Employers

What are the benefits of the SCQF?

The Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework can help you as an employer to:

  • recruit the right team with the right skills for the job;
  • avoid costly training mistakes in recruitment and training;
  • recognise what further skills your employees need and plan this effectively;
  • recognise the formal and informal learning your employees have taken part in and help them to make further progress (a process known as the Recognition of Prior Learning or RPL);
  • gain credit for your own in-house training programmes which raises the profile of your organisation and attracts potential employees with the skills you need. 

Read our Employer Guide for more information on the SCQF Level Descriptors.

There are more qualifications available to learners today than ever before. People are being encouraged to gain knowledge and skills all through their lives. As an employer, you will come across many different kinds of qualifications on CVs. You also have more opportunities now than previously to encourage employees to improve and develop their skills. The Framework has been developed to help you to understand what the different qualifications are and how they compare with one another.

How does the SCQF work?

The SCQF has 12 levels and the level of a qualification shows how difficult the learning is. Credit points for each qualification are simply a way of describing the amount of learning, knowledge, skills or competence needed to achieve the qualification.

Each level on the Framework also has a set of 'descriptors' or competencies to help employers understand the range of skills an employee might demonstrate at that particular level. For instance, you may need to recruit someone at degree level or equivalent. By using the SCQF levels in your job description and advertisement, you can better understand the skills you need and widen the pool of potential employees. It will also help to ensure you recruit the right person for the job thus saving unnecessary time and expense. The Employer Guide will help you understand how to use the Framework as a tool for effective recruitment and HR practices and the detailed SCQF Level Descriptors help you write a detailed job description and person specification.

A potential employee can also map out their skills and competencies for a potential job role by referring to the detailed SCQF Level Descriptors.

Recognition for your in-house training

Employers may be interested in having their in-house CPD programmes recognised on the Framework. This has a number of benefits:

  • It gives your in house training national recognition and a comparison with nationally recognised qualifications.
  • It helps employees to map their learning pathways and gain personal recognition for what they have achieved. It also allows them to progress into more advanced learning programmes whether in-house or via an external learning or training provider.
  • It encourages employees to undertake learning, raises morale and increases company loyalty.
  • It promotes skills development and helps support effective skills utilisation.

Read our Would you credit it? leaflet for more information on the benefits of credit rating or give the team a call on 0845 270 7371. 

Skills Utilisation - P3 Tool

The P3 People, Performance and Productivity Tool is designed to help organisations who want to be more successful. It shows how your staff can drive growth and how others have made it happen for them.

Developed by the Scottish Government in partnership with Investors in People (IIP) Scotland, the Tool is free, confidential, easy to use.  It is relevant to organisations in the private, public or third sectors.  If you want, you can focus the Tool on some part of the organisation rather than all of it.

Aimed at connecting your staff’s potential to the ambitions of your organisation, the Tool guides you through established good practice in driving performance and profitability and increasing job satisfaction and employee wellbeing.  

It focuses on:

  • leadership and people management
  • employee engagement
  • employee autonomy
  • skills development
  • management of learning
  • equality, diversity and a healthy organisation.

The tailored results offer relevant practical advice, signposting you to further help, including to examples of how others have successfully tackled similar challenges.

To find out more, visit the P3 Tool.