their career options and proactively manage their own development, leading to increased staff satisfaction and reduced staff turnover.
SFIA focuses on IT skills using an internationally standardized common language and framework, easily understood by non-technical managers, HR/Learning and Development, and IT professionals.
The Benefits of SFIA
Organizing & Planning
Reward
Acquire
With SFIA, you can: • Define the IT skills your organization needs • Enhance the effectiveness of your IT operations
Develop
A Common Reference for Managing Your IT Workforce
Deploy
• Make the right IT recruitment decisions • Develop your IT staff • Help reduce IT and operational risk
Assess Analyze
• Increase staff retention and productivity • Provide long-term company and employee benefits
A simplified Employment Life Cycle (ELC)
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Life Cycle Interventions
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By determining what you need, you can develop a target IT services model that includes:
Organizing & Planning Before you can effectively manage your IT staff, you need a clear understanding of the skills required to meet your organization’s objectives (i.e. what you need). You also need an honest assessment of the current skills possessed by your staff (i.e. what you have). These two inputs allow you to perform a Capability Gap Analysis, and provides insight of how to close the gap (i.e. what you must do).
• The planned organization structure • Accountabilities and responsibilities for each team or department in the organization structure • The skills required for each team, explained in a consistent way using SFIA definitions • A headcount of each team Second, to determine what the organization has, you need to assess current IT capabilities, including: • Current organization structure
What We Need
GAP
• Current succession and development plans
What We Have
•S kills possessed by current employees • IT metrics and benchmarks
What We Must Do Succession & Development Plans
First, to determine what the organization needs, you must consider multiple key inputs, including:
Capability Evaluation
Staff Appraisals
What We Have
IT Metrics & Benchmarks
• Organizational strategic planning and IT capabilities • Current IT performance and processes • IT planning and investment
Current Status Assessment
• Benchmarks and other market comparisons
Process Model Business & IT Strategy
Investment Portfolio
What We Need
Market Comparison
By comparing the outputs from these two activities, organizations can prepare a plan that details the steps necessary to transition from the status quo to a more productive and agile state. This plan may include: • Recruitment requirements • Training requirements •S taff development plans
Target IT Organization
• Revised succession plans Organizations may also discover wider issues, such as the need to improve strategy or governance, or even reengineer processes.
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Acquire
Deploy
Employers can use the information gathered from their Capability Gap Analysis together with “exit data” (i.e. staff turnover), to determine current recruitment needs. SFIA is a very effective tool to document the skills, and the level of those skills, required by each new hire. Additionally, the skills are in a consistent, transferable form that can be useful during the process of developing and standardizing job descriptions, communicating with recruiting agents/HR, and structuring the recruitment interview process.
Knowing the skills required to perform a given role, and the skills possessed by staff, will help assign the right staff to the right positions at the right time —increasing performance and reducing risk. Staff satisfaction and retention significantly increases when staff know that their valuable skills will be deployed accordingly, rather than a disorderly assignment.
Develop
SFIA enables you to develop clear role definitions that can be used to assess the performance of each staff member, and agree upon clear development targets.
The structure of the SFIA framework — grouping skills into categories and subcategories — is particularly effective in guiding career direction for IT staff at both the individual and organizational/managerial level. Its use of levels within each skill can set milestones for career progression.
Remuneration & Recognition
The SFIA skills possessed by an employee, the aspirations of that employee, and the organization's IT needs can be used to systematically provide standards-based guidance.
Assess/Analyze
SFIA’s seven levels can be easily mapped to existing HR grading levels, and can then be used to provide a consistent framework for staff remuneration and recognition across the organization.
Defining training needs using SFIA skills increases the effectiveness of selecting appropriate training courses, particularly if training providers have mapped their training to the SFIA framework.
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About Learning Tree
About the Author
Established in 1974, Learning Tree is a leading provider of IT training to business and government organizations worldwide. Learning Tree provides Workforce Optimization Solutions — a modern approach to delivering learning and development services that improves the adoption of skills, and accelerates the implementation of technical and business processes required to improve IT service delivery.
David White
Learning Tree is also a SFIA-accredited training and consultancy partner with a team of SFIA-accredited consultants. We offer a comprehensive suite of skills enhancement services, including:
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Director, IT Common Sense David is an independent consultant based in the U.K., engaged with Learning Tree International, providing workforce development services and training in the areas of IT skills, IT governance, project management, business analysis, and personal development. He has more than thirty years of experience in the IT industry, including consulting with major management firms, and as Group IT Director for FTSE 250 companies. He is also an accredited SFIA Consultant and Trainer.
• SFIA-accredited training • Organizational skill-needs analysis • Skills assessments and gap analysis • Acceleration workshops • Ongoing measurement and assessment for continuous improvement We have mapped our 350+ IT and management courses to the SFIA Framework — enabling organizations and individuals using SFIA to easily identify courses that meet their needs. Training can be taken through our public course schedules, on-site at client facilities, and online via AnyWare® — Learning Tree’s web-based training service. To learn more about Learning Tree and SFIA, call 1-800-843-8733 or email Info@LearningTree.com
Utilizing SFIA
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