Press / 2005 / 15th June
Local authorities achieve skills audit success with InfoBasis and Employers’ Organisation
Councils gather vital data for workforce development and deployment
London, UK, 16th June 2005: A recent skills audit of staff across four English local authorities has been hailed a success by participants. The skills audits, required to meet government workforce development regulations, were delivered using software developed by InfoBasis, a leading provider of skills management technologies.
InfoBasis was selected by the Employers Organisation in 2004 to deliver a pilot program to four nominated local authorities. The aim was to prove the value of skills auditing, using the InfoBasis Enterprise Skills Infrastructure™ software platform, and to produce a blueprint for a more widely adopted national skills audit service for local government.
The project has re-enforced the value of skills audits to the participating authorities. “Knowing exactly what skills are needed for each job in the Council will help us to plan the career progression of our staff so that we always have the right people in the right place at the right time,” says Paul Bradshaw, head of human resources at the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral.
Wirral was one of four North West councils chosen to assess the value of skills audits, the others being Halton, Blackpool, and Macclesfield. All were selected by the Employers’ Organisation for Local Government, a body established by the English and Welsh Local Government Associations in 1999 to support authorities in delivering quality services.
“Local authorities increasingly need to run skills audits as a core part of their workforce planning,” says Nigel Carruthers of the Employers’ Organisation’s Skills and Development Unit. “In addition, demand for the service has been driven by the Pay and Workforce Strategy for Local Government. This stresses the central role of people in improving services through a Workforce Development Plan. In turn, this is a route to authorities achieving greater efficiency and meeting their strategic objectives.”
By using existing competency frameworks, the authorities were able to collect data on skills relevant to them locally, including skills for management, first aid, languages, Braille and health and safety. After the success of this first audit, Macclesfield Borough Council plans in future to use a skills-based approach to selecting staff, and also sees it providing wider benefits in the staff review process.
“Managers have responded very positively to using this approach during Performance Development Reviews,” says Ruth Hind, Macclesfield’s Senior HR Officer. “They say that it has given them a clearer overview of the skills required by their direct reports, and made reviews more thorough.”
The Employers’ Organisation now plans to make the InfoBasis local government skills audit solution available across England and Wales. This will help authorities meet their growing obligations under a variety of initiatives additional to the ODPM’s Pay and Workforce Strategy, including Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) in England, and the Wales Programme for Improvement (WPI) and Whole Authority Assessment (WAA) in Wales.
For further press information:
Donald Taylor
Tel: +44 (0) 1235 540 140
Fax: +44 (0) 1235 534 869
Email: donaldt [at] infobasis [dot] com
For sales enquiries:
Tom Sandman
Tel: +44 (0)1235 540 140
Fax: +44 (0) 1235 534 869
Email: toms [at] infobasis [dot] com
