Career Frameworks and Matrices
I'm a guilty as everybody else of thinking like this but it simply is not true - the evidence is there for us all to see, every day - the department does not implode when we have a couple of weeks on holiday or leave to take up a new role somewhere else.
In the past we have (all) tended to define how irreplaceable we are, and the jobs we do, by emphasising our differences.
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This has resulted in individual silo working, compartmentalisation, and a lack of workforce mobility - in our minds rather than in organisational structure.
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We have an overwhelming belief that "only me, or my immediate colleagues can possibly perform this task" - this might, might, be true for several tasks we have in our roles but it isn't true for all of them.
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How many people have the required skills to perform the tasks we do?
The reasons we think this way are all valid - we are protecting our livelihoods and demonstrating how important we ae to the organisation (so that they will get rid of other people before they get rid of us).
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But, how about focusing on shared skills, of how useful we can be in other roles - we all have:
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transferable skills - those skills used in our roles that can be transferred easily to many other roles, such as people skills, negotiating, presenting, teaching, attention to detail, timeliness, etc.
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specialised / role-specific skills - those skills that a much smaller group of people have (usually, those within the same industry or role type as us) have, such as: driving, specialist knowledge, operating specific equipment, management and leadership, qualifications, etc
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individual skills - are those skills which make us best for the role, of how we bring together the other skills into a workable package, which is us and what makes us brilliant in the role we do.
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Focusing on how much our roles have in common enables us to create career pathways for whole departments and, when we combine career pathways from other departments, career matrices for whole organisations. This results in a far more mobile and engaged workforce.
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How to create a departmental career framework
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Firstly, and most importantly, we need to define / describe each of the roles within the department - we are all, generally, a bit rubbish at doing this. If you don't believe me then take a look at your published job description; how closely / accurately doe it describe the role you perform on a day-to-day basis?
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Step 1: define the roles
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Using the job description as a starting point, describe all of the skills (and behaviours) needed to perform that role. Alternatively, at the end of each day / week, describe the tasks performed in a role and the skills required to perform those tasks.
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Note: At this point these descriptions will be very mobile documents as people recall different tasks they perform or tasks they perform on a less regular basis - you must allow for this but not let the activity drag on indefinitely.
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Step 2: categorise the skills
Gather a group of people who can then categorise the list of skills and behaviours into one of the three categories - transferable, role-specific and individual skills. Gather people who know the role, manage the role, report to the role, HR representatives and union representatives to ensure everything is fair and above board and choose people who can and will make decisions.
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Most of these skills will be easily categorised but the group may have to physically meet to discuss the small number of skills where discussion over their category needs to happen before they are agreed.
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Repeat this for all of the roles within the department and you will have an accurate description of the skills and behaviours required to enable the department to function well.
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Step 3: combining the departmental skill sets
Now comes the (politically) difficult bit!
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Take all of the lists of shared and specialist skills (not individual skills) and combine them into a framework for the whole department - this will / may involve:
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tweaking the wording of some of the skills to standardise skills that are the same
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combining some of the roles into groups
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discarding or adding skills to different roles
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I suggest that you start with the more junior roles within the department and work your way up the hierarchy to the top - this is because it is easier to add skills then it is to remove them.
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Beware of tweaking some skills over this process (as you move up the hierarchy) and rendering them inapplicable to the more junior roles - be sensitive to when a new / different skill is required, rather than a tweak.
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Send the completed list around people in the department to ascertain that they agree that the skills assigned to them accurately represent the role that they perform within the department. Negotiate
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You now have a departmental Skills Framework
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Step 4: convert the Skills Framework into a Career Framework
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To covert a Skills Framework into a Career Framework you need to look at the learning for each skill - if I lack that skill then how am I going to acquire it?
Most of this training and education will already be in place and available but going through this process can highlight where your staff are being held back, or reveal glass ceilings.
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When you've finished you will have a Career Framework for your department that can show you:
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the most useful skills in your department and where to focus your training resources most effectively - where you will get most "bang for your buck" and how many people any new training will affect.
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a list of exactly what I need to do if I want to move from one role to another - for discussion in reviews or self-directed learning
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justification for the different pay rates for the different roles which, no longer, needs to rely on chat, gossip and hearsay - colleagues understand their roles and others within the wider team.
Step 5: converting Career Frameworks into a Career Matrix
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This part is sooooo much easier said than done - combine the Career Frameworks from all of the different departments within your organisation into one.
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This requires:
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a huge amount of inter-departmental cooperation
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effective negotiations for standardising the nomenclature of the skills (agreement)
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great communication to get the workforce to agree and adopt the standardised nomenclature
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But the benefits can be huge:
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colleagues can match roles to their skill set and consider roles they may not have thought of previously - thus you retain them (and their skills and knowledge within the organisation, rather than having them leave)
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jealousy and inappropriate competitiveness are reduced as colleagues understand better how they fit into the organisation, and how other also fit within the organisation (rather than basing their opinions on "what I see X do")
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identifying people for secondments and projects becomes easier when managers can see the roles which have the skills they require - these may not be within their own department, thus improving the quality of secondments and project groups
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when legislation and practice changes, or when addressing issues arising from staff survey results, improvements and training can be focused on those roles which are affected
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better-focused training and more inter-departmental training and activities increase understanding between departments and reduce silo-working.
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