Professional Skills for Government

What skills do I need?

To make sure you have the right mix of skills and expertise to help your organisation to deliver effective services, you can use the PSG competency framework.

This framework sets out the skills and expertise you require in your current job and those you need to develop for promotion. These will depend on your role and department, but include the core skills (that all Civil Servants need) and professional skills (that are specific to your role), as well as leadership and broader experience.

The starting point for assessing whether you have a training need is to look at the skills you require for your role.

• To get a quick overview of the professional and core skills you need, use the framework skill identifier.
• To assess yourself in more detail against all four strands of the framework (if you are at Grade 7 or Senior Civil Service pay bands 1 and 3), use the PSG assessment tool.
• From here, you can discuss any skills gap with your manager, and ask other relevant people for feedback on your performance.

If you want more information on using this self-assessment tool, see Guidance