A competency is an underlying characteristic of an individual, which is causally related to effective performance. Competencies are a set of observable behavior statements rather than skills or abilities (such as communication, leadership, and customer responsiveness). Each job family has three sets of competencies:
- Competency set related to the organization's mission/vision/strategy.
- Competency set related to Internal and External Customer Expectations.
- Competency set related to departmental focus areas.
Difference between Competencies and Skills
Competence is ability plus a positive attitude, whereas skill is only ability. Competency is made up of two components: Knowledge & Skill. We acquire knowledge and store it in our mind to be retrieved later. Knowledge is acquired from learning or from experience. Knowledge provides us with the necessary theory, rationale, and background to allow us to tackle a task.
Skill, on the other hand, is the talent that we have, which enables us to execute what is in our mind. The greater our skill, the greater is the ability to convert theory into practice. Skill is our ability to do; it is practical, it produces results and consequences, which can be seen. Skills can be learned, practiced, and then stored away to be called upon when required. Both knowledge and skill are equally important. As they grow together, so grows the competency of the individual.
How are competencies mapped for an individual?
Competencies needed for a job family are identified and defined concisely to reduce misinterpretation. These competencies are divided into Vital, Essential, and Desirable competencies for each job family, and the calibrations in the measurement scale of each competency are defined. Each position is profiled in terms of:
1. Vital, Essential, and Desirable Competencies.
2. The expected calibration on the measurement scale of each competency.
Each person is profiled in terms of the level of knowledge application and attitudes on the measurement scale of each competency. The superimposing of the Person profile on the Position profile has wide-ranging ramifications. The gaps between the position profile and the person profile give birth to training needs.
How are individuals measured on competencies?
Individuals are assessed in assessment centers and are subject to various tests and games such as psychological tests, interviews, group sessions, simulated role-play, and presentations. Specialists assess behavioral performance in these tests.
What are the generally desired competencies?
In addition to job-specific competencies, some of the generally desired competencies include individual competencies (personal traits such as flexibility, determination, drive, autonomy, risk-taking, personal integrity), managerial competencies (achievement orientation, developing others, empowerment, planning, team leadership), analytical competencies (problem-solving skills, logic, innovation, analytical skills, numerical skills, practical learning, aware of the detail), interpersonal competencies (communication skills, expressiveness, openness), motivational competencies (spirit, energy, motivation, perseverance) among others.
How will improving an individual's rating on a competency assist him/her on the job?
Competencies are vital as they provide a clear picture of what is expected of employees to achieve excellent performance. Improving employee competencies is important because organizations in this time and age have a competitive advantage only when employees' performance is excellent. Quality performance can be achieved only when attention is paid to how employees go about their tasks and then how these are developed. This excellent performance leads to the overall improvement in the performance of the organization.
Competency Mapping
Competency mapping is the complete understanding of an individual's organizational, managerial, and behavioral competencies - and not just in terms of skills, abilities, or intelligence. For a manager, competence is a compendium of skills, behavioral traits, beliefs, motives, social roles, and self-image. Competency mapping helps companies to respond to the economy, industry, and customer dynamics in a fast-changing world. It helps a company to bridge the gap between vision and implementation.
The ultimate objective of the technique is to create an organizational design based on a set of competencies that are in sync with the requirements of the business and are able to drive the company's policies on recruitment, performance management, training, and compensation. The commonly used four models of competency mapping include the job-competency model, the role-competency model, the functional-competency model, and the core-competency model.
A combination of these models allows the company to map the functional, managerial, and behavioral attributes that are required for each position in the organization. Apart from ensuring a perfect fit, this also facilitates cross-functional moves and succession planning.
Mapping For Recruitment
A company that uses competency mapping as a recruitment tool has a clear understanding of who, why, and what it is looking for. This ensures that it hires the best possible people, thereby maximizing its return on recruitment. To optimize its employee costs, for instance, PepsiCo India uses competency mapping across four key areas: sales, marketing, customer development, and finance.
Every year, PepsiCo analyzes every position in the company in terms of its organizational relevance and the required competencies. A set of them - ranging from lateral thinking to strategizing - defines each position; the extent to which a particular competency is required is, of course, a function of the level: junior, middle, or senior. Interestingly, PepsiCo's model also tracks the competencies defining each position over a three-year period to ensure that the person being hired not only possesses them at that point in time but also has the ability to acquire those that are most likely to define the position in the future.
Mapping For Performance
In a sense, the similarities between competency mapping and benchmarking are obvious. By comparing the desired with the existing, companies can focus on acquiring competencies - both at the level of the organization as well as at that of the individual. For example, Modi Xerox uses an organizational competency model to highlight the gaps in competencies and provides its employees the training they need to bridge them.
First, the company created competency centers in each of its functional areas - sales, service, finance, manufacturing, and management development - which define the specific competencies for each position and create opportunities for knowledge transfer.
Mapping For Development
As any CEO who decides to use competency mapping will realize, the technique, invariably, results in a hierarchy of competencies. Companies wishing to use it as a development tool merely link this to their career development model. Aligned with HR inputs like training, this approach can serve as a comprehensive developmental framework.
That's why Hughes Escorts defines each position in the organization in terms of 23 competencies, categorized into four groups: attitude-based, knowledge-driven, skill-based, and value-based. While attitude- and value-based competencies are the same across the organization, skill- and knowledge-based competencies vary across positions. For instance, financial acumen, a skill-based competency, is assigned a higher weightage for positions either in the finance function or senior management.
While continuing to adapt its model, Hughes Escorts provides training inputs that will help its employees move up the hierarchy. In the process, the company hopes to maximize productivity.
Mapping For Appraisal
Like any other technique, which can compare what is with what should be, competency mapping can easily serve as a tool for appraisal. After all, it allows employees to be appraised not only on their performance but also on their ability to acquire the competencies that are required for their jobs.
Tobacco major ITC, for instance, uses the technique to quantify performance measurement. This ensures that the appraisal is result-oriented, with the performance of the employee being measured against specific functional and behavioral competencies. Thus, a senior manager's appraisal includes not only a measure of business results, but also behavioral competencies like ethical standards, teamwork, leadership, and the development of subordinates. However, while competency mapping can serve as an objective appraisal tool, companies should ensure that they provide their employees with adequate opportunities to develop the required competencies before evaluating their ability or inability to meet their objectives.
Mapping For Rewards
A structured organization, built around clear hierarchies and rigid roles, can coexist with a traditional job-focused rewards system. But companies designed around processes or projects, where career progression has as much a chance of being lateral as vertical, would do better to use a competency-based rewards system. This is especially true in knowledge-intensive industries like software. For example, Hughes Software Systems has a rewards system based on a role-competency model. This requires the company to profile a particular position in terms of its role in achieving the greater objectives of the organization and to evaluate if an employee is ready for the next role. Thus, instead of paying for experience or qualifications, the company can pay for competencies.
Mapping For Change
Everyone knows that the people aspect of change management is more difficult than the business aspect. Competency mapping can address this issue by helping them create a stimulating work environment, with sufficient opportunities for growth. ITC uses competency mapping as a change management tool in this way.
While charting its future, apart from identifying the new competencies that will be required, the company also analyzes the impact of a change in the desired competency profile on the careers of its employees.
Competency mapping is a technique that requires substantial investments in terms of time, money, and commitment. There are some businesses where competency mapping is more effective than others. This is a function of three factors: the nature of the industry that a company operates in, the stage of the life cycle it is in, and the depth of the talent pool it can hire from.
From India, New Delhi
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22- Competency set related to the organization's mission/vision/strategy.
- Competency set related to Internal and External Customer Expectations.
- Competency set related to departmental focus areas.
Difference between Competencies and Skills
Competence is ability plus a positive attitude, whereas skill is only ability. Competency is made up of two components: Knowledge & Skill. We acquire knowledge and store it in our mind to be retrieved later. Knowledge is acquired from learning or from experience. Knowledge provides us with the necessary theory, rationale, and background to allow us to tackle a task.
Skill, on the other hand, is the talent that we have, which enables us to execute what is in our mind. The greater our skill, the greater is the ability to convert theory into practice. Skill is our ability to do; it is practical, it produces results and consequences, which can be seen. Skills can be learned, practiced, and then stored away to be called upon when required. Both knowledge and skill are equally important. As they grow together, so grows the competency of the individual.
How are competencies mapped for an individual?
Competencies needed for a job family are identified and defined concisely to reduce misinterpretation. These competencies are divided into Vital, Essential, and Desirable competencies for each job family, and the calibrations in the measurement scale of each competency are defined. Each position is profiled in terms of:
1. Vital, Essential, and Desirable Competencies.
2. The expected calibration on the measurement scale of each competency.
Each person is profiled in terms of the level of knowledge application and attitudes on the measurement scale of each competency. The superimposing of the Person profile on the Position profile has wide-ranging ramifications. The gaps between the position profile and the person profile give birth to training needs.
How are individuals measured on competencies?
Individuals are assessed in assessment centers and are subject to various tests and games such as psychological tests, interviews, group sessions, simulated role-play, and presentations. Specialists assess behavioral performance in these tests.
What are the generally desired competencies?
In addition to job-specific competencies, some of the generally desired competencies include individual competencies (personal traits such as flexibility, determination, drive, autonomy, risk-taking, personal integrity), managerial competencies (achievement orientation, developing others, empowerment, planning, team leadership), analytical competencies (problem-solving skills, logic, innovation, analytical skills, numerical skills, practical learning, aware of the detail), interpersonal competencies (communication skills, expressiveness, openness), motivational competencies (spirit, energy, motivation, perseverance) among others.
How will improving an individual's rating on a competency assist him/her on the job?
Competencies are vital as they provide a clear picture of what is expected of employees to achieve excellent performance. Improving employee competencies is important because organizations in this time and age have a competitive advantage only when employees' performance is excellent. Quality performance can be achieved only when attention is paid to how employees go about their tasks and then how these are developed. This excellent performance leads to the overall improvement in the performance of the organization.
Competency Mapping
Competency mapping is the complete understanding of an individual's organizational, managerial, and behavioral competencies - and not just in terms of skills, abilities, or intelligence. For a manager, competence is a compendium of skills, behavioral traits, beliefs, motives, social roles, and self-image. Competency mapping helps companies to respond to the economy, industry, and customer dynamics in a fast-changing world. It helps a company to bridge the gap between vision and implementation.
The ultimate objective of the technique is to create an organizational design based on a set of competencies that are in sync with the requirements of the business and are able to drive the company's policies on recruitment, performance management, training, and compensation. The commonly used four models of competency mapping include the job-competency model, the role-competency model, the functional-competency model, and the core-competency model.
A combination of these models allows the company to map the functional, managerial, and behavioral attributes that are required for each position in the organization. Apart from ensuring a perfect fit, this also facilitates cross-functional moves and succession planning.
Mapping For Recruitment
A company that uses competency mapping as a recruitment tool has a clear understanding of who, why, and what it is looking for. This ensures that it hires the best possible people, thereby maximizing its return on recruitment. To optimize its employee costs, for instance, PepsiCo India uses competency mapping across four key areas: sales, marketing, customer development, and finance.
Every year, PepsiCo analyzes every position in the company in terms of its organizational relevance and the required competencies. A set of them - ranging from lateral thinking to strategizing - defines each position; the extent to which a particular competency is required is, of course, a function of the level: junior, middle, or senior. Interestingly, PepsiCo's model also tracks the competencies defining each position over a three-year period to ensure that the person being hired not only possesses them at that point in time but also has the ability to acquire those that are most likely to define the position in the future.
Mapping For Performance
In a sense, the similarities between competency mapping and benchmarking are obvious. By comparing the desired with the existing, companies can focus on acquiring competencies - both at the level of the organization as well as at that of the individual. For example, Modi Xerox uses an organizational competency model to highlight the gaps in competencies and provides its employees the training they need to bridge them.
First, the company created competency centers in each of its functional areas - sales, service, finance, manufacturing, and management development - which define the specific competencies for each position and create opportunities for knowledge transfer.
Mapping For Development
As any CEO who decides to use competency mapping will realize, the technique, invariably, results in a hierarchy of competencies. Companies wishing to use it as a development tool merely link this to their career development model. Aligned with HR inputs like training, this approach can serve as a comprehensive developmental framework.
That's why Hughes Escorts defines each position in the organization in terms of 23 competencies, categorized into four groups: attitude-based, knowledge-driven, skill-based, and value-based. While attitude- and value-based competencies are the same across the organization, skill- and knowledge-based competencies vary across positions. For instance, financial acumen, a skill-based competency, is assigned a higher weightage for positions either in the finance function or senior management.
While continuing to adapt its model, Hughes Escorts provides training inputs that will help its employees move up the hierarchy. In the process, the company hopes to maximize productivity.
Mapping For Appraisal
Like any other technique, which can compare what is with what should be, competency mapping can easily serve as a tool for appraisal. After all, it allows employees to be appraised not only on their performance but also on their ability to acquire the competencies that are required for their jobs.
Tobacco major ITC, for instance, uses the technique to quantify performance measurement. This ensures that the appraisal is result-oriented, with the performance of the employee being measured against specific functional and behavioral competencies. Thus, a senior manager's appraisal includes not only a measure of business results, but also behavioral competencies like ethical standards, teamwork, leadership, and the development of subordinates. However, while competency mapping can serve as an objective appraisal tool, companies should ensure that they provide their employees with adequate opportunities to develop the required competencies before evaluating their ability or inability to meet their objectives.
Mapping For Rewards
A structured organization, built around clear hierarchies and rigid roles, can coexist with a traditional job-focused rewards system. But companies designed around processes or projects, where career progression has as much a chance of being lateral as vertical, would do better to use a competency-based rewards system. This is especially true in knowledge-intensive industries like software. For example, Hughes Software Systems has a rewards system based on a role-competency model. This requires the company to profile a particular position in terms of its role in achieving the greater objectives of the organization and to evaluate if an employee is ready for the next role. Thus, instead of paying for experience or qualifications, the company can pay for competencies.
Mapping For Change
Everyone knows that the people aspect of change management is more difficult than the business aspect. Competency mapping can address this issue by helping them create a stimulating work environment, with sufficient opportunities for growth. ITC uses competency mapping as a change management tool in this way.
While charting its future, apart from identifying the new competencies that will be required, the company also analyzes the impact of a change in the desired competency profile on the careers of its employees.
Competency mapping is a technique that requires substantial investments in terms of time, money, and commitment. There are some businesses where competency mapping is more effective than others. This is a function of three factors: the nature of the industry that a company operates in, the stage of the life cycle it is in, and the depth of the talent pool it can hire from.
From India, New Delhi
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Competency mapping.ppt
ART AND SCIENCE OF COMPETENCY MAPPING.doc
Competency Development.xls