Do you know the ground reality when it comes to your IT workforce?

Organizations have been striving to get the most out of their IT workforce trying various management and training philosophies/approaches based on high level assumptions related to employee skills, competencies, engagement, workload, and work variety. The results, at best, are much less than accurate and often disappointing. Some say, it is a shot in the dark!

Through Demand Assessment, while we can derive expected roles, workload, and work variety; however, it is imperative that we collect actual data to identify gaps and correct our assumptions, plans, and goals. AVVAL Current State Inventory is an exahustive discovery, analysis, and reporting process which allows organizations to get a deep insight into the following:

• Skill, Competency, and Engagement level for each IT worker
• Workload of each IT worker
• Work variety performed by each IT worker
• Effectiveness of HR programs related to acquisition, training, utilization, and transition of IT workers

The purpose is to understand composition, characteristics, skills, competencies, engagement level, supply, workload, and work-variety of Internal/Contracted IT labor pool. Thus a 4-step approach is followed:

• Develop skill/competencies/engagement benchmarks
• Collect skill/competency/engagement levels for each individual IT worker
• Analyse the collected data
• Report findings and gaps

Benchmark Development

This step involves developing and/or using existing benchmark related to skills and competencies required for each role in the Strategic, Critical, and Supporting IT role families.

Data collection

• In-depth interviews are conducted with each IT worker and IT executive to gather their own definition/perception of skill, competencies, experience, workload and work variety, issues, and engagement levels. This is then cross validated with associated peers, subordinates and superiors.
• 360 degree feedback is gathered as third party input about skill, competencies, experience, workload and work variety, issues, and engagement levels.
• Collection and review of individual’s delivery history based various projects they worked on based on estimates they provided, overruns, quality delivered (assessed through testing results in case of developer) and stakeholder satisfaction/concerns.
• Gather tenure, age group, and salary history data from HR if available else collect directly during interview process.
• Gather any skill/competency test results data available from HR and/or individuals.

Review/Analysis

• What are individuals doing outside of their assigned role?
• What are individuals not doing that is part of their assigned role?
• What is the gap between expected and actual skills/competency levels?
• Why is individual not fully engaged?
• Is the person right fit for the assigned role and/or the work s/he is doing outside of the assigned role?
• Are the HR programs effective with respect to acquisition, succession planning, training, and helping individuals? Where are the issues?

Deliverables

• Skills/Competency/Engagement Inventory per IT worker
• Workload and Work Variety report per IT worker