UK planning industry skills levels revealed

The benchmarking exercise assessed the competencies of people working in Resource Planning roles.

The Professional Planning Forum and Silver Lining Solutions carried out a benchmarking exercise at the end of Q3 2013 with a total of 42 companies, representing 497 individuals.

The exercise was undertaken to help the industry understand how it stands vs. the 64 essential skills and competencies deemed important by UK industry for Resource Planning roles.

• The planning industry’s skills levels are ‘average’ overall and struggling in key areas that are essential for the role.
• Self-awareness on sensory measures like Confidence/Credibility/Mutual understanding is positively impacting overall performance.
• On average, individuals on a professional development path are scoring c. 60% higher across all skills than the industry benchmark.

Encouragingly, out of the 497 people who are live and participating in the Skills Framework, 118 are on a professional development journey and scoring, on average, 60% higher than those who are not.

• The highest rating skills were in the Personal organisation cluster (Time management, Attention to detail, Teamwork and Continuous learning), where, on average the score for this cluster was 26% higher than the industry benchmark.
• Personal attitude scores (Credibility and Confidence) were significantly higher – at 59% and 318% respectively – than the industry benchmark.

“We are an industry of average performers with defined weaknesses in certain essential skills. In real terms, our industry is not achieving the minimum required skill levels for areas like Process improvement, Project management, Change communication and Legal compliance,” said Colin Whelan, Head of Professionalism at the Planning Forum.

“In the current environment where strong management is important to keep costs down and manage the customer experience, our planners absolutely have to have these skills. The benchmarking results indicate that there are key skills that we are not giving our management information and planning people.”