P2 – Describe how the skills that employees require to carry out jobs in an organisation are
identified
There are several ways through which Matthew Boulton College can identify the required skills.
Some of these processes are by assessing the desired skills set, skills audit, skills transferability,
skills acquisition and by determining the impact of technology.
To begin with, a skills audit is a procedure that is used to identify the skill gaps in an organisation.
In other words, it is a review of employees’ existing skills against the skills that they will need
both now and in the future. It can help to identify existing skills, figure out which additional skills
they may need to carry out a role more effectively and to develop overall knowledge as well.
Through this process, a company investigates what skills their employees have and from this,
identify whether certain individuals need to develop their skills and how. A business might also
assess the existing skills which an employee has and thus find out whether these skills match
new organisational objectives. In many cases, some employees may already have the necessary
skills, but may not be using them. As such, the business concerned, can transfer an employee to
a different department where their skills might be more useful. Therefore, in this situation, the
Matthew Boulton College might use these existing employees instead of employing new external
staff. This process is known as skills transferability.
In short, without the information from a skills audit, an organisation will not know where to
improve. Another advantage of the skills audit is that, it enables future training and development
to be better targeted. The business will be aware of which aspects need further consideration
and thus improve, based on the results of the skills audit. Also, as a result, the employers will
already know which skills they lack and thus better define their recruitment criteria to address
this shortage and this is more likely to result in the most appropriate candidate being employed.
Moving on, nowadays, technology is changing the way people work and this has had a significant
impact on the number of employees that organisations need to employ, their resources and
level of technical expertise required. As technology is evolving at a fast pace, employees with a
high technological expertise have an advantage over those who do not. Changes do not always
mean fewer employees in Matthew Boulton College’s case, but simply that there are changes to
the skills required. For instance, as Matthew Boulton College is an educational institution, the
teachers are expected to have good IT skills as they need to have the ability to teach students
using PCs, projectors... Also, they have to be able to send emails as it is one of the most common
methods of communication.
Moreover, skills acquisition is used to describe the ability to learn and acquire new skills. This
process is extremely important for both the employers and the employees. For example, when
employees are gaining new skills, it can motivate them and help them perform more efficiently
and thus increase productivity in the place of work. On the other hand, if employers are
constantly monitoring and training their staff, then when an employee decides to leave the
college for example, it will be able to replace the latter and keep things running smoothly. We