Building Individual Staff’s Capability

Capability is having the ability, potential, aptitude, facility, and qualifications to meet the needs of business today. We expect staff to continually develop new abilities and aptitude at a pace that matches the transformational change taking place within our organisations.

To build capability in your organisation:

• Identify Skills Gap
• Individual Development Path
• Individual Development Plan
• Training Needs Analysis
• Implement Learning Interventions
• Post Learning Activities
• Performance Support
• Give long term support
• Build a Community


Identify Skills Gap
To build capability, this initial picture must be mapped against the required skill set for effective project, programme and change management.

Individual Development Path
To move towards the required skill set involves creating individual development paths as each person starts from a unique position and will have their own desired state – some will wish to develop greater technical ability and others will search for further management opportunities.

Individual Development Plan
A personal development plan cannot be imposed upon someone. Building capability must be a joint effort between each individual and the organisation. Individuals supply the willingness to learn new skills and the organisation provides training courses, management support and practice opportunities in the form of secondments, transfers to new projects and increases in responsibility and authority levels.

Training Needs Analysis
A training needs analysis identifies required training courses and events based upon any skills gaps and for each course pre and post course support activities can be identified. These include briefings by managers to their staff before a course begins to identify with the individual their personal objectives for the course and the objectives that the manager seeks to fulfil on behalf of their team, department and organisation overall.

Implement Learning Interventions
There are many learning options available, you may decide that your staff would learn well on a bespoke training course which can then be followed up with a workshop where your staff can work through real life examples. Senior staff or those on high profile programme or projects may benefit from one to one coaching or mentoring to help with and developing a blueprint and mapping out specific issues.

Post Learning Activities
Post course activities include developing communities of practice and performance support. Communities of practice are effective if they provide access to best practice and a supportive environment in which individuals can share their difficulties in applying new skills and share ideas for how problems can be solved.

Performance Support
Performance support gives help at the point of need. Often, these are short interventions which answer specific ‘how do I?’ type questions. Building capability means that the organisation allows people to practice and accepts the risk that on their first attempts they might get it wrong and resists the temptation to blame them for their early mistakes.

Build a Community
Building capability requires organisations to commit long term effort, investing time and energy in encouraging staff to learn new skills, work in different ways and adopt new technology. They must also provide relevant support as individuals practice these new approaches until they become second nature.

If you would like Maven Training to help you build staff capability and organisational resource capacity please call our team on 020 7403 7100