Competency Mapping
Shashank Ahluwalia
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Access to competencies, rather than access to cash, is the most critical driver growth.
Competency is a result of ability and willingness. It is a cluster of knowledge, skill, abilities, underlying personal characteristics that drive resultant behavior leading to success or superior performance on the job. Competency is a set of observable behavioral statements. It could be related to organization mission, vision, strategy, internal and external customer satisfaction and expectation, departmental focus areas. Thus it is the ability and positive attitude or also can be defined as combination of 2 components – Knowledge and Skill.
In today's world it is becoming increasingly very important to build on the competitive activities of the business, particularly regarding what competencies a business needs to have in order to compete in a specific environment. Top management is identifying corporate core competencies and working to establish them throughout the organization. HR development builds competency based models that drive business results. Competency modeling addresses the development of people from process design through succession. But most of the organizations of all sizes are still struggling with defining, designing and implementing competency model projects.
The process is completely customizable. The decisions of competency design are driven by number of organizational factors, including management philosophy, customer requirements, business needs and in place processes. These factors vary from one organization to another, requiring a customized approach to competencies in the workplace. Customization is essential to the overall success of competency efforts, since every organization must integrate competency concepts into its own job design, recruitment, hiring orientation, development and succession planning processes. Competency Mapping is a process of identifying key competencies for a company or institution and the jobs and functions within it. Competency Mapping is important and is essential exercise. Every well managed firm should be well defined roles and list of competencies required to perform each role effectively. Such list should be used for recruitment, performance management, promotions, placements and training needs identification.
The competency framework serves as the bedrock for all HR applications. As a result of competency mapping, all the HR processes like talent induction, management development, appraisals and training yield much better results. The competency mapping process does not fit the ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL formula. It has to be specific to the user organization. It is important to focus on one or two key areas of implementation rather than the whole HRD agenda in one scoop. So if recruitment and selection or performance management is the key strategic need of the business and where the pain is being felt, start there. It is advisable to begin with a "Horizontal Slice" of management or the senior most team as the benefits will percolate down to the whole organization. It's about identifying preferred behaviors and personal skills which distinguish excellent and outstanding performance from the average. The use of competencies can include assessment during recruitment, assessment during further development, as a profile during assessment to guide future development needs, succession planning and promotion, organization development analysis.
Competency Mapping is a process through which one assesses and determines one's strengths as an individual worker in some cases, as a part of the organization. It generally examines 2 areas emotional intelligence and emotional quotient and strengths of an individual in areas like team structure, leadership and decision making. Large organizations frequently employ some form of competency mapping to understand how to most effectively employ the competencies of strengths of workers. They may also use competency mapping to analyze the combination of strengths in different workers to produce the most effective teams and higher quality work.
How is Competency mapped for an individual?
Competency Mapping is essential and vital as they provide clear picture of what is expected from the employees to achieve excellent performance. Improving employee competency is important because organization in this competitive era need to have a competitive edge. This is must for employee's optimum performance. An individual has to be profiled in terms of levels of knowledge application and attitudes on the measurement of scale of each competencies that we identify. This process and profiling becomes inconvenient if we divide our area of working or the job family into 3 constituents – Vital, Essential and Desirable and then an expected calibration is done on the measurement of scale of each competency. In such cases there can be ranging ramplifications or the so called gaps between the position profile and the person profile which in turn gives birth to what is called as training needs.
Competency Mapping can also be done for contract or free lance workers, or for those seeking employment to emphasize the specific skills which would make them valuable to a potential employer. These kinds of skills can be determined when one is ready to do work. Competency Mapping also requires some thought time, analysis and some people simply may not want to do work involved to sufficiently map competencies.
The value of competency mapping and identifying emotional strengths is that many employers now purposefully screen employees to hire people with specific competencies. They may need to hire someone who can be an effective time leader or who has demonstrated great active listening skills. A problem with competency mapping especially when conducting by an organization is that there may be no room for an individual to work in a field that would best make use of his or her competencies. If the company does not respond to competency mapping by reorganizing its employees, then it can be of little short term benefit and may actually result in greater unhappiness on the part of individual employees. A person identified as needing to learn new things in order to remain happy might find himself or herself in a position where no new training is ever required. If the employer cannot provide a position for an employer that fits him or her better, competency mapping may be of little use.
However competency mapping can ultimately serve the individual who decides to seek employment in an environment where he or she perhaps can learn new things and be more intellectually challenged. Being able to list competencies on resumes and address this area with potential employers may help secure more satisfying work. This may not resolve issues for the company that initially employed competency mapping without making suggested changes. It may find competency mapping has produced dissatisfied workers or led to a high work turnover rate.
Over the past 10 years, human resource and organization development professionals have generated a lot of interest in the notion of competencies as a key element and measure of human performance. Competencies are becoming a frequently used and written about vehicle for organization applications like assessing the current performance and future development needs of persons holding job and roles, mapping succession possibilities for employees within the organization, assigning compensation grades and levels to particular jobs and roles.
A competency map is a list of an individual's competencies that represent the factors most critical to success in the given jobs, department, organizations or industries that are a part of individuals current career plan. Competency mapping is a process an individual uses to identify and describe competencies that are most critical to success in a work situation or work role. The main need for identifying and mapping competencies is for individuals who may be pursuing full time employment within the organization. However the need for mapping of competencies also extends to independent contractors seeking project work with those organizations that broker their services.
For example:-
· Determining what competencies is the employer looking for?
ü Use the job description: - The companies that employ behavioral interviewing have predetermined the skill sets they require for a particular position.
ü If you don't have job description – research the company
ü Look at other similar job postings
· Assessing the Leadership Competency Profiles for executives:-
The leadership competency profile for executives contains 6 competencies. These are broadly defined as multiple concepts are found within their definitions. For instance in case of competency "Coaching and Team Development", the definition integrates 2 important elements. The first element focuses on acting as a coach; the second element which is congruent with the first one has to do with being a change agent and championing change.
The approach is somewhat different than other interview techniques as the interviews must truly understand the situation that the candidate faced, what the candidate did, said or felt and why they did so and the consequence of action. Because of this requirement interviews will often take the form of a conversation where the candidate does 80% of talking.
Being ignorant is not so much a shame as being unwilling to learn to do things the right way.
--Benjamin Franklin
--Socrates
"In a nutshell, educated persons are those who can choose wisely and courageously under any circumstances. If they have the ability to choose between wisdom and foolishness, between good and bad, between virtuousness and vulgarities, regardless of the academic degrees they have, then they are educated."
Shashank Ahluwalia has done her Bachelor's in Computer Applications from Punjab University, Chandigarh and is currently pursuing her Master's in Business Administration from Amity University. Very determined and passionate, aspires to make an excellent career in HR ahead. She is presently undergoing learning and strategy sessions and can be reached at shashank.ahluwalia86@gmail.com
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2 comments:
Hi, a good article. Do you think that the HR executives or recruiters should also be assessed for the competancy?
Yes Abhijit, they should be assessed.
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