Case Studies

Our Skills Diagnostic systems have already been implemented by a broad sweep of professional, educational and governmental organisations, over the past few years. The case studies below show some of the skills diagnostic projects we've completed.

Diabetes Care Skills Diagnostic System

Client: The National Health Service (NHS).

Challenge: Eight North London Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) invited MyKnowledgeMap to develop a skills diagnostic system for diabetes care. The diagnostic system needed to be relevant for a wide variety of workers with a broad range of skills in diabetes care.

Solution: MyKnowledgeMap worked with the NHS over a number of months to adapt their existing skills gap scheme and to develop an innovative, leading-edge diagnostic system.

The system can cross-match and tailor skills targets for a wide variety of job roles. The advantage of this for its users is that it allows people to identify those skills that are of the highest priority to them individually for their skill development, and provides a structure for improving them.

Foreign and Commonwealth Office Skills Diagnostic System

Client: Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Challenge: The Regional Learning and Development team are responsible for the training of Foreign and Commonwealth staff based in embassies and consulates around the world. They needed to develop a new competency framework to help drive staff development on both a regional and international level.

Solution: MyKnowledgeMap worked with the Regional Learning and Development team to develop a competency framework which covers Foreign and Commonwealth staff at all levels – from administrative workers to ambassadors. Staff use MyKnowledgeMap’s skill diagnostic system Capability Matrix to assess themselves against the competency framework and to create individual training reports.

The system allows for a wide-range of management reports, regionally and internationally, to let the Regional Learning and Development team know specific organisational requirements. The team are now able to coordinate training across large geographical areas and target staff who need it most.

Technical Breakthrough

Client: Leeds City Council.

Challenge: Work with MRS Consultancy and Leeds Federation of Colleges, led by Leeds College of Technology, to create both online and personal training experiences that will give individuals a chance to find out about themselves, identify new skills and start on a new career path.

Solution: MyKnowledgeMap developed a Skills Gap Analysis tool that enables individuals to assess their knowledge and skills against a variety of jobs in the IT industry.

The Skills Gap Analysis tool is also linked to the Yorkshire Forward online resources on ICT skills activity in the Yorkshire and the Humber Region. This resource enables individuals to find out more about ICT skill providers in the region, look at career paths and qualifications and map their ICT knowledge against the demand for skills.

West Lothian Council SkillsGap

Client: West Lothian Council.

Challenge: To improve the effectiveness of the council’s staff by implementing an easy-to-use system that analyses skills gaps within the organisation, within specific departments and down to the individual and presents an opportunity to close these gaps.

As West Lothian Council already had an established HR system in place (PRPDP), MyKnowledgeMap had to create a skills gap system that would run alongside this existing one and share data with it.

The skills gap system would also have to encapsulate a huge variety of different job roles and responsibilities.

Solution: MyKnowledgeMap developed a self-contained and easy-to-use system, which was introduced through a series of induction workshops carried out by MKM staff.

The Skills Gap Analysis which was developed is in effect an online profiling tool, designed to identify specific competencies and knowledge areas (with both hard and soft skills) which are important for each job role, and to direct each individual to the appropriate development opportunities. A Portfolio section was also added where employees are encouraged to provide evidence of how they have improved a knowledge or skill area, in order that that their team leaders as well as the individuals could track progress.

CIM SkillsGap

Client: The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM).

Challenge: MyKnowledgeMap was asked to develop a skills gap analysis system for consultancy use so that through their sales team CIM could better analyse the training needs of their members and offer their corporate customers appropriate courses.

Due to the nature of the product use, the training needs analysis needed to allow for multiple comparison levels so that the consultant could regularly update their competency levels after a set period of time during which the customers/members may have been on several courses.

This was different from the other Skills Gap Systems that MKM had previously developed as they were updated on continual progress, whereas the CIM system would need to be able to look at the evolution of skills that had taken place over time, through a comparison of knowledge maps showing different stages in time, before and after courses etc.

Solution: A 4-tiered skills gap system covering job area, scope, competencies, and tasks for standalone laptops was developed.

Due to the enormous and potentially unmanageable number of reports that were now possible, the report formulation function was restricted to those that were most useful to the job in hand. These included showing which competencies were weakest across the business, averages per area/scope/competency/task for each job role or a general report for all staff at the competency level.