Developing Performance Standards
Industry-wide standards
Our core expertise is setting out in exact terms what people should be able to do in their day to day jobs.
We work in collaboration with the people who will use the specifications and systems we design. This approach not only ensures the robustness and accuracy of the framework, but it also develops a sense of ownership and commitment amongst users which helps to ensure its smooth introduction into an organization, and ensures a close match between the expectations of the organization, the requirements of a role and the content of the competency.
The vast majority of our work in this area is published in the form of National Occupational Standards (NOSs) and National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs). The potential users of these frameworks are many and diverse, so it is crucial that they are accessible and easily understood by everyone.
This approach is not occupation-specific. Specifying competence is a generic skill which is applicable to any industry. That said, we offer particular expertise in working with engineering and in those sectors involving explosives and munitions clearance (see client list).
Organizational competency frameworks
We also develop in-house organizational competency frameworks. These frameworks are tailor-made to an organization's requirements. They might be broad-brush statements of best practice to be used for staff development purposes, or they might be specific, performance specifications of the organization's expectations which would be used for performance management purposes. However they are described, a competency framework that is developed specifically to meet an organization's brief is a powerful tool to make explicit that organization's expectations, culture and values.
