Hi all,
Firstly I should say that I have been working with competencies and
competences (note, there is a difference) for over ten years now, both
at organisation and individual levels. Lately I've been working at the
individual level as it affects the organisational or corporate level -
primarily because I've found that this is the tool all managers have
been looking for for so long, a singular description of what people must
know and do to enable the organisation to achieve its goals and
objectives.
In the past too many of us have relied on job descriptions and duty
statements to describe the skills and knowledge someone must have in any
particular position. In the past (wayyyyy back in the past) the typical
business was only a small company run by one boss who knew exactly who
and what he (and they were 'he' in those days) wanted to achieve his
goals. And if an individual couldn't provide the right competencies then
that person was out of a job. Today we are controlled by multi-nationals
and corporate committees whose primary goal is return on investor dollar
- and few, if any, at this level would have a clue what competencies are
required to do this (save for kick the tail of the next level down until
the bottom line figures change. If that doesn't work - sell the
division.).
Competencies (or competency/skill standards as they are known throughout
the world) identify clearly the skills and knowledge needed to achieve
these goals and objectives - including (in some countries) the
competencies required at board or Director level. However, these are
only useful if they are based on the needs of the functions found within
the organisation which achieve the desired goals and objectives - not
the people found in these functions.
Those organisations using these processes well are starting off with a
blank sheet and defining what functions are required to achieve whatever
goals and objectives they've set for the corporation. Once these
functions have been defined they then identify the skills and knowledge
needed to fill these functions and these are developed as competency /
skills standards. THEN it is determined whether or not there are people
currently filling those functions and, if so, whether or not their
skills and knowledge match those determined as essential for the
achievement of the goals and objectives (ie, the competency/skills
standards). If the answer is yes then they provide, through the
appraisal system, goals and challenges for these people to strive
towards in the achievement of corporate objectives. If the answer is no
then the appropriate training and development strategies are put into
place. In most cases the answer is usually yes to some competencies and
no to others.
Now, these competencies are determined in 'output' terms, not (training)
input terms which means that people are assessed against an outcome of
the application of certain skills and knowledge as determined in the
competency/skills standards, not in whether or not they've 'learned' the
skills and knowledge. Traditionally we trainers would have said that
these competencies are training objectives and thereby assess people
against their progress towards the learning outcome. Not any more.
Employers want 'competent' people, not 'trained' people (there is a big
difference) and it is for this reason that many employers will go for
someone with a good track record before going for someone with more
degrees than a compass. Well, the smart employers will anyway. Why else
do we have so many university educated taxi drivers and street sweepers?
Why are there so many people with university educations working for
people with only high school or college diplomas? Check out Bill Gates'
CV.
The bottom line is that competency (as determined by what a person must
do, in the workplace, in a variety of settings, and in a team based
environment) is at the centre of the Human Side of business (ie, the
part of the triumverate most often missed in business courses where
concentration is most often on Technical and Conceptual skills). For
those who care this is better explained in the attached PowerPoint
slide. (See the very bottom - I think. My competencies at computer
literacy could be called into question......!)
Now, to answer the specifics raised by Lynn in her posting:
Lynn Vavra wrote:
>
> Thank you Aim� Heene, for bringing up the subject of competencies, though it may have been discussed here earlier & I may have missed it. If so, I apologize.
>
> I am currently writing an article RE: career development center within public sector organizations, and one of the points addressed is the trend towards "building competencies". While Aim�'s question is a search for publications addressing competence in organizational dimensions, I am interested in the current popularity of competencies addressed by HRM on the individual level, especially in lieu of Aim�'s reference:
>
> "The 'competence' concept as it has been developed in strategic management literature is however an ORGANIZATIONAL concept, which has of course to do with competence of individuals, but which is not exactly referring to these individual competencies. (Sanchez, et al, Dynamics of Competence Based Competition, 1996)."
>
Competence as it is described here is far different to competency and it
is in this that people are so often sent off on the wrong track.
Competence describes something that someone (or, in the above reference,
an organisation) can do. Competency, on the other hand, is a compilation
of what people can do, how well they manage all of the little jobs that
go into what it is they are doing, whether or not they can fix things
when these little jobs go wrong, and being able to contextualise
whatever they are doing in order to meet the needs of where they are
doing it at the time - including working together in teams. Note, as I
said above, competency is written for the function the person fills, not
the person him/herself.
Imagine the question: "Can your organisation do such and such?" Some
would say that this is questionning the competency of the organisation.
But organisations can do nothing without the people inside of them. It
is these people who have the competency as shown in their application of
skills and knowledge which determine whether or not there is
organisational competence.
My father once said that he never saw a ship win a battle - it was the
sailors on board that won the battle. Without them the ship was nothing
but a funny shaped island floating around getting in the way of things.
> My question to the list, then, is: so what about those competencies? Are they indeed being packaged for HRM at the individual level? And if that's the case, is it appropriate?
They are being packaged for HRM only by those people who haven't yet
cottoned on to the fact that not all HR related matters have a training
start or finish point. The best practitioners in the world are, in fact,
packaging competencies as an OD strategy. Check out Champy and Hammer,
and in fact anything else on Reengineering, and you will see the 'why'
of competencies. Check out Rutherford (and, just to show I'm not too
egotistic, anyone else writing on the subject) and you'll see the 'how'.
>A well-known consultant in the career development field, Betsey Collard of Career Action Center up in Silicon Valley, has come out against the use of competencies for use at the individual level. Her perspective is that with the psychological contract broken, employees as well as employers should support employee career self-reliance. Competencies drag both parties back into the outdated paternalistic relationship.
>
If Betsey is saying that competencies unaligned to corporate needs are a
waste of time and effort then I am on her team. Putting competencies at
the HRM level is to say that people are 1000% responsible for
identifying what they must be doing to achieve the corporate goals and
objectives (oh, and by the way, we're not going to tell you what these
goals and objectives are), and how their actions are to be assessed
(which, by the way, we're going to be doing - against criteria that
we're not going to disclose to you).
Remember the old saying? People are hired for their skills and fired for
their behaviour. Skills are a personal thing which people bring to a job
(and are then upskilled - to meet ever changing organisational needs
when they get there - and defined in terms of competency), but behaviour
is something that changes with contexts and conditions - and usually
measured by others. Our argument is that if the behaviour is so
important that people will be fired for it, why weren't they recruited
for it in the first place? The reason? No-one in the organisation knows
how to accurately capture what this behaviour should be. But we do - by
writing it into the competency/skills standard.
> I would very much like to hear from any HRM professionals who have
implemented or are considering competencies for their organization.
Please feel free to respond to this list if others are interested, or
directly to me & I will summarize for the list. Thank you.
>
> Lynn Vavra
Lynn, I know this is a bit long-winded but you offered me an opportunity
to leap up on my favourite soap box and I took it. Thank you and I hope
this helped.
Please feel free to give me a call if you want to talk this through any
further.
Regards
PHIL RUTHERFORD
robnphil@ozemail.com.au