If you’re working in talent management in the NHS in England, you may well have been having discussions about “how to simplify the Knowledge and Skills Framework” (if the 100+ discussions that we’ve been having over the past 6 months on this topic are anything to go by!)

I’m finding that the knee-jerk reaction is often “yes we need to simplify, and we’ll do this by focusing on the core 6 dimensions only”. In other words, the simplification is through reducing the breadth of the KSF from 31 dimensions to 6.

I think this is often a mistake.

When using only 6 dimensions and 4 levels, I see three main issues, or missed opportunities:

1. The core dimensions (communication, health & safety, equality & diversity and so on) are incredibly important underpinning ideas, but they are so broad that it is difficult to engage employees in the importance of gathering evidence around them – taking this stance puts the L&D/HR team in the position of “policing people who aren’t achieving” rather than using the KSF to further personal, professional and career development.
2. 6 dimensions and 4 levels doesn’t give enough scope to differentiate between pay bands. It’s almost impossible to create a structure where each pay band has an increasing requirement for knowledge and skills, when only using this limited palette of competency definitions. Let alone the problems of creating some space for progression between foundation and full outlines.
3. When competency-based development was first introduced, one of the main benefits was intended to be the creation of a language for better workforce planning and learning needs analysis. 6 dimensions doesn’t create enough granularity to do much useful analysis. You don’t learn much from finding out that 20% of your workforce have a gap in health and safety at level 2, for example – you can’t plan the workforce or its learning provision from this. With 31 dimensions, you have a better chance of using the resulting information to make smart workforce decisions.

About Tim Newham

Tim is the founder and Managing Director at Think Associates Ltd. He takes an active role in helping clients and has specialist interests in organisation development, process improvement and knowledge management. Tim has over 10 years’ experience of managing large-scale performance and learning processes in the public sector, and focuses on building the bridges between HR policy/process, line management requirements, and IT systems to make life easier for staff. Tim has a First Degree in Engineering Systems and a Masters Degree in Management.

Mail | Web | LinkedIn | More Posts (26)