Personnel (Job Skill Matching) Database System

A bespoke database design for comparing employee skills to job requirements.

Our client a global electronics manufacturer employed 700 in their UK plant. The manufacturing plant had three production lines for different product ranges. Each morning was a headache as employees called in sick. If too many “key skill” employees off the same production line were sick, production could grind to a standstill. This happened too frequently and when it did the contingency was for managers to think from memory who else might be able to replace the sick staff.

Support for Organisations were asked to produce a bespoke database design to record skills, qualifications, training and employment history for all employees. It was necessary for the database design to facilitate the rapid identification of suitable replacements for sick employees.

The database design used a split database construction; both the front end database and back end database were implemented using Microsoft Access. This provided the facility to migrate the backend to Microsoft SQL at a later date for improved performance.

Some of the features of the database design are as follows:

All essential information relating to employee skills and qualities was recorded: employment history (hence experience), skills, training (scheduled and attended) and qualifications.

All essential information relating to “roles” within the organisation. In particular what skills and qualifications were required and a history of all employees who had ever performed the role.

The database design needed to accommodate a series of pre-defined management reports, but in addition the client needed to easily add their own custom reports. Some of the key reports included: a list of all employees who had ever performed a particular role, a skill gap report for identifying training needs.

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