A Study of Capturing the Skill Competencies of the Workforce Within a Small Manufacturing Engineering Company

Within companies across many engineering industries, there is a growing realisation that human capital provides the greatest force for economic competitiveness. Indeed, this realisation is true of companies in a wide variety of industries, as well as national governments. Furthermore, harnessing this human capital, referred to as employees’ skills and abilities, will contribute towards improved organisational performance. That is, the effective utilisation of a company’s personnel, through the most appropriate application of their skills and competencies, can improve performance thus aiding the achievement of sustained competitiveness. A pre-cursor to enabling the effective utilisation of the workforce is for a company to gain knowledge regarding the skills and competencies of its individual members. Only by being in possession of such knowledge, can companies make advances in terms of realising the full potential of its workforce. This paper highlights the need for organisations to gain measures of the skills and competencies held by the members of their workforces. In the early stages of this research, a small manufacturing engineering company has contributed not only in the development of a formalised skill competency assessment process, but also realised its implementation in conducting an assessment exercise on its workforce. Consequently, the company has been able to identify skill gaps, along with competency deficiencies, within its workforce. As such, it is now proceeding to develop a strategy for training and development needs, and recruitment needs. Furthermore, additional potential benefits of the skill competency assessment process and its application are discussed.