by Competency management as a business lever for hiring, development, mobility, and promotion started more than 40 years ago. It continues as essential today in the effective management of human capital. To implement competency management to drive employee development and performance excellence, let us align on four key definitions.
- Competencies are abilities, behaviors, knowledge, and skills that impact the success of employees and organizations. Some common competencies are analytical thinking, communication, flexibility, integrity, and teamwork.
- A competency model is a set of key competencies, ideally seven to 10, carefully selected in alignment with an organization’s business goals. High-performance models include four types of competencies: core competencies, leadership competencies, functional competencies, and career competencies
- A competency proficiency scale is a defined rating or measurement that assigns an expected level of competence on a given competency. Leading practice scales have behavioral indicators as their building blocks with related behaviors organized under each competency. Scale ratings range from three to seven mastery levels, with five levels being the most common.
- Competency management is the set of management practices that identify and optimize the skills and competencies required to deliver on an organization’s business strategy. Competency management provides the foundation to manage strategic talent management practices such as workforce planning, acquiring top talent, and developing employees to optimize their strengths.
Benefits of Competencies
Effective and automated competency management creates a real-time and predictive inventory of the capability of any workforce. By defining and automating job roles and associated competency proficiency, leadership can readily identify strengths and skill gaps. Competency management then informs targeted skills development learning solutions improving individual and organizational performance, leading to better business results.
High-performance organizations describe the following benefits of effective and automated competency management:
- Enriched understanding of expected behaviors and performance. Of course, the quickest path to improving performance starts by knowing the target performance. Organizations that take the time to define the short list of competencies and expected proficiency level for each competency, by job role, essential for the achievement of business goals, have taken the first step toward giving employees and leaders the best shot at performance excellence.
- Improved talent planning. Competency assessment results inform leadership about current and future talent capability. To be assessed as competent, the employee must demonstrate the ability and experience to perform a job’s specific tasks. Data and analytics about employees’ skills and knowledge are essential for performance risk mitigation that leadership would otherwise be blind to.
- Optimized development and mobility strategy. High-performance organizations realize that organizational success depends on how capable their people are. They also recognize that formal training does not necessarily equip employees with the appropriate skills to thrive in the workplace. This is where competency management and competency-based development comes in. Competency-based development is created around the competency standards that have been identified for a specific role in an organization.
- Enhanced talent pipeline. Automated competency management enables on-demand information about employees’ and leaders’ competency mastery and readiness to move into next-level or other critical roles. In this fashion, organizations are better prepared with development planning and, as a result, yield healthier talent pipelines regardless of business cycle or economic conditions.
- Improved operational efficiencies. Competency management automation facilitates business-driven learning and development, eliminates non-value-add training, highlights strengths to be further developed, flags critical skill gaps for mitigation, and generates higher levels of employee and leader satisfaction with their overall experience with the organization.
- Integrated talent processes. Serving as the standard for expected performance by job role, competency management becomes the standard by which the highest-performing organizations talk about and manage all phases of the employee lifecycle: from talent acquisition to development, to retention and reward.
