Competency mapping
THIS NEW series is for the majority of us who hear of new words and phrases being flung about the place but are not confident in using them ourselves or have totally no clue what they mean. Just the other day I received a management jargon-manufacturing device that had three columns of words listed under the part of speech that they represented. These were adjectives or adverbs, nouns and verbs. All one had to do was to choose any one word from each column and the resultant phrase could become the new Management catchphrase. One that I churned out was "Creative Strategic Downloading." I am anxiously waiting to see if corporate India will start using it, and if they do, what meaning they will ascribe to it.
One phrase that has been doing the rounds these past couple of years is `competency mapping' that every CEO/HR honcho fires at will to anyone willing to, or paid to listen. CEOs usually glibly trip this phrase off their tongues when talking to their board.
Seeing how often they hear it, you and I must appreciate that they are earning their sitting fees by having to listen to it without complaint and pretending that they understand.
So what does `Competency Mapping' really mean? Competency Mapping is a process of identifying key competencies for a company or institution and the jobs and functions within it.
To make it even clearer, we could say that a competency is a behaviour (i.e. communication, leadership) rather than a skill or ability although it sometimes includes skills and abilities. Clear? I thought not! Perhaps if we were to look at the steps involved in the process:
First: A job analysis is carried out by asking employees to fill in a questionnaire that asks them to describe what they are doing, and what skills, attitudes and abilities they need to have to perform it well. There would be a bit that requests them to list down attributes needed to make it up to the next level, thus making it behavioural as well as skill-based.
Second: Having discovered the similarities in the questionnaires, a competency-based job description is crafted and presented to the personnel department for their agreement and additions if any.
Third: Having agreed on the job requirements and the skills and attitudes needed to progress within it and become more productive, one starts mapping the capability of the employees to the benchmarks. There are several index points within the responsibility level. An almost (but not quite) arbitrary level of attainment is noted against each benchmark indicating the areas where the assessee is in terms of personal development and achievement.
These give an adept HR manager a fairly good picture of the employee to see whether he (or she) needs to perform better or to move up a notch on the scale. Once the employee `tops' every indicator at his level, he moves on to the next and begins there at the bottom - in short, he is promoted.
This reasonably simple though initially (the first year only) tedious method helps everybody to know what the real state of preparedness of an organisation to handle new business (or its old one) because it has a clear picture of every incumbent in the organisation.
It helps in determining the training and development needs and importantly it helps to encourage the best and develop the rest. A win-win situation for everyone.
ARMITY GAUR
drwise@sify.com
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