Who is it for?

Individuals can map their current skills and experience, identify their goals, and plan their professional development journey. The mapping of higher-education courses, qualifications, professional memberships, and training courses helps individuals and their managers to choose the right actions and activities to support the development they need. SFIA can help in the creation of Job/Position Descriptions and in advertising vacancies, and helps individuals to identify opportunities which match their skills and experience.

Organisations use SFIA for overall resource management. It can be used to quickly provide a baseline of the capability of the organisation, specific departments, teams, professional communities or individuals, and to identify skills gaps. SFIA describes the skills and levels of competency needed to operate effectively – ensuring that individuals can do their jobs properly, supporting the achievement of business and customer outcomes. Organisation structures, salary banding and benchmarking can be aligned to SFIA, facilitating a link to the skills and experience, focusing on the required capabilities and the value delivered.

During Recruitment SFIA helps employers to more accurately describe what they need, in language that potential employees understand. It helps move away from an over-reliance on certificates and qualifications that often only confirm a theoretical understanding of the relevant areas, and towards specifying competency based on having the right skills and an appropriate level of experience and responsibility.

SFIA-based role profiles and job descriptions reduce business risk, increasing the chances of recruiting and developing individuals with the optimum mix of skills, at the right level. This is good for the organisation and the individual – it reduces the churn risk when individuals feel ‘the job is not what they thought it would be’, or the organisation discovers they haven’t got the right set of skills to do the job effectively.

Education bodies, universities, colleges and training providers map their offerings to SFIA, to ensure the most appropriate courses and certifications are selected for individuals, providing the knowledge they need, so they can apply it to help develop the skills they require at the right level.

Professional bodies and membership organisations map SFIA to their membership levels, certifications, professional development and mentoring programmes. SFIA is used to identify suitable mentors, supporting knowledge and experience sharing and coaching activities.

Conference and event organisers can identify the target audience by mapping to SFIA levels of responsibility, skill categories or individual skills and levels – so individuals can select the sessions which best match their development needs.