Organizations whether big or small sized, all aims towards the same goal of having competent and skilled workforce that can make them compete in the industry and influence others. Lack of competency and scope of development de-motivates the employees which lead to employee turnover. Most of the employees believe that changing organization may help them grow rather than staying here. In this competitive world, retaining employees are the biggest challenge that an organization faces. It incurs heavy losses to the company because of unproductive days plus recruiting cost. The key to success for any organization is a competent and skilled workforce that adapts changes and increases productivity.
For doing a particular job you need to be competent to perform it, so competency is necessary for development and growth. Every individual has a motive to grow in their career so for that you need to upgrade yourself and should be adaptable to changes then only you will see in your life as well. HR managers should focus on the area where they can help the employees to develop their skills to become efficient to work and contribute towards growth. Competencies are basically the skills and behaviors required in an individual to perform their jobs successfully. There are two types of competencies- core and leadership competencies. Core competency includes the overall skills required to perform a particular job in the organization whereas, leadership competency includes abilities required to take responsibilities and lead the team.
Every individual possesses some skills but what matters is that those skills should align with the values and needs of the organization and then only he/she will be a right person. Not every individual possesses skills desired by the organization, leaders are responsible to figure out the skill gaps and make competency based development plan that aligns with the requirement of the organization and work accordingly. To create a competency based development plan, the first step is to be transparent about the competencies required by the organization, where they are lacking and what is expected out of them. If the employees do not have an idea about what the company expects, it becomes difficult for them to deliver, so it is important to be clear with your requirements and goals. After making them aware about the plan, make it mandatory stating that skill development is a crucial part and no one can exempt it. While developing skills are mutually beneficial and it becomes tiring as it requires a lot of time and effort. In this situation, if employees get a bit support from the organization then their morale will boost and they can learn more efficiently. The leaders can reduce the workload or give them time offs, so they can concentrate more on developing skills rather than on anything else.
There is the best approach towards competency based development plan and that is 70-20-10 approach. A 70-20-10 approach is a learning process where 70% of the learning comes from on-the job training, it’s like learning while working, the other 20% comes from mentoring and coaching by the team leaders or supervisors and the rest 10% comes from official training that is provided when you join the organization. This approach indicates that most of the employee’s development happens within the organization while working, as rightly said that “All genuine learning comes through experience”. This summarizes that competency reflects the work culture and values of the organization.
The competency plan should also include delegating tasks rightly. As a leader, it is your responsibility to assign jobs to the right candidate to ensure smooth functioning and efficiency in the organization. Assigning particular tasks and mentioning the deadlines will enable the employees to work in a conserved environment thus enhancing their skills and measuring their competency.
Making a competency plan does not end your job here, monitoring the performance is what makes the plan complete. Whichever process you follow to increase the competency, but the end process should be checking the performance of the employees, whether the goals have been achieved or not, how efficient they are in their work and what all improvements needed if any. You have to see whether your plan is working and giving desired result or not. To understand the progress, the senior managers should discuss among themselves whether they are noticing any improvements in the organization’s talents and if there are still any areas that lack skills and needs to be improved. Mentoring performance will help you figure out the strength of your workforce and build competencies strategies to meet organizational goals more efficiently.
