Citation
(2006), "BAE Systems gets the definition right", Industrial and Commercial Training, Vol. 38 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/ict.2006.03738cab.004
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2006, Emerald Group Publishing Limited
BAE Systems gets the definition right
BAE Systems has chosen skill-management company InfoBasis to define and manage the roles of IT specialists within the company.
BAE Systems, the international aerospace and defence-system development, delivery and support company, has previously grouped IT employees with either engineers or project managers, making it hard to gauge internal levels of expertise. Using InfoBasis Enterprise Skills Infrastructure (ESI), it will audit existing internal IT skills against a framework, within a geographically-dispersed workforce based in 20 different sites in the UK alone.
The project, which has grown out of a small pilot begun last year, currently involves 500 licences, covering IT employees in the UK and Saudi Arabia. In addition to auditing the pool of IT skills within the organization, InfoBasis ESI will create a capability-management mechanism for effective staff development.
InfoBasis was chosen partly because of its previous work with the Ministry of Defence. Another factor was the ease with which InfoBasis ESI could customize and expand skill frameworks, to define very specialist IT skills, as well as giving the ability quickly to change and update role definitions.
“The work with BAE Systems demonstrates the huge impact skill management can have at a business level in organizations,” said Ashley Wheaton, InfoBasis chief executive. “It grew from a skill audit of one section of the business, into the creation of a professional IT structure within the company, once BAE Systems saw that ESI can be used as a modelling tool to validate job profiles.”
“It is important to us to ensure that our IT staff have a clearly-defined career path and are aware of the professional requirements they are expected to meet,” said Adrian Fallows, of BAE Systems. “At the same time, our work with InfoBasis will ensure that IT projects are carefully matched to employees’ skills – increasing efficiency and also, we hope, job satisfaction.”