Human resources experts meeting at Qatar University.
DOHA: Human Resources experts from across the country met at Qatar University (QU) this week to launch the latest phase of a programme designed to help companies create new job skills’ criteria and better design their training and development programmes.
The Qatar University Initiative for Life-long Learning (QUILL), launched last year, aims to ultimately enable companies to attract, retain and successfully promote key talent. Part of the university’s Continuing Education Office, QUILL has a number of projects, all of which are underpinned by the Qatar National Vision 2030 of helping to support the development of Qatar’s workforce.
One of QUILL’s key projects – the Competency Frameworks Initiative – includes HR professionals from a number of fields of expertise in Qatar. They are assessing organizations’ current provision of guidelines for job competencies — the integrated knowledge, skills, judgment, and attributes that people need to perform a job effectively. These can be general employability skills, such as communicating effectively, as well as technical abilities. While widely used internationally, competency frameworks are a relatively new concept in Qatar.
Working in teams, the experts will then evaluate the usefulness of developing such competency frameworks in Qatar, looking at the benefits and challenges, before drafting prototype frameworks for employability skills and the field of HR on a range of skill levels. Finally they will create draft process guidelines to implement these frameworks. They will also review the training needs, provision of training and development and quality of training programmes in organisations across Qatar.
The head of the Office of Continuing Education, Dr Taj Kardaman, said: “This is an important project which will help identify areas where we can further support organisations across Qatar as they focus on selecting and promoting the best talent to lead Qatar in the future.”
Kevin Lamb, Managing Partner of Keystone Global Consulting Group, who is working with QUILL on the project, said: “This is one of countless efforts under way by many ministries and other organisations to prepare the workforce in Qatar for the QNV 2030 goals.”
Community College of Qatar’s Associate Dean, Dr Abdulnassir Al Tamimi, said: “It is great that Qatar University’s Continuing Education Office is leading this initiative in looking at the possibility of developing and using competency frameworks that are useful across all organizations in Qatar.”
THE PENINSULA
