Competency Mapping: Definition, Process And Needs: Recognizing and measuring the success and effectiveness of teams and individuals is important for any organization or business to help your business thrive. A competency framework can help identify the skills, attitudes, and behaviors employees need to do their jobs well. Whether you are interested in leadership or talent management, learning about a competency framework and how to build it can help you develop skills for your career.
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Competency Mapping: Definition, Process And Needs
WHAT IS COMPETENCY MAPPING?
A competency mapping is a measure of the skills, judgment, knowledge, and job-specific attributes required to perform a role successfully. It defines a set of competencies for each role in your department, company or business and outlines the values, behaviors and requirements that the organization establishes to achieve its goals.
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PRINCIPLES OF COMPETENCY MAPPING
- Core Values: Core values are the principles that guide the decisions, actions, and behavior of people in your organization. The organization often engages them to establish ethical standards and codes of conduct, regardless of position or role.
- Core Competencies: Core competencies often form the basis of the framework and apply to all roles and employees.
- Functional Competencies: Functional competencies reflect the responsibilities and functions associated with a specific job, title, or role, and the tools and skills required to perform them.
- Leadership Qualities: Leadership qualities are general characteristics and specific skills that can identify an employee with the potential to lead, lead, or motivate others.
- Metaskills: Metaskills are traits that are less relevant to a person’s current role but may be useful in the future, especially if the person wants to grow.
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PROCESS OF COMPETENCY MAPPING
- Identify organizational goals
An organization can begin the competency mapping process by identifying its goals. He may review his mission statement or meet with senior management to understand the larger goals employees are trying to achieve. This step helps the process lay a good foundation, identify the smaller goals that employees strive to achieve on a daily basis, and eliminate any confusion about the organization’s goals.
- Analyzing Current Employee Capabilities
By analyzing current employee capabilities, an organization can define capability models and identify opportunities for improvement. A useful method of analysis is self-assessment, as employees have a unique view of their skills and can highlight them in relation to their roles. Organizations are also adopting managerial appraisals to gain a more objective perspective on employee performance. Whether you use any of these scoring methods or a combination of them, considers tailoring them to each department or role.
- Defining Competencies
Once an organization understands its people’s goals and the skills needed to achieve them, it can define competencies for each role.Consider making a list of important skills and linking them to important responsibilities. For example, a product designer’s skills may include communication and negotiation to foster positive customer relationships. These specialists also rely on analytical thinking skills to develop prototypes and conduct user tests that effectively analyze consumer preferences.
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- Definition of Metrics
The organization can define competencies more clearly by assigning metrics to them. A common example of a metric is revenue amount, which indicates an employee’s expectations of performance. The level of sales is just a number, but it is closely related to skills such as interpersonal skills, negotiation skills and active listening. When an employee stands on or near the edge, the employer can better understand the employee’s ability to do their job.
- Provision of additional resources
During the skills mapping process, organizations can identify employees’ need for additional resources.Departments may need more training or better equipment to do their job properly. By allocating these additional resources, organizations can boost morale and demonstrate their ability to set realistic expectations.
- Implementing the results of the competence mapping
Once an organization has clearly defined the roles through the competence mapping, it can share the results internally and externally. For example, results can be integrated into job descriptions to attract the right candidates.Organizations can also share results with employees so they can prepare for performance reviews.
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NEED OF COMPETENCY MAPPING
- Optimizing Employee Performance: Because the competency map provides an assessment of current employees, you can identify existing strengths and weaknesses in your organization. This information will help you to optimize your employees’ potential by assigning them to tasks where they are more likely to be successful. Additionally, understanding employee pain points allows the organization to create new training opportunities and identify other areas where it can better support its employees.
- Improving Productivity: Competency mapping often limits roles within an organization. This specialization ensures that employees can focus their talents on the activities that matter most and rely on support from their peers that relates to their experience. As a result, organizations typically achieve outcomes such as higher productivity and higher profits.
- Simplified recruitment process: An organization with clearly defined roles can benefit from a simplified recruitment process. He can use his skills mapping to write accurate job descriptions and attract talented people with the right skills.As a result, hiring managers may have fewer resumes to review and spend time interviewing candidates who are right for the job. Additionally, retention rates tend to improve as new hires have the core skills for their roles and receive streamlined training.
- Improving Morale: Skills mapping can increase morale by setting expectations and ensuring employees understand how to achieve good evaluation results. Also, it may be easier for employees to seek support from their managers when both parties are aware of what is expected.In addition, the transparency that results from the mapping of competencies facilitates career development. Strengthening industry expertise encourages innovation and prepares employees for more advanced roles within the company.
Also See: Employee Motivation
DISADVANTAGES OF COMPETENCY MAPPING
- Due to the inevitable change of pace in the organization, it can be outdated at times.
- This is sometimes less useful when organizations are not responding properly.
- Lack of space for a person who could work in the field that could best use their skills.
- Change can be difficult for employees, few can be good in theory and few can be good in practice. When there is a skills shift at work, the work can be less productive.
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CONCLUSION
Competency mapping is the process of identifying the skills, attitudes, skills and knowledge required for a job. Organizations often begin this process by defining their goals and analyzing the capabilities of their current workforce. They then outline the expectations they have for each position and equip employees with the skills they need to be successful in their position. For example, an IT professional’s competency map may show the importance of communication, problem-solving skills, and knowledge of related operating systems.