In last week’s article, I introduced the concept of job competence mapping and how it may be a useful tool for recruitment and ascertaining future development programmes for employees.
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The whole idea of job competence mapping is to mitigate against recruitment errors while creating a platform for organisations to work to their optimum potential. Job competency mapping is about identifying preferred behaviours and personal skills which distinguish excellent and outstanding performance from the average and mediocre. Competencies are the ingredients that contribute to excellence. The competency ingredients are skills, knowledge, attributes and behaviours. It is prudent for every organisation to ascertain these before any recruitment process or staff development programme is embarked upon.
Rationale for job competency mapping It is through the competencies of its employees that an organisation executes its strategy and achieves results that are crucial to its success.
Competency Mapping Techniques The major thrust of this article is to focus on techniques/models which organisations may employ for job competency mapping.
Critical Incident Analysis Respondents are asked to relate specific incidents, which highlight exemplary behaviours in critical situations. This is based on the assumption that the best and the worst of a person surfaces in a crisis. For example, in a banking institution incidents would include occasions when a client comes complaining that their bank transfer has not sailed through yet. When analysing a critical incident, it is useful to ask yourself questions such as: “how should an employee react when faced with a situation like this?” The answer automatically leads you to the required behaviours, attitude, attributes and disposition of a person to hold such role.
Traditional Person-Job Match Model This model assumes that employees have jobs with specific and identifiable tasks. Work is generally standardised and repetitive in an organisational hierarchy. Job performance is readily verifiable. This model works best with organisations defined by stable environments.
The Strategy Development Model This model assumes that employees with broad, strategic “attributes” will create their own roles which interact to produce the organisation’s strategy. Work is constantly evolving within a network of organisational relationships. This model is described in terms of organisations in chaotic, unpredictable, or very rapidly changing environments.
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What is the best technique? Companies create and use the competency models to specify the employee behaviours, knowledge, and motivations that they believe are necessary to produce organisationally critical results. But if the model is not quite right, the organisation will suffer. To determine the right model it is essential to look at actual data and assessments of employees’ competencies and of the results they achieve. Everything else that an organisation does should be derived from the business strategy being deployed and this includes job competency mapping as well. Profiling of expertise and knowledge must be a by-product of an assessment of the intended strategic outcomes of the business.
l Request Machimbira is the Group CEO for Proficiency Consulting Group International and StrategyWorld Consulting. For feedback, email [email protected] or visit website www.proficiencyinternational.com Phone: 0772 693 404/0776 228 575
