Competency Measurement
The competency study is a comprehensive data set that provides deep insights into the company culture and identifies targeted developmental needs of worker populations. As a transformational assessment tool, the study can be extremely effective in moving a company’s culture forward on the excellence continuum. Although the study uses a self-assessment format, it is an extraordinarily reliable tool for base lining and routinely measuring an organization’s progressive transformation to excellence, alignment with the strategic plan, and present competency levels across the workforce including manager competency, project managers, technical staff and employees at all levels.
Competency measurement enjoys wide popularity in Health Care, Engineering, Manufacturing and many technical disciplines who need more than just a 360 degree assessment approach.
The process of administering competency measures is ideal for groups of 25 or more employees or managers who share the same skill sets or in the case where an organization wants to embrace a particularly important set of competencies. Management and employee competencies should be designed to parallel and complement core objectives of strategic and operational plans. Often, the competency assessment is a vital first step in accelerating the development of the workforce in order to achieve aggressive organizational goals.These assessment methods can also shed light on personnel promotion or even personnel selection. It is important to assure that your workforce has the skills needed for where your organization is going in the future.
The competency assessment process can be utilized as a one time measure of job knowledge or ongoing competency assessment program to baseline the skills across the company, or to identify specific needs within a particular group or department. Assessment of competency is a powerful addition to the full set of assessment tools used for workforce planning. We have developed an effective process to measure strenghts and weaknesses and to efficiently administer continuing competence. The process has two phases, each with unique benefits.
PHASE ONE
1. Definition of specific competencies.
We will spend time with stakeholders to define and develop the critical competencies an organization needs to support their strategic and operational goals and objectives. Competency areas can be developed in any repeatable job skill or functional area. Typical domain areas include:
Job Knowledge
Computer/IT Knowledge
Leadership Skills
Managing Skills
Management Knowledge
Communication Skills
Regulatory Knowledge
Policy/Procedures Knowledge
Project Management
We will work with your key stakeholders and managers through facilitated consensus to determine the critical skills and competency models that will build a robust and competitive workforce. Along with basic job modeling, We will draw from our comprehensive database of workplace and job competencies to guide the skill and competency selection process.
2. Administration of Internal Self-Assessment
We will build an internet-based email survey to capture worker impressions of their skills in two critical areas:
Self Perception of Skill level in each particular competency
Self Perception of importance of each particular competency to accomplishing their job
This twin perspective helps an organization zero in on the high leverage areas where workers need the most support, and where strengths and weaknesses reside across the worker population being measured. The competency assessment can also be utilized to baseline skills that workers do not presently use on the job, but which will be required in the future. This helps define exactly how much development will be necessary to build competency in the future workforce. In addition to basic levels of competency across the population, the study is designed to target many additional helpful demographic factors such as:
Competency by time on the job
Competency by education
Competency by age
Competency by department/plant location
Competency by professional certification
Inclusion of these and other possible demographic factors can yield tremendous insight into hiring decisions, compensation, retention, and professional development. Assessment of competency is analyzed to the individual employee level.
3. Analyses and Reporting
We will build a customized report with several layers of reporting. This comprehensive report examines worker competency from macro to micro with an executive summary down to an individual development plan for each participating employee.
Typical reports generated by the study include integrated text and graphics:
Top Ten Competency and Importance—High and Low Scores
All Domains 10 Highest Knowledge Scores
All Domains 10 Lowest Knowledge Scores
All Importance Domains 10 Highest Scores
All Importance Domains 10 Lowest Scores
Competency High And Low Scores By Domain
Total Competency Scores
Total Importance Scores
Factor Analysis: High Importantce/Low competence
Competency Knowledge and Importance by Demographic Groups
Competency by Department
Competency by Supervisor Status etc.
The individual sees his personal competency scores in relationship to all others being measured in the study and in relationship with the mean for each domain being measured across all participants in the study. This lets individual workers know where they stand in the total population, and what areas are most critical for them from two perspectives:
Areas they need to build skills to become completely competent
Areas they need to build skills to ‘catch up’ with the mean score (average skill level) for the entire population
The individual development report can include many other items (see phase 2 below) but is especially useful for creating greater efficiency in performance reviews for supervisors.
Rather than wasting hours in meetings with individual employees, simple emails can communicate the need to build skills in targeted areas for each employee.
Individual competency reports are an effective means to develop individual motivation for competency development. Our competency system can be built into development plans for each individual, department and across company lines at an unlimited number of locations.
Findings and Recommendations In addition to basic reporting information, we will share our perspectives on the impacts of the data fro the study. Typical areas included in Findings and Recommendations:
Impact on employee culture
Skill Needs in Common
Critical Barriers to Strategic Growth of the Organization
Most Leverage able Strengths
Marketplace/Competitor Analysis and Comparison
PHASE TWO
Workforce Development
Once we have helped an organization measure it’s critical competencies, it can also assist in fulfilling each specific development need.
Employee Training
We offer a full range of manager and employee development workshops and seminars, from courses in customer satisfaction and leadership development, to executive communication and team building. Courses are designed with the ‘train to production’ model in mind and are customized to the specific needs of each employee group. In addition, the competency study process also contributes to the new employee hiring and training process as well as progress moitoring. Better-qualified employees are selected, based upon the organization’s critical competencies, and fast track new employee development programs can be developed to get new hires up to speed and in the saddle quickly.
Educational Resource Development
In cases where individual development needs vary widely, we can help by developing high quality educational resources for each skill or competency. Often times a variety of options are available from extension courses at local universities to online training at the employee’s convenience. We will work with the specific needs identified in the study to build an in-depth database of employee development options.
Executive Coaching
At more senior levels, the realization that one needs to refresh critical skills and core competencies often comes as a surprise. The costs to the organization of carrying senior managers who’s skills are not ‘up-to-speed’ can be quite expensive in many ways. Often these more experienced human assets will benefit from one on one executive coaching with a consultant. This often helps build motivation and understanding for a ‘late career’ professional development push, that will pay large dividends to the organization.
Internal Best Practice Mentoring Once internal experts are identified, those who score low in area can tap this external expertise through the development of formal or informal job skills mentoring. This can yield rapid/low cost results.
Employee Transition
The unfortunate news for some workers is that the organization cannot afford to carry them with critically low competency levels. The objective data provided in this system of measurement will help with employee termination, and also create a blueprint for individual development targets for an employee’s next job. We can provide transition workshops to help employees transition to the next step in their career. These types of services often help soften negative impacts of employee termination and demonstrate an enlightened approach for today’s responsible and progressive organization.
Other Business Costs
We can also provide financial assessment and projections on the impacts of employee retention vs. termination, forecasted expected benefits of employee training, and long term projections of developing a learning organization that will meet future goals. These levels of analysis fall into our expertise areas of strategic planning and performance management but are a great complement to this type of study.
Implementing a Competency measurement study and system is a proactive step in any organization with more than 25 employees. The potential benefits of this type of consulting project will yield not only short-term benefits, but also long-term efficiencies and an increase in overall organizational performance and competitiveness.
Call today 760-815-4527 to see how your organization can benefit from competency assessment.
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