Competency Mapping

COMPETENCY MAPPING

ABSTRACT:

The term competency is quite generic and related to human behavior and psychology. Competency is often defined as a quality of being adequately qualified, intellectually able and emotionally stable. The concept of competency is basically used to define a capability of being able. Competency mapping is a psychological test that helps the human resource management department to test the competence or competency of an employee or a potential employee. It must be noted that competency is measured in the employee's quality(es) and not quantity (measurement of performance). For instance, while mapping a person's competency the question 'when and where' comes into the picture and not 'how much'.

INTRODUCTION:

ORIGIN OF MANAGEMENT INCLUDING COMPETENCY MAPPING:

Chanakya's Arthshastra, an ancient Indian script/ book on Political Science and Administration, written some 3000 years ago. Other names of Chanakya were Mr. Kautilya, and Mr. Vishnu Gupt. Constitutions of all the major countries have origin in this book. It could be Indian Constitution, Irish, Canadian, USA, Australian, etc. and even British unwritten constitutions have roots imbibed in this book. It is the towering book in which you find the basics and applications of Management Sciences, Chemistry, Physics, Military and War techniques, Basic Engineering and Technologies, Ethics, Legal and Judiciary and Fiduciary system, Values, Psychology, and Anthropology, Organization Behavior, Human Resource Management. In fact major basics of all Marketing Management, Human Resource Management, basics of Management Models, are been directly lifted with some modification from this book. Great efforts of Chanakya by all means; and one of the greatest contributions to the world. You may call Arthshastra as a Classical book once if you read, you will find other subjects easy any time in your life.
If Geeta, Bible, Kuran, Gurugranthsahib, Adi Granth, Vedas, Vedanta are classical scripts in spirituality then Arthshastra is one of the classical book for above mentioned subjects. In fact all the classical scripts have everything put in gist to live normal life happily. It is said that once you master classical books everything becomes easier in later part of life and work.
UNDERSTANDING COMPETENCE, COMPETENCY & COMPETENCIES ➢ Competency: A person- related concept that refers to the dimensions of behaviour lying behind competent performer. ➢ Competence: A work- related concept that refers to areas of work at which the person is competent ➢ Competencies: Often referred as the combination of the above two.
Competence is a standardized requirement for an individual to properly perform a specific job. It encompasses a combination of knowledge, skills and behavior utilized to improve performance. More generally, competence is the state or quality of being adequately or well qualified, having the ability to perform a specific role.
For instance, management competency includes the traits of systems thinking and emotional intelligence, and skills in influence and negotiation. A person possesses a competence as long as the skills, abilities, and knowledge that constitute that competence are a part of them, enabling the person to perform effective action within a certain workplace environment. Therefore, one might not lose knowledge, a skill, or an ability, but still lose a competence if what is needed to do a job well changes.
THE FOUR GENERAL COMPETENCE ARE: ➢ Meaning Competence: Identifying with the purpose of the organization or community and acting from the preferred future in accordance with the values of the organization or community. ➢ Relation Competence: Creating and nurturing connections to the stakeholders of the primary tasks. ➢ Learning Competence: Creating and looking for situations that make it possible to experiment with the set of solutions that make it possible to solve the primary tasks and reflect on the experience. ➢ Change Competence: Acting in new ways when it will promote the purpose of the organization or community and make the preferred future come to life.
There are several different factors that are considered during a competency mapping process. There are also some simple processes that have been made by experts in the field of clinical psychology.

CHARACTERISTICS OF A PERSON’S COMPETENCY

• Constitution: Every person's personality is based upon a definite constitution. Some aspects about work such as a person's ability to work as a team member or a team leader or even his temperament to work individually are affected by this constitution. • Self Concept: Every person has an interpretation about himself and some self ideals. The management bears in mind these simple ideals, even during day-to-day work, due to the fact that, when these ideals are respected the employee tends to remain happy and productive. • Skill and Knowledge: Every employee has different skills and knowledge. Competency mapping helps the company to know more about the person's skills and knowledge. It must be noted that even a simple virtue of being patient is treated as a skill by the recruiters. • * Motives: Things a person consistently thinks about or wants that cause action, motives drive, direct and select behavior towards certain actions. Example achievement motivation people consistently set challenging goals for themselves, take responsibility for accomplishing them and use the feedback to do better • * Traits: Physical characteristics and consistent responses to situations. Good eyesight is physical traits of a pilot. Emotional Self Control and initiative are more complex consistent responses to situations.
LEVELS OF COMPETENCY ARE: • Practical competency - An employee's demonstrated ability to perform a set of tasks. • Foundational competence - An employee's demonstrated understanding of what and why he / she is doing. • Reflexive competence -(An employee's ability to integrate actions with the understanding of the action so that he / she learn from those actions and adapts to the changes as and when they are required. • Applied competence - An employee's demonstrated ability to perform a set of tasks with understanding and reflexivity.
APPLICATION LEVELS OF COMPETENCY
ADVANCED
Demonstrates high level of understanding of the particular competency to perform fully and independently related tasks.
Frequently demonstrates application that indicates profound level of expertise. Can perform adviser or trainer roles. Work activities are carried out consistently with high quality standards.
PROFICIENT
Demonstrates a sound level of understanding of the particular competency to adequately perform related tasks, practically without guidance. Work activities are performed effectively within quality standards.
KNOWLEDGEABLE
Demonstrates a sufficient understanding of the particular competency to be used in the work place, but requires guidance Tasks or work activities are generally carried out under direction.
TYPES OF COMPETENCIES
1.Organizational competencies — unique factors that make an organization competitive

2. Job/Role competencies—things an individual must demonstrate to be effective in a job, role, function, task, or duty, an organizational level, or in the entire organization.

3. Personal competencies—aspects of an individual that imply a level of skill, achievement, or output
4.Managerial -Competencies which are considered essential for staff with managerial or supervisory responsibility in any service or program area, including directors and senior posts. Some managerial competencies could be more relevant for specific occupations, however they are applied horizontally across the Organization, i.e. analysis and decision-making, team leadership, change management, etc.
5.Generic -Competencies which are considered essential for all staff, regardless of their function or level, i.e. communication, program execution, processing tools, linguistic, etc.
6.Technical/functional -Specific competencies which are considered essential to perform any job in the Organization within a defined technical or functional area of work, i.e. environmental management, industrial process sectors, investment management, finance and administration, human resource management, etc.
COMPETENCY MAPPING
Competency mapping is a process through which one assesses and determines one's strengths as an individual worker and in some cases, as part of an organization. It generally examines two areas: emotional intelligence or emotional quotient (EQ), and strengths of the individual in areas like team structure, leadership, and decision-making. Large organizations frequently employ some form of competency mapping to understand how to most effectively employ the competencies of strengths of workers. They may also use competency mapping to analyze the combination of strengths in different workers to produce the most effective teams and the highest quality work also use competency mapping to analyze the combination of strengths in different workers to produce the most effective teams and the highest quality work.
It is the process of identifying key competencies for a particular position in an organisation. Once this process is complete, the map becomes an input for several other HR processes such as job-evaluation; recruitment; training and development; performance management; and succession planning.
For competency mapping to be productive, the organisation has to be clear about its business goals in the short- as well as long-term and the capability-building imperatives for achieving these business goal
PROCESS OF COMPETENCY MAPPING
The process starts from as macro an endeavour as understanding the vision and mission of the organisation and how that translates into specific, time-bound business goals.
It then goes on to delineating the organisation structure clearly, and identifying the various levels and positions, as well as the reporting relationships obtaining within that.
For each position / level, the mapping exercise should outline the roles and responsibilities of the position; short-term goals to the extent that they are qualified; skill sets required for the job; and soft skill sets required for the job plus interaction with other units / personnel.
Once this is done as specifically as possible, the next step would be to assess where the individual currently filling the position stands in terms of what is required.
This would indicate the gaps between the skill sets required and the skill sets possessed.
It is also useful if the competency of the current incumbent is assessed keeping in mind the next promotion and the competencies required for that position. This will enable the organisation to remain one jump ahead of the game.
The assessment of the competencies required as well as the current competency level should be completed using a combination of structured and in-depth interviews with the person supervising the position and with others in the hierarchy.
A skilled assessor needs to study the gaps and figure out which ones can be filled through training, and which cannot. For instance, if a position requires working knowledge of MS Excel, that is something which can be addressed through training.
Though there are well-accepted guidelines and assessment tools such as psychometric tests, the assessor’s skill will play an important role in deciding when a gap calls for training and when it calls for redeployment.
BENEFITS:
Several companies have started using competency mapping tools in order to know more about their prospective employees or even current employees. On an average, a competency mapping test on an employee would depict skills and knowledge of the person, his ability to work with other people, his constitution, his dedication and finally his willingness to work.

A competency mapping presentation depicts every aspect of a person's personality. The total process of competency management ultimately helps the company in better personnel management and good workplace communication. Competency management is thus often considered to be an indispensable management tool.

Competency mapping comes in very useful in the following situations: candidate appraisal for recruitment; employee potential appraisal for promotion; training needs identification; performance diagnostics; and self-development initiatives.
Apart from the above situations, organisations would also be well-advised to carry out a comprehensive, company-wide mapping exercise if it has never been done before.
As is the case with any HR appraisal activity, competency mapping too places emphasis on transparency, objectivity and quantification.
CONCLUSION:

Competency mapping has always been considered as an indispensable management tool which has its origin from Vedic period. It is a tool to understand an individual’s emotional intelligence, leadership & decision making skills. The different characteristic of a person’s competency enables the Human Resource Management to understand the ability of a person to perform effectively within a certain workplace environment. Thus it enables to understand the on job performance problems and identify the gaps between the competencies of the person & the requirement of the job. For competency mapping to be productive, the organisation has to be clear about its business goals in the short- as well as long-term and the capability-building imperatives for achieving these business goals.