Talent mapping across your trust - how to get the most out of a skills database

Auditing your staff to create a skills database can help the schools across your trust access in-house experts. This can save you money, encourage collaboration, manage talent and drive improvement. Follow our tips to make this work in your trust and find examples of skills audits you can use.

Last reviewed on 17 March 2022
School types: All · School phases: All
Ref: 44203
Contents
  1. Why audit your staff skills? 
  2. Start small and pinpoint your needs
  3. Identify key areas to audit  
  4. Create and manage your database
  5. Promote and embed it across your trust 
  6. Examples of skills audits you can use

Thanks to Julie Carson, Bex Howe and Andrew Mackereth for their help and expertise in writing this article. 

Why audit your staff skills? 

By auditing your staff you can:

  • Create a database of staff skills or expertise
  • Spot skills gaps or areas for improvement to feed into professional development

By knowing these 2 things you can match areas for improvement with in-house experts from across your trust. This will save you money instead of sending staff on external training and will encourage school-to-school collaboration.

Fostering collaboration in this way has additional benefits around talent management. For example, you can:

  • Empower your staff by giving them opportunities to coach and train others 
  • Develop future leaders in your trust by helping them to become better coaches 
  • Support retention by giving staff new challenges and a broader remit - for example, additional non-teaching time to support less experienced teachers from across the trust

Ultimately, it's up

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