Looking back at the transformations we’ve worked on at Zebra, one of the big things most organisations have in common is the need to balance and improve their team’s capabilities—particularly across the technical disciplines. A common scenario we see is HR departments—who are not subject-level experts— passing recruitment and CPD for technical roles on to functional leads. While functional leads know their subject, they don't necessarily have the HR background to recruit and build teams successfully. This leads to skills and training gaps, unbalanced teams, lack of career progression and ultimately, inefficiency for the business. To address this, we’ve created a capability assessment framework as a way to combine HR knowledge with technical subject-level expertise. It’s designed to help organisations define what “capable” looks like for them, and plot out career progression paths to get the most out of their people.

What’s a capability assessment framework?

Although it’s tailored to suit each organisation, there are five core elements to our capability assessment framework.

1. Discipline definition

This describes the role of the discipline within the organisation including the overarching goal, responsibilities and activities, and any crossover with other disciplines.

2. Capability areas

Here we lay out the key themed capability areas for the discipline. This is a top-level look at the knowledge and skills required to successfully fulfil the discipline definition.

3. Capability matrix

Now we take a closer look at the proficiency levels for each capability area, categorised as beginner, novice, experienced, expert and master.

4. Capability by role

Here we explore the make-up of the team by looking at the expected capability levels for each role to form a well balanced team that can deliver what the organisation needs.

5. Career paths

Using the roles defined in the last section, we map out possible career progression routes taking into account mastery and management paths, as well as cross-discipline opportunities.

What are the benefits of this approach?

Write more accurate job descriptions

Rather than what usually happens—a generic job description is recycled with a few tweaks—you can write highly-targeted job descriptions that accurately reflect the skills and knowledge your organisation needs at that moment in time. This transparent approach to recruiting shows you understand candidates’ needs and allows you to be open about exactly what you are looking for—a unique advantage in today’s highly competitive labour market.

Attract and retain better talent

When you write better job descriptions it follows that you attract better candidates, both in terms of calibre and fit for what you need. Using our framework, you are recruiting for the skills you need, not just generic job titles. The most talented candidates will also want to know what progression is available in a role. If you don’t have a satisfactory answer to this question, you risk missing out on a great hire. Likewise, people are more likely to stay with an organisation that has good career development opportunities. With career progression paths mapped out using our framework, you can retain more of the top talent you recruit in the long-term.

Identify skills and training gaps

Aside from hiring new people, our capability assessment framework can help you accurately assess your current teams to identify skills and knowledge gaps that may be holding your business back, rather than relying on gut feeling and anecdotal evidence. These gaps can then be filled by training, internal promotion or external recruitment to make sure teams are in good shape to fulfil their remit.

Improve business efficiency

The ultimate aim of all of these measures is to make sure you have the right people with the right skills and aptitudes to deliver what your business needs to move forward. Using our capability assessment framework, you can be confident that teams are balanced and have clarity on what they are doing and where they are going. And if not, you have a system in place to swiftly address any issues.