Professional profiles provide a different way of approaching job descriptions. They offer time and cost savings in production and maintenance. More importantly they support strategic resourcing and talent management for your technology / IT workforce. They enable an agile and responsive organisation to meet changing workforce requirements.

What’s wrong with the way we do Technology / IT Job Descriptions?

Paul Taylor notes that traditional approaches to job descriptions act as an organisational straitjacket to flexibility and innovation.

Jon Husband warns of the dangers of over-prescriptive approaches e.g.

•  The ‘one true’ organizational design model for successful performance
• Fixed competency models, job descriptions, developmental learning and management models
• The ‘perfect’ CV and resume
• Recipes’ for change management and digital / organizational transformation

1. Quick to produce with minimal update and maintenance costs
2. Reduces the number and complexity of existing job descriptions
3. Enables the implementation of HR / HCM / Talent management systems
4. Simplifies job evaluation and reward processes. Support job classification systems for reward and compensation.
5. Reduces workload and support the introduction of global reward mechanisms for your Technology / IT workforce

1. Clarifies technology career path & career development by aligning to an industry / external view of technology professions.
2. Drives learning & development, professional development, networking and professional communities of practice
3. Helps employers attract and retain talent.
4. Powers recruitment. Makes recruitment more efficient and effective. Balances recruitment for immediate vacancies with acquiring talent with long term value / potential for the organisation
5. Leads talent management and talent reviews by simplifying options and opportunities
6. Simplifies talent assessment – what skills do you have and what skills do you need
7. Simplifies the development of L&D catalogues and the use of competency and skills frameworks.
8. Supports salary and reward bench-marking. Provide fair and equitable reward structures for your technology / IT workforce.

Provide organisational alignment and transparency

1. Makes it easy to compare jobs in your organisation no matter what their specialisation. Provides a consistent approach to jobs and titles.
2. Improves the quality of organisation design and Technology Target Operating Model initiatives
3. Provides transparency across technology functions, locations and markets
4. Enables short, medium and long term resource planning. Improves ability to see resourcing gluts and shortfalls and to identify ways to balance and optimise resources
5. Highlights skills gaps. Enables analysis and provides more options to close skills gaps
6. Adds value to simplistic spreadsheet, numbers based resource planning
7. Supports performance management and high performance through the introduction of comparable, fair objectives
8. Works with all HCM / HRIS systems and SaaS

1. Allows and facilitates your organization structures to flex and change without little or no need to update job descriptions
2. Reduces the number and complexity of existing job descriptions
3. Flexibility / agility to change organisation, team structures to respond to external/internal market demands

1. Undertaking a transformation which impacts their technology / digital work force. e.g. digital transformation
2. Introducing a new / revised target operating model (TOM) and organisation design
3. Needing a more flexible workforce to support organisational agility. e.g. if working in a fast moving market or an organisation embarking on a multi-year, multi phase organisational development plan
4. Global / multi-national organisations looking to move to a global, consistent approach to managing the Technology / IT workforce
5. Introducing improvements to the way you manage your people. Attracting, developing and retaining people with the skills you need.
6. Driving professional standards improving organisational capability – up-skilling, cross-skilling to meet changing demands.
7. Operating in fast changing / growing environment. When you need to achieve the benefits of structure / maturity but without limiting innovation and creativity.
8. Introducing a project / assignment based working and resourcing approach
9. Implementing professional communities of practice to improve engagement, innovation and develop new capabilities
10. Implementing an HRIS / HCM systems for a Technology / IT workforce

• Career families or job families are a key component for organisations adopting professional profiles.
• Career families are not silos and they are not organizational structures. Career families are groupings of roles / jobs with similar skills and knowledge requirements. Keeping them separate from structures means that the organisation design can change with impacting roles profiles or career families.
• They will be recognizable to the external job market and will usually align with the Technology / IT industry professional qualifications.
• Within each career family there will be around 3-4 roles and / or levels of professional capability.
• 9 example career families are shown here
• The number and make up of career families is dependent on the organisation design and its Target Operating Model
• The career families should be forward looking i.e. based on your organisation’s strategic direction rather than on existing job titles and organisational structures.
• SFIA provides the ideal framework to describe the professional skills associated with each career family
• SFIA provides a quick way to link the career families with industry standards