The Department for Work & Pensions
Competency Framework Development
Background
The Programme & Systems Delivery group (PSD) within the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) had undergone an organisational transformation resulting in approximately 1000 people being surplus to requirements, meaning either redeployment or redundancy. New job roles were created and the Department wanted to ensure that the right people were in the right roles doing the right job. Associated with this was to ensure that the staff received appropriate learning and development activities.
Client Business Objectives
The Department ultimately wanted a more professional staff base. To achieve this, a portfolio of learning and development activities across a number of platforms highlighting patterns of demand to meet business requirements had to be established. The resulting competency framework enabled the DWP to:
- Identify learning and development needs
- Support individual staff members by highlighting where on the career path they were and what they needed to do in order to reach the next step
- Optimise the value gained from staff by differentiating between staff with only "paper qualifications" and staff with both qualifications and the "skills to do the job required"
- Support progression towards clearly identified career paths
- Aid succession planning
- Benchmark against IT professional standards
Parity's Solution
Parity developed a Competency Framework for approximately 140 job roles. We provided a team of consultants comprising a Project Manager, Lead Consultant and Subject Matter Experts. The work was conducted as a series of phases, each phase concentrating on the job roles within 4 specific specialisms.
These job roles were mapped to the SFIA framework (skills and levels); potential learning and development interventions were identified encompassing: e-learning, self study, coaching, classroom courses and on-the-job experience; verification was conducted by an independent Learning Consultant and final review and assessment was carried out by the DWP of the populated framework. The Parity Consultants were responsible for monitoring the industry practice competency definitions including BCS, SFIA, OGC, CIPS etc.
Linda Thorpe, PSD HR Transformation Director of the DWP commented:
"Working with Parity as a strategic Partner to develop the 4 Competency frameworks enabled PSD to build sustainable Capability with their IT Specialist teams and Project/Programme Communities. From the beginning the Parity consultants 'rolled up their sleeves' worked closely with the Directors and line managers to design and implement the frameworks and associated tools – this at a time when significant changes where being implemented within our structure, the Parity Managers quickly establised themselves as part of the PSD team, contributing fully in meeting key objectives for our People Transformation programme."
