Competency-based HR Management

chillibreeze writer — Meera Ramakrishnan

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Organizations around the world depend on human capital to achieve their strategic objectives. Nevertheless, how they leverage the talents of their resource is the hidden mantra. With umpteen numbers of organizing factors emerging day by day, competency based HR management is being increasingly recognized as an effective way of talent management.

Today, the process and competency have become key factors in determining how HR function is organized. While the process play a keen role on total quality management and re-engineering, a growing number of organizations sees competence as the key to enduring performance and to making HR most effective.

Competency Based HRM

A competency is any “skill, attitude, knowledge, or other attribute that is observable and identifies successful performance”. Effectively competencies translate the strategic vision and goals of the organization into measurable and observable behaviors or actions that employees must display.

For any given organization, there will be a common framework of competency that integrates all aspects of the HR system including employee selection, evaluation, promotion, and reward systems.

By communicating these competencies, organizations empower employees to take charge of their careers, direct their own personal development and continually self-evaluate and improve. The framework also helps the organization to pro-actively plan for its human resource needs and establishes programs that support employees in acquiring the competencies needed for the organizational success.

However, it takes extraordinary effort and commitment to develop and implement a detailed and integrated competency-based human resource management system. Hence, it requires a valuable amount of time to evaluate the needs of the organization and to create a strategy or plan that will meet these needs.

Implementing Competency Based HRM

Implementing competency based HRM requires significant change initiative and there must be a compelling need and will to change. In order to develop a common framework, not just the HR, but, everyone in the organization must see the benefits and be willing to champion the initiative.

For instance, leaders must see the benefits while employees must understand how the program will benefit them both in their current jobs, as well as in advancing their careers. In order to succeed, HR will have to implement first the components of a competency based HRM system that addresses the expressed needs of the employees, preferably in a non-threatening way.

Having championed the change, the first major challenge will be to define the competencies across levels. For instance, will it be sufficient to define the common framework of competencies for everyone, or should specific competencies be developed for a particular level, functions, and jobs? The answer hinges on how the competencies will be used.

For example, to staff particular position, competencies should be defined for the job, while on the other hand for appointments to level, should competencies only be defined at the core or common level.

With myriad of competency modeling methods, it becomes crucial for any given organization to arrive at a methodology best suited to support their identified needs. However, no one single method will effectively support all components of the HRM system (i.e. training, development, selection, performance etc.) or the full range of occupation levels (executive, skilled, semi-skilled etc.).

Finally, communication is highly important before you implement a competency based HRM. While employee communication is imperative, promoting the framework between stakeholders also becomes mandatory. This ensures that the competencies are truly reflecting the behaviors that contribute to the sustained organizational success.

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—About our writer: Meera says, "A happy mum of the world who lives by the moment. My interests varies from yoga to technology to political science to gift making."

 

 

 

 

 

 

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