HR Experts Launch New Phase of Skills Program at Qatar University

Doha, January 30 (QNA) - Human Resources experts from across Qatar met at Qatar University (QU) to launch the latest phase of a program designed to help companies create new job skills' criteria and better design their training and development. 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 (CEO), 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 programs in organizations across Qatar. For his part, 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 organizations across Qatar as they focus on selecting and promoting the best talent to lead Qatar in the future." Meanwhile, Kevin Lamb, Managing Partner of Keystone Global Consulting Group, who is working with QUILL on the project hailed it as one of several ongoing efforts by many ministries and other organizations to prepare Qatari workforce for the Qatar National Vision 2030 goals. "The participation of these HR experts testifies to the willingness of professionals from all sectors to develop HR practices fit to Qatar's unique needs. Qatar University is a key partner in all of these efforts as demonstrated by the success of the QUILL program to date," said Lamb. For his part, Community College of Qatar's Associate Dean Dr. Abdulnassir Al-Tamimi expressed his gratitude that Qatar University's Continuing Education Office is leading the initiative in looking at the possibility of developing and using competency frameworks that are useful across all organizations in Qatar. We are enthusiastic to be involved in the second phase of the QUILL project. The first phase resulted in a development of a very successful certification program offered at Qatar University for young Qatari Human Resource professionals. Participation in the second phase of this project is very important to us at the Community College of Qatar as we want to make sure that we are aligning essential workplace competencies with our workforce programs that we are developing for government agencies and local industries." (QNA)