Home > News > December 2004 > 29-Dec-2004

Firms failing to formalise IT professional development, claims survey

According to a new survey, over 80% of UK employers consider it important to develop their IT staff's professional skills, but only 9% run a professional development scheme. The survey of 183 UK organisations was jointly conducted by the British Computer Society and skills management technology provider InfoBasis Limited.

While the figure for professional development programmes is low, the survey found that 40% of employers considered having an externally-accredited professional development scheme as 'very' or 'quite' important.

"The figures show both sides of corporate attitudes to professional IT development in the UK," said Malcolm Sillars, BCS Professional Director. "While increased professionalism of the industry is widely viewed as important, only a handful of employers are actively engaging in it." He added that the broad spread of spend on development products and services re-enforced this view. Over the past 12 months, while nearly one fifth of organisations represented had spent £10,000 or more, just over half the respondents indicated that their employer had spent nothing or did not know how much they had spent.

"A series of reports has shown that professionalism and skills development are vital to improving the quality of delivery of IT projects," said Sillars. "For example, the BCS and Royal Academy of Engineering's report on 'The Challenges of IT Projects' and the OGC/Intellect Code of Best Practice."

When it came to skills frameworks, 31% had heard of the BCS's Industry Standard Model (ISM), 28% of the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA), and 22% of SFIAplus.

"The organisations which recognise these frameworks are the ones leading the way with professional development," added Sillars. "Like the 10% of respondents who use some form of IT skills gap analysis software, or career development package. And it seems that more are keen to join this group. Over 30% of employers are looking to deploy some form of IT skills assessment or career development system."

The survey was conducted via an internet poll of 3,000 IT decision makers, invited to participate by e-mail. There were 183 respondents in total, spread over a range of 9 named sectors. The greatest number came from the IT services/consultancy sector (21%), and the lowest from health/social work and wholesale/retail trade (both 5% each). A representative range of employer sizes was represented, with about a third of responding organisations having fewer than 100 employees, and a quarter having more than 500.

External link

For a more detailed summary of the survey, go to:
www.infobasis.com/survey

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