Employers
Spotlight skills recognition tool
The Spotlight skills tools help managers and HR personnel to write position descriptions, select employees, manage performance and encourage individual and career development.
The Spotlight Skills Recognition tool helps focus on the skills that job holders can build on in carrying out individual and group activities. The tool provides a better understanding of the skills used in service work that can be overlooked or taken for granted, especially skills used in interacting and relating, coordinating and shaping awareness.
Types of skills which are often overlooked are the skills of combining activities in work streams and those involved in the sensitive, responsive and integrated delivery of appropriate services to people.
The classification framework consists of:
- 3 sets of skills (shaping awareness, interacting/relating, and coordinating)
- 5 learning-based levels of each skill (from familiarisation through problem-solving to expert system-shaping).
A list of work activities shows the use of each skill element at each level. Selected activity examples can be used to help pinpoint the skills required in specific jobs, or be included in position descriptions.
The framework makes concepts such as ‘problem-solving’, ‘communication skills’ and ‘time management’ more precise, and gives a way of naming different levels of the skills that are the basis of effective work performance.
The Spotlight Skills Recognition tool has been developed to be used by managers in writing job descriptions, recruitment and selection, and performance management and development.
It consists of 5 Spotlight Skills tools including:
- Skills recognition tool user guide
Identification tool: Part 1. Introduction for managers [PDF, 595 KB]
- Skills recognition tool user guide
Identification tool: Part 2. Adding value to job descriptions [PDF, 282 KB]
- Skills recognition tool user guide
Identification tool: Part 3. Adding value to recruitment and selection [PDF, 181 KB]
- Skills recognition tool user guide
Identification tool: Part 4. Managing performance and careers [PDF, 663 KB]
- Research report that provides the background to the Spotlight skills recognition tool