Who Handles Performance Appraisal and Competency Mapping: HR or T&D Manager?

My question is simple: I want to know who is responsible for performance appraisal and competency mapping in an organization. Is it the HR manager or the T&D manager?

Measuring Competency Mapping

I also want to know how to measure/evaluate when the competency mapping exercise is done.

The simple answer to your first question is that a T&D Manager is NOT responsible for performance appraisals unless they are for his/her staff within the T&D department.

Now, as for Competency Mapping, if done properly and not just as a 'cut-paste' exercise (that most businesses do), it is much bigger than HR and T&D Managers. Its responsibility sits in the C-suite (or at least it is actively driven by the C-suite) with delegation to HR and T&D managers among their other peers. These other peers will include each and every other Department or Vertical Head (depending on the scale, industry type, geographic spread, etc., of the business).

Competency mapping is not a short or cheap exercise. It can take anywhere from 3 to 12 months with a full-time complement of 2 to 3 people working on it. That is why most companies find it beneficial to outsource it to external consultants. But, that discussion is another post in its own right.

I wish you well if you are looking at initiating a competency mapping exercise in your business.

Thank you so much for your reply. I made some competency mapping forms, but the manager is not satisfied. Could you please send me some templates/forms/questionnaires so I can refer to them? Also, I would like to know how to evaluate competency exercises and how to measure them. Since T&D is a new area for me, I need your help.

Regards

While I must appreciate your enthusiasm, I must advise you that this is a scientific process. If I may say, I believe unless your manager is a "competency evaluation specialist" himself, he isn't qualified. You will need an expert's indulgence.

Reading this might help:

Competency Mapping Overview

Competency mapping is a way of assessing the strengths and weaknesses of a worker/employee or organization. It's about identifying a person's job skills and strengths in areas like teamwork, leadership, and decision-making. Large organizations may use some form of this technique to understand how to best use each worker or how to combine the strengths of different employees to produce the highest quality work. Individuals may also find that this type of assessment can help them prepare for a career change or advance in a specific job field.

Functional and Behavioral Models

Many competency mapping models break down strengths into two major areas: functional and behavioral.

Functional skills include all of the practical knowledge that a person needs to perform a job.

Behavioral assessment is sometimes more difficult to quantify and is the focus of most competency studies.

Benefits for Businesses

In large organizations, competency mapping models are often used to improve employee performance, to help with hiring or promotion decisions, and to provide a critical look at the current workforce. The process can be complicated, but typically begins with identifying those competencies that are most important for a specific position.

Challenges for Businesses

While this technique can be quite useful to large organizations, it does require thought, time, and analysis, and some companies simply may not want to do the work involved. When enough time is not put into preparing a questionnaire, the results may not be very useful. Some companies choose to hire an external consulting team to handle the modeling, testing, and analysis process for them.

This type of skill analysis can also backfire if the workplace does not respond to the results. Companies that engage in competency mapping need to be prepared to make changes to take advantage of the skills and abilities revealed in the assessment. This may mean that job descriptions and responsibilities are changed or swapped, and departments are merged or split as needed. Training and incentive programs may be needed to improve core skills for workers who are struggling with performance issues. While these changes can cause initial confusion and anxiety, actively responding to the results can often improve employee performance, raise morale, and create a more efficient workplace.

Benefits for Individuals

Competency mapping can also be used to help those seeking employment show the specific skills that would make them valuable to a potential employer. Many employers now purposefully screen applicants for specific characteristics, so once a person knows her strengths, she can emphasize them on an application or in an interview.

Challenges for Individuals

One potential limitation of personal testing is that individuals often have a few blind spots regarding their skills and personality. People tend to overestimate their abilities, which can limit the usefulness of any test. They may also have difficulty accurately answering questions that ask how others view them in the workplace. This gap between how a person sees himself and what his skills really are can sometimes make the results of self-testing assessments questionable. For the most accurate results, test-takers must be prepared to answer questions candidly and resist the temptation to overestimate their abilities.

I hope this helps you understand competency mapping better.