Are you looking for ways to optimize your workforce? Perhaps, you’re looking to fill open positions or find a candidate with skills your team lacks. If this is the case, creating a competency management strategy is essential for your organization. This strategy helps you map out your team’s skills and knowledge while outlining any additional competencies specific job roles may need to succeed.
Keep reading to learn more about competency management, what kind of benefits it can provide your team, and the top 3 best practices. Let’s dive into it!
What is Competency Management?
Competency management is the process of identifying skills or competencies that employees are required to have for each role. Most companies follow a competency management model to identify, develop, and assess employees’ skills. Assessing your workforce skills allows you to identify any individual skill gaps or overall team weaknesses. By addressing the lack of competencies or expertise knowledge, you’ll be able to develop a high performing team with a wide range skills.
In order to complete the assessment of your team’s skills you must complete the following steps:
- Identify the skills needed for each role in your organization
- Identify the current skills your team has
- Outline your organizational goals and what skills are needed to achieve those
- Implement a learning and development plan to upskill your team
Benefits of Competency Management
If this is your first time hearing about this concept, you must be wondering: “What is the importance of competency management?” And, “why should companies care about implementing a competency management system?” Well, for starters, completing a skills gap analysis can help you align your workforce to your business objectives. Additionally, identifying opportunities for growth will allow you to train your team to enhance their professional skills while also increasing productivity levels and efficiency. Further key benefits include:
- Career Development Opportunities: A 2023 study reveals that, “only 32% of employees actually said they’re satisfied [with their company’s L&D program].” Meaning employees know it’s essential to reskill and upskill in today’s professional landscape, but don’t think their companies are providing adequate training. As you monitor your employees performance, you can identify which skills they lack and come up with a proper plan to develop those necessary skills. You’ll be increasing overall employee satisfaction, workforce agility, and core competencies.
- Organizational Success: Investing in training efforts can be costly – both financially and time-wise. With a well-defined competency management system, you can benefit by understanding and outlining the specific skills your organization needs to succeed. That way you can incorporate targeted training that will drive business goals, increase productivity levels, and see a greater ROI outcome.
- Enhanced Performance: By utilizing competency management software, you can automate tedious tasks to reduce admin burden on your team and increase efficiency. That way your HR team can worry more on developing your people rather than monitoring, assessing, and tracking key competencies. It also allows HR professionals to focus on creating more engaging learning and development courses, cultivating a positive workplace, and enhance workforce agility.
- Higher Employee Engagement: Effective talent management would prioritize employee development to close the skills gap their company. This would mean employees are getting closer to achieving their career goals. Your employee performance will increase due to additional training and knowledge. A more motivated workforce means a higher employee engagement rate.
- Clearer Criteria for Recruitment: By identifying the required competencies for each position, you’ll know exactly what to look for while recruiting. This allows managers and HR teams to prioritize the specific skills that are needed in candidates to help narrow down their search. In turn, cutting down the time to complete HR processes and onboarding newcomers sooner.
- Succession Planning: This ensures your team is prepared for any future challenges or sudden internal changes. A well outlined competency framework would make certain that your team has the skills they need to step into leadership roles if needed. With competency development, you eliminate the fear of filling certain job roles with external candidates where you’re unsure of their cultural fit or experience.
Best Practices to Develop a Competency Management Model
Every organization has their own unique way of approaching competency gaps. However, there are some common characteristics that make a competency management system great. Here are some best practices for tackling your skills management at your workplace.
Define the purpose of your competency model
Understand who will use this and what you are hoping the user learns from this model. You should be able to define what job roles require what skills. For example, if you’re a manager, you need to learn how to run fair performance reviews, identify your team’s strengths and weaknesses, and delegate tasks accordingly. The purpose of your model will determine what information, skills, and goals you need to include. Not having a clear outcome in mind and implementing a competency model could result in wasted time and undermine effective talent management.
Structure your competency management process
Once you’ve outlined your goal, structure your model around employee skills, company values, or job roles. Your structure will help your skills management as you may want to distinguish between leadership or individual contributor competencies. Don’t only take into consideration your goal, but also think about company size and how your organization is made up. For example, your model is structured around departments, which means different roles will have shared competencies.
Also, consider where your source of knowledge is coming from. Is this an internal or external training? Perhaps a mixture of the two? You can provide your team with growth and development opportunities from an external source to expand your workforce’s competencies. Additionally, you can have more senior members organize a workshop to pass on their knowledge. This way, they have the chance to develop new skills from various sources. Also, this gives your training programs more nuance and depth to learn from different experts.
Create a mentorship program
Assign new hires to established employees in the company so they can guide them through the company’s workflows, tasks, and projects. You are providing your new hires with a warm welcome and also providing an opportunity for leadership to your mid-senior workers. This helps ensure you are actively providing your team the skills they need to hit company targets, but also aligns with their career goals.
Utilizing Competency Management Tools
Identifying, assessing, and tracking skills can cause a lot of confusion. To make your life easier, it’s best to utilize a competency management software. These platforms provide you with a competency framework and assist you as you identify skill gaps in one centralized location. It’s a key tool to help monitor and manage your competency management process, as it provides you with features to assess employee skills, customize training, and view your team’s skills development.
By using robust competency management software, your team can identify the skills required for each role and assess the current capabilities within your organization. This allows you to outline your organizational goals, determine the skills needed to achieve them, and implement a targeted learning and development plan to upskill your team. With technology, you’ll be able to create the best competency framework for your team and make it easier to evaluate your employees’ skills.
These digital tools come with features that give you a clear overview of employee competencies and overall skill data. This makes it easier to make real-time decisions, spot areas where your team needs support, and create a training and development plan that fits your goals. They’re also great for tracking proficiency levels and helping you guide your team toward the skill levels you want to achieve.
Whether you are managing a small team or an international workforce, it’s vital to invest in the right competency management platform. With the right tool, you’ll be able to assess and identify gaps in knowledge while also coming up with a comprehensive training and development plan. Ultimately, leveraging a competency management model and software boosts your company’s overall skills and competencies. Additionally, enhancing your team’s overall performance and laying the foundation for long-term success.
Empowering Employees with Competency Management
Part of the competency management process involves empowering your team. It’s also a key aspect of talent management that brings out the best in your employees and lets you challenge them. A well-defined workforce development plan not only equips your team with new skills and knowledge but also gives them the autonomy they need to perform their roles effectively. It’s essential that you take the time to assess competencies so you don’t fall behind your competition.
When you leverage these tools, you have the ability to create a more comprehensive and effective approach to competency management. This ensures you are maintaining the skills needed for your company to thrive, but also growing your team so they can achieve their career goals. This extra motivation and desire to further their professional and personal lives will translate to higher productivity levels and a boost in overall performance.
FAQ
What do you mean by competency management?
Competency management is the process of identifying key competencies needed from an employee to reach business goals. This is a strategic workforce planning process to develop, reinforce, and upskill employees to ensure optimized performance levels.
What is a competency example?
An example of a competency that is needed to successfully carry out their job as a receptionist is communication. A receptionist must be able to communicate in a clear, concise, and pleasant way. To perform the core functions of their job, they must communicate with their colleagues and clients.
What are the benefits of competency management?
There are several benefits of competency management, including boosting your company’s skills and competencies, enhancing overall organizational success, and optimizing core business operations. It also encourages growth opportunities with mentor programs.
