COMPETENCY MAPPING

BYBhumika Garg

COMPETENCY CONCEPT

– Competency is any attitude, skill, behavior, motive, or other personal characteristic that is essential for an individual to perform a job or, more importantly, differentiates ‘solid’ from ‘outstanding’ performance.

– The following are the competencies required by an employee for excellent performance:

(i) Adaptability, (ii) Commitment, (iii) Creativity, (iv) Motivation, (v) Foresight, (vi) Leadership, (vii) Independence, (viii) Emotional Stability, (ix) Analytical Reasoning and (x) Communication Skills.

CATEGORIES/TYPE OF COMPETENCIES/ COMPETENCY MATRIX

– BEHAVIORAL

– FUNCTIONAL

– MANAGERIAL

A competency matrix is a tool by which a person’s competencies are assessed. It is used as a means to define the required competencies for a particular position, as well as a tool to help identify the most suitable individuals for the job. As mentioned, it is categorized into three, which are: functional, managerial, and behavioral.

– Functional: This refers to the technical competencies or the hard skills that a professional would need in order for him to perform his job. This varies of course, depending on the job. For example, an IT professional should be skilled at Java Development and PHP programming; a management accountant should be good at economics, corporate finance, and financial management.

– Managerial: This refers to one’s ability to work productively with other people. This can be classified into: organizational, people-related, and role-related. This includes several aspects such as, time management, staff developing, decision-making, delegation, communication, and resource management.

– Behavioral: This refers to the interpersonal and “people” skills of an individual. This is where a person’s soft skills are categorized. Such skills include leadership, teamwork, motivation, adaptability, communication, service-oriented, initiative, and dynamism, among others.

COMPETENCY DICTIONARIES– Competency dictionaries include all or most of the general competencies

needed to cover all job families and competencies that are core or common to all jobs within an organization (e.g., teamwork; adaptability; communication). They may also include competencies that are more closely related to the knowledge and skills needed for specific jobs or functions (e.g., IT skills, financial administration skills).

– The competencies in the dictionary are required by a broad range of employees functioning within a wide variety of private and public sector organizations. The demonstration of these competencies by employees and managers is related to increased performance at the individual, team, and organizational levels.

Competency models Organizational Approaches Models HR Systems Approaches Models Team Approaches Models Individualistic Models

Example Models

Elliot Jaques provides a normative model of effective hierarchical organizations with an emphasis on competencies. The elements include the present and potential competencies of individuals along the dimensions of cognitive capacity, valuing the work, and non-disruptive personality.

Peter Senge’s approach to a whole organization competency model is captured in his notion of the "learning organization." Its essential characteristics include nurturing the growth of new capabilities, transformational learning for survival, learning through performance and practice, and the inseparability of process and content.

“Organizational” Approach Model

Dubois focuses on the whole human resources system, but emphasizes competency improvements through training and development strategies and programming: the contingencies are driven by organizational strategy but outcomes are focused on individual employees’ competency enhancement.

Charles Snow’s contingency model links organizational performance to HRM and competency. Strategies depend on extent to which cause-effect relations affecting organizational performance are known and degree of formalized standards of desirable performance.

“HR Systems” Approach Model

Campion’s model, which applies to professional work, suggests that teams composed of individuals with complementary competencies are more effective and have higher levels of job satisfaction than teams whose members have the same competency sets. This is especially true for work that is complex and varied in scope.

“TEAM” Approach Model

Traditional Person-Job Match Model

This model assumes that employees have jobs with specific and identifiable tasks. Work is generally standardized and repetitive in an organizational hierarchy. Job performance is readily verifiable. This model works best with organizations defined by stable environments

Strategy Based Model

This model assumes that employees have roles defined by the organization’s strategic goals. Work is flexibly defined and often carried out in a flattened, decentralized or matrix structure. Role performance is only partially verifiable. This model functions most effectively in organizations in competitive, complex or highly stressed environments.

“Individualistic” Approach Model

The Strategy Development Model

This model assumes that employees with broad, strategic “attributes” will create their own roles which interact to produce the organization’s strategy. Work is constantly evolving within a network of organizational relationships. This model is described in terms of organizations in chaotic, unpredictable, or very rapidly changing environments.

Intellectual Capital Model

These models emphasize the linkages and dynamic interaction among human capital, structural capital, and customer (client) capital. These models stress the knowledge that resides in employees and strategies to use it and value it differently.

“Individualistic” Approach Model (continued..)

Companies create and use the Competency models to specify the employee behaviors, knowledge, and motivations that they believe are necessary to produce organizationally critical results.

But if the model is not quite right, the organization will suffer. To determine the right model it is essential to look at actual data -- assessments of employees‘ competencies and of the results they achieve.

Which Competency Model is Right?

HR processes based on competencies -Mc Lagan

HR Professional Framework

The HR Professional Framework will help to identify the person in relation to the roles.

The purpose of the framework is to help think about the direction you would like to take as you pursue a career within the HR profession.

It can be a useful reference in building the Individual Development Plan (IDP) with the manager, coach or mentor.

The HRM Competency Model features 24 general competencies, categorized into three HR Professional Roles, plus the Leader Role.

Competency-based Management (CBM)

CBM can be regarded as an approach to managing employee

performance based on both the "what" is achieved and the

"how" results are derived.

The presence of organizational culture that fosters change,

excellence innovation, participative decision-making, and

continuous learning will greatly enable the application of CBM

to success.

Human Resource Areas

Role of Competency Modeling

1. Job analysis & Evaluation

Shift the unit of analysis from a job and associated tasks to a person and what he/she is capable of.

2. Selection and Promotion

Serve as a means to determine appropriate assessment tools after identifying that competencies are job-related.

3. Lay-off Used as qualifications to determine order/reasons to be laid off.

4. Deployments Serve as requirements and justifications to appointments

5. Resourcing Activities Be a tool for assessment with indicators and proficiency level.

6. Human Resource Planning

Address rising marketable skills in demands or in shortage.

7. Training and Development

Used to identify training needs, self-development, evaluating.

8. Performance Management

Establish 360-degree feedback system & performance standard.

9. Compensation Least often used, reward performance/skill-based pay for team.

10. Career, Succession, Placement

Support for career mobility and individual development plan.

Byham &Moyer, 2000; Dubois,1998; Lucia & Lepsinger,l999; Zwell, 2000

COMPETENCY MODELS: TYPES & TECHNIQUES

It is about identifying preferred behaviors and personal skills which distinguish excellent and outstanding performance from the average. A Competency is the ingredients (skills, knowledge, attributes and behaviors) that contribute to excellence.

Competency mapping is the process of identifying the specific skills, knowledge, abilities, and behaviours required to operate effectively in a specific trade, profession, or job position

What is Competency Mapping?

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; organizational development analysis.

Techniques used to map Competencies include Critical Incident Analysis , Repertory Grid , Assessment centers , Questionnaire , Psychometric Tests.

When should Competencies be Used?

Respondents are asked to relate specific incidents, which highlighted exemplary behaviors in critical situations. This is based on the assumption that the best and the worst of a person surfaces in a crisis.

What is Critical Incident Technique?

When analyzing a critical incident, it is useful to ask yourself questions such as: * Why do I view the situation like that? * What assumptions have I made about the client or problem or situation? * How else could I interpret the situation? * What other action could I have taken that might have been more helpful? * What will I do if I am faced with a similar situation in the future?

Critical Incident Analysis

Identify important attributes For each attributes, establish a bipolar scale with

differentiable characteristics and their opposites

What is Repertory Grid Analysis?

Business Applications of Repertory Grid

Repertory Grid - Constructs

Descriptor – One Pole Descriptor – Opposite Pole

a Creating my own ideas Just following directions

b Challenging, problematic, troublesome Easy, simple

c Have some idea beforehand about results Have no idea what will result

d … …

Repertory Grid - ElementsDescriptor

1 Selection of a problem for investigation by participant

2 Identifying and exploring factors which may affect the outcome of the project

3 Decisions about materials and equipment may be needed

4 Drawing of plans my be involved

5 Building models and testing them may be required.

Attributes

– Availability

– Easy of Programming

– Training Time

– Orientation Traits

– high, low, symbolic, numeric

Example: Assisting in Selecting a Computer Language

Market Research Quality Control Compliance Job Analysis and Design Decision Making

Business Applications of Repertory Grid

Assessment Centre: “Assessment Centre” is a mechanism to identify the potential for growth. It is a procedure that uses a variety of techniques (given below) to evaluate employees for manpower purpose and decisions. a) Group Discussion b) In tray c) Role Play d) case StudiesQuestionnaire: Questionnaires are written lists of questions that users fill out questionnaire and return. a) Common Metric Questionnaire b) Functional Job Analysis c) Occupational Analysis Inventory d) Positional Analysis Questionnaire e) Work profiling system

Psychometric Tests: Many organizations use some form of psychometric assessment as a part of their selection process. For some people this is a prospect about which there is a natural and understandable wariness of the unknown.

A psychometric test is a standardized objective measure of a sample of behavior. It is standardized because the procedure of administering the test, the environment in which the test is taken, and the method of calculating individual scores are uniformly applied. It is objective because a good test measures the individual differences in an unbiased scientific method without the interference of human factors. Most of these tests are time bound and have a correct answer. A person’s score is calculated on the basis of correct answers. Most tests could be classified in two broad categories:

a) Aptitude test b) Achievement test

As a conclusion we can say that ,it is through the competencies of its employees executives, managers, and individual contributors -- that an organizationexecutes its strategy and achieves results that are crucial to its success. It is realized that there is no right answer to competency issues. What is important for organizations is adopting definitions, models, and approaches that make sense, meet their needs, and used them consistently.

Conclusion