Skills-management system helps Centrica and Anglia Polytechnic University

Citation

(2003), "Skills-management system helps Centrica and Anglia Polytechnic University", Industrial and Commercial Training, Vol. 35 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/ict.2003.03735cab.006

Skills-management system helps Centrica and Anglia Polytechnic University

Skills-management system helps Centrica and Anglia Polytechnic University

Centrica – the UK-based multinational business with a workforce of more than 40,000 people – and Anglia Polytechnic University are among a growing number of organizations using skill-management systems supplied by John Matchett Ltd.

Centrica has launched a technical-competence framework for managers at its group financial operation. Group financial director Phil Bentley believes that the framework is a way of co-ordinating the development of 600 or so finance employees across the business. "In any organization, people are its greatest asset. In finance, they are the only asset", he said.

The competence framework, which covers post-qualified managers, emphasises raising standards and the introduction of a common language that defines capability.

Centrica commissioned management consultants Moloney and Gealy to help in refining the competence headings, descriptors and language of the framework into 25 competences clustered under strategic planning, business-performance management, decision support and analysis, and specific technical skills. Moloney and Gealy also recommended that Centrica apply these competences within a skill-management system.

A year later, Centrica has reviewed both the competence framework and the skill-management system within which it operates. According to Matthew Joint, Centrica group management-development manager, having the framework in electronic form has made it easier to update the competences and ensure that revisions are quickly and consistently implemented.

Moloney and Gealy also introduced Anglia Polytechnic University to John Matchett Ltd when the University wanted to introduce a technical and behavioural competency framework for its 900 or so support staff.

Following a review – chaired by a pro-vice chancellor of the University and containing representatives of the Unison trade union – the University has decided to introduce a competence framework in order to strengthen its human-resources strategy. The competences will define the skills, qualities and standards necessary to achieve the University's objectives, as well as addressing issues of rewards and individual achievement.

John Hague, of John Matchett Ltd, said: "The skill-management system that Centrica and Anglia Polytechnic University are using is a stand-alone system that identifies which employees have which skills and where they are in the organization. This system can be linked with a training-administration system, perhaps to help to automate some of the skill-development process.

"However, other skill-management systems that John Matchett Ltd supplies are integrated with the Pathlore learning-management system to provide an even more comprehensive human-resource-development system".