Introducing SFIA in IT

This year we have introduced the Skills for the Information Age Framework (SFIA) in IT. It’s an externally recognised skills framework which describes IT-focussed roles against a set of generic skills, attributes and levels of responsibility. Now all roles in IT have been mapped to the framework and have individual skills profiles. This means that colleagues can clearly see the skills required, and how to apply these skills at Vanquis. 

We had a coffee with Fran, Senior HR Business Partner who has been leading the changes to find out more.

There’s been lots of changes in IT, tell us more about why we needed to change?
2018 was a year where we listened…we listened to our external customers, we listened to our internal customers and we listened to our colleagues. It was clear that in order to help our customers lead a better every day life, we needed to professionalise and re-organise the function and more effectively align ourselves to our internal teams, ensure our colleagues were clear on their roles and responsibilities, and build out our skills and capability.

So what were the key changes you made?
We re-organised IT to align ourselves to our internal customers in a way that we could deliver for them in a quicker, more secure, more resilient and more agile way. All roles were modernised so they are more externally recognised job titles with updated job descriptions.

So why is SFIA important for IT colleagues?
Ultimately it means our IT colleagues can easily identify their strengths, areas for development and plan their career journey. In the coming weeks they will be sitting down with their managers to talk through their Skills Profiles and plan their development for the year.

So tell us what you have you launched so far to support the development of IT colleagues?

1. An Internal Recruitment and Secondments Policy to ensure all vacancies, where possible, are advertised internally and there is clarity and consistency in the way secondments are agreed.
2. The People Development Platform for People Managers, aligning all colleagues to our People Development Strategy and giving a single point of contact for development resources.
3. The new MyLearning portal, a massively re-vamped learning portal with easy access to a huge range of learning resources.
4. A bi-annual Promotions Board, the first of which was completed in January

What a great start for IT @ Vanquis in 2019!