HR briefing: manual to automatic testing programme

Status: draft for review by the training lead and head of test before it goes to HR.

Summary

We plan a development programme of 308 hours of protected learning time, by default 7.5 hours a week over about 41 calendar weeks, ending with a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt with a lifetime certification, for manual testers at Bands 3 to 7. It builds automated testing skills, and closes gaps in each person's current role. Nobody changes band. We ask HR to agree four things before the programme starts.

Background

• Each tester has been given a UK GDaD PCF role and role level.
• The programme measures each person at six gates against their own band, their UK GDaD PCF role, and their role's skills, using a self-assessment that the manager also rates. The full design is in spec/index.md.
• The self-assessment uses the organisation's band outlines and the 16 job evaluation factors, from the illustrative roles-skills reference. The factors are used as a self-assessment of how fully a person works at their job's level. This is not a job evaluation and never changes a job's band.

What we ask HR to agree

1. Gates are developmental only (Decision 7)

• A gate result supports development planning only.
• It never starts a capability, performance, or conduct procedure by itself.
• If a manager has a separate concern, it follows the normal HR policy, separately from the programme, and does not use gate records as its basis without HR advice.

Why: the gates only work if people rate themselves honestly. Measured against their whole role, people will see gaps. If they fear the result, self-ratings will be inflated and the programme will not find the real gaps.

2. No band or grade changes follow from the programme

• People are measured against the band they hold.
• Some tracks set an automation target above what the role requires (Band 5 and 6 quality assurance test analysts, and Band 7 test managers). Reaching it is recorded as a strength, not as grounds for regrading.
• If a person's job changes for other reasons, the normal job evaluation process applies.

3. The Band 3 rule, and the mapping rule (Decision 6)

• The reference has no testing role level at Band 3. For Band 3 participants, the job evaluation factor levels are agreed at Gate 0 from the person's own job description, with a total within the Band 3 range of 216 to 270 points.
• Where a person's band and UK GDaD PCF role have no reference level (for example a Band 5 test engineer), the spec's mapping rule applies: Part A uses their own band; Parts B and C use the assigned role's nearest level below their band. The line manager, training lead, and HR record the decision in the person's individual learning plan.

We ask HR to agree these rules, and to name who signs off each mapping.

4. Handling the assessment records

The completed self-assessments, individual learning plans, learning logs, and gate forms are personal data about each employee's capability. We propose:

• They are kept in the organisation's HR or learning system, with access limited to the person, their line manager, their mentor, and the training lead.
• Cohort reports use anonymised, aggregated capability indexes only.
• They are kept for the programme plus 12 months (to cover the Gate 5 follow-up and evaluation), then deleted unless the person asks to keep them for their own development record.
• The information governance lead confirms whether a data protection impact assessment is needed.

What else HR will see

• A signed learning agreement for each person, covering protected time (7.5 hours a week, 20% time) and reasonable adjustments.
• Reasonable adjustments agreed at Gate 0 and reviewed at every gate.
• An evaluation report after Gate 4 that confirms no band changes and no HR procedures resulted from gate results.

Decision needed

View this document on GitHub materials/planning/hr-briefing.md