Best strategies in skills utilisation A report summary Graham Thom and Alasdair Yuille 12 January 2010

1 Introduction Our task The challenges Key findings Reflections

2 Task To conduct a set of case studies Focussed on the key sectors, plus construction Reporting  Overview report  Individual case studies  Updated literature review, more impact focussed

3 Challenges Identifying suitable cases Convincing companies to participate Measuring the benefits

4 Findings - motivation Driven by:  senior management and the culture and values that they wish to be held by the company  a response to market forces, including staff attraction and retention, and the desire for a quality product In all cases the implementation of practices had evolved over time  to meet specific issues as they arose in the business  affordability Important to have buy-in and leadership by managers at all levels.  the ethos with which actions are pursued appears as important as the individual practices themselves

5 Findings - activities No really big surprises! A wide range of practices undertaken by businesses interested in getting the best from their staff. Our findings are broadly consistent with the wider literature:  appraisal systems and regular communications about the firm are the most common practices  there is more frequent reporting of employee involvement and getting the HR practices right than of reward and commitment practices  no silver bullet Although… differences around market strategy and needs of production (cuts across sectors)

6 Findings - measurement Firms strongly associate their performance with skill use practices  in one case company turnaround was seen to have been underpinned by the introduction of such approaches However, most firms do not formally measure the impact of skill utilisation on bottom line business performance Firms do often monitor proxy issues such as  recruitment and retention  staff motivation

7 Reflections Underpinned by a lot of issues that are not about skills per se … more about organisational development Important to have building blocks in place skills use then focuses on  job and production process design  learning transfer Multi-skilling  job rotation

8 Contact Graham Thom Associate Director SQW Consulting t e. w.