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HR Era	Competency – The New Mantra
	by MM Nair, COO, Value Lanes, Bangalore

Whenever I speak about competency-centric management systems, I get asked why this sudden shift. And, the answer is simple. The changing global marketplace is forcing organizations to focus on competitiveness and speed. In a world where a start-up organization can catch up with you on technology in near zero time, there is only one thing that will keep you ahead of your competition; the competency levels of your workforce. Today, organizations thrive on “intelligent production” and not mere production. Organizations invest heavily in their people providing training and other learning experiences, but the consideration of employee as an “intellectual asset” is somewhat lopsided. The employee, on whom the investment is made, must consider himself to be an investor too, because the relationship of employer and employee cannot be a one-way street.

Competencies and Performance

Competencies must be developed in a performance-centric environment. Else, they will bring nothing to the business table. This requires focusing on two main targets (1) the business targets and goals – what must be produced and what competencies are required for the same and (2) the individual who is producing it, whose competency levels are high and therefore, the performance levels are exemplary. There is a direct relationship between competency and performance and to be successful, businesses today have no choice but to go with it.

Approach to Competency Modeling

Most approaches to competency modeling are limited to the use of a zero-based, bottom-up methodology that constructs a competency profile based on the skills that superior performers are currently demonstrating. These focus on the current organization rather than the organization’s future requirements.

The right approach to competency modeling is to have an organizational alignment focus to ensure that employees develop the competencies that are crucial to achieving the organization’s vision and goals, thus focusing on constructing an organization-wide competency model that is based on the corporate vision, values and business strategies. This enables the organization to concentrate on developing core competencies that have the greatest potential impact for the business. The competencies and identified behaviors are then used to drive the organization’s human resource systems, such as recruitment, performance appraisal, training and development. By integrating the core competencies into the human resource systems (Organization Alignment), the organization ensures that employees are focused on, motivated towards, and rewarded for activities that support and result in the achievement of the Corporate Vision.

Objectives of Performance-centric Competency Systems

A summary would read thus:

 Develop a Management Framework that will be used to build and sustain the required levels of Competencies for the Corporation to achieve its objectives and conduct its business activities efficiently.
 Develop job descriptions, which clearly indicate the essential and desirable competency requirements for various roles in the organization.
 Be able to conduct Competency based performance measurement to build an understanding of the current competency posture and further development needs of the current and future workforce.
 Prepare a company wide Development Plan.

Core Competency Model

Core Competency-1	Core Competency-2	Core Competency-3	Core Competency-4	Core Competency-5	Core Competency-6
Key Behaviors	Key Behaviors	Key Behaviors	Key Behaviors	Key Behaviors	Key Behaviors	STRATEGIC ROLE
Key Behaviors	Key Behaviors	Key Behaviors	Key Behaviors	Key Behaviors	Key Behaviors	COORDINATING ROLE
Key Behaviors	Key Behaviors	Key Behaviors	Key Behaviors	Key Behaviors	Key Behaviors	FRONTLINE ROLE

Note: Core Competency includes Knowledge and Skills. Competency is a cumulative effect of Knowledge, Skills and Behaviors.

The completed core competency model provides Businesses with direction for aligning your human resource systems and will also serve as the benchmark and model for developing job family/functional competency profiles. Developing job family/functional competency profiles would be the next phase in integrating competencies into your organization, once you have implemented the Core Competency Model.

Key Principles

The performance-centric competency management approach must be driven by some key principles:

1. It’s a valuable tool

First and foremost, businesses must recognize the value of such a system. They must be driven by the principle that the intellectual assets brought in by their valuable performers is key to the business’ success. They must be driven by the thought that the willingness of the workforce to invest back in the organization through their learning, effort and motivation can alone sustain the business.

2. Model is the Key

The competency model is the key to success. The very way in which the model is developed, implemented and monitored at regular intervals alone can provide sustainable business results. For competency models to impact the business results, the model must be simple to read, apply and monitor. This is where the value of your Consultant will be tested with acid.

3. Behavioral Descriptors

For the system to be effective, the competencies must be tied tightly into behaviors that can be described, visible and therefore documented. It must have norms, measurable criteria and can generate critical incidents both positive and negative, so as to be able to “see” the performance.

Is only performance management affected by competencies?

That is a question, which I often come across. My answer is a simple and straight NO. It is not the performance that we are talking, it is not the HR systems we are talking; we are talking about the business. When you staff, on what basis do you want to do that? When you decide on your training calendar for the coming year, on what basis do you want to do that? When you tell your management that you need to re-look at the organization’s structure, on what grounds are you going to do that?

If all above needs an amount of understanding of the competencies and competency-levels required in your organization’s pursuit of excellence in business, then the answer to the question must be that the competency system affect the business – not just the performance, not just the HR.

Integrating with business sub-systems

A friend of mine, a noted academician, told me the other day, and I will go with him cent per cent: “Executives take business decisions, not HR decision, finance decision or marketing decision. This classification of HR, finance, marketing or production is a product of the academic world; not the practicing world.” It is time that HR starts to look at the business and not the corners where the department is staffed.

You need to be able to integrate the competency model into other people function systems like Staffing, Training, Structuring, Organizational Designing, Performance Measurement and Rewards & Recognition systems – else your CEO is not going find any value in it!

Advantages

So, what does a good performance-centric competency management model bring to the table in terms of business? The answer to that question may lie in the following:

1. Organizational Performance is a cumulative effect of the individual performance various members and teams.
2. Why do some teams and/or individuals perform well and others not? The key to the answer is in the underlying competencies.
3. Understand the gaps in competencies of various teams and members in relation to their performance levels.
4. Bridge the gaps in competencies to bridge the gap in performances.
5. That is one way to build an organization performing well across teams and divisions and bring overall results into the business.


Author	:	MM Nair

About the Author	:	The author is Chief Operating Officer of Value Lanes, an HR Management Consulting organization based out of Bangalore. You can reach MM Nair through email: murali@value-lanes.com

Copyright	:	Copyright MM Nair

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