One of my clients asked me recently, what is the point in competency frameworks? As far as he was concerned they just seemed to be getting in the way of his task of helping people to learn their jobs - just another bureaucratic corporate process which ate up time and gave back little in terms of real benefits. I sympathised with what he was saying, but felt uncomfortable with rubbishing what, for me, is one of the foundations of modern performance management. So I developed my own list of pros and cons and here’s what I came up with:
Against:
- Competencies are often expressed at such a high level (‘innovativeness’, ‘leadership’) as to be meaningless and in no way observable.
- At the other extreme, competencies can in such detail and so specific to a particular context as to be unworkable.
- Competency frameworks are hard to develop. They require a clear understanding of the job in question and a relentless focus to think in terms of what employees need to be able to do rather than what they need to be.
- They are even harder to maintain, particularly once the initial burst of enthusiasm has … well … burst.
- Assessing competencies against a portfolio of evidence is cumbersome and time-consuming. On the other hand, a simple subjective rating may not be sufficiently reliable.
For:
- Evaluating someone’s performance on the basis of what they can actually do is a whole lot better than judging them by their personal qualities, their qualifications, the amount of time they spend on an activity or even their knowledge.
- Competencies focus on the outputs of a learning experience not the inputs in terms of how you learned. So, someone who can do a job on the basis of their work experience or their private study is judged the same way as someone who obtained those same competencies through formal learning.
- Competency frameworks provides a basis for designing learning activities and content. This has to be preferable to teaching what you like teaching or what you personally believe in.
- They also provide a basis for individuals to plan their personal development. It should not be a mystery how you get to be promoted.
- And they also provide a foundation for more objective performance reviews.
So, what do you reckon? Should we keep them?
Yes. As a SFIA Accredited Consultant I would say that, wouldn't I? Well ... no, not if I thought it was wrong. There are many reasons for not implementing a framework and they are very well summarised above, but I think that your 'pros' outweigh the 'cons' sufficiently to ensure that we continue to implement the right framework that has a positive impact on an organisation. Where it isn't or doesn't, then it should not be done.
ReplyDeleteHi Clive,
ReplyDeleteI think sometimes the problem comes from the way "competencies" or "capabilities" are defined.
Where they are created by HR professionals in ivory towers then they are most frequently a spurious burden which are too generic and abstracted to be of real value. Other than normalising behaviour and providing nominal benchmarks on organisational expertise... and giving a large number of HR professionals a deluded sense of importance.
For me, the process of defining competencies is potentially as important as their application in performance management and development planning.
And I believe that there is one scenario where they can have an impact.... If competencies are defined by individuals' teams, as a shared reflection of "what great looks like", in the way they handle their business challenges; then actually they can be transformational...
1) because the participants have a clear understanding of what they describe
2) they have a clear alignment to business/performance improvement
3) they are relevant to day to day transactions and targets
4) they prompt discussions about effectiveness and create shared expectations
5) they can be embedded into After Action Team Reviews and feed a dialogue of continuous improvement
6) they place the emphasis on the "individual" as part of the team - rather than being arbitary labels which are owned by HR
7) They can change dynamically as the business evolves and new challenges emerge
8) Their discussion enables "process" and "systems" issues to be escalated as part of the performance agenda - as part of wider continuous improvement...
9) They empower decision making and goal ownership, rather than treating employees like children who must do as they are told
10) They place the emphasis of teams owning and describing their expertise and how it impacts / is important for business performance - THE EXPERTS ARE IN THE BUSINESS...
Whilst we suffer the hegemony of HR departments dictating norms rather than empowering performance; many talent management and performance management initiatives will continue to be nothing more than costly HR employment schemes which put lots of money into consultants and software providers hands.
If we remember that competencies are primarily a reference for driving day to day feedback and performance improvement discussions (rather than annual performance review cycles) then we can realise their true value.
But the process is the important catalyst of change...
Starting at the point of giving out pre-defined competencies, is like wearing someone else's used pants. They just don't feel right and people don't want to wear them.
If we want competencies to have an impact and be taken seriously - the only place they should start is with individuals and their teams...
Remember you are dealing with professionals who have been trained and have already met certain competencies when they achieved their degrees many of whom have Bachelors, Master, Doctorates, and Post Graduate education. Are we empowering performance or are we stifling teacher creativity by boxing teachers into some kind of straight laced girdle with no freedom to move.
ReplyDeleteAnother issue is the tension between an individual's need or desire for competence development, and a manager's concern for team performance or organisational improvement. Unless managers believe in individual development implicitly, or the organisation priorises, coaches, and rewards this behaviour, it is unlikely that competency development will live in the business.
ReplyDeleteSo as noted above, the overlap area is the team, where the individual and the manager have a shared interest.
There are so many negative things that I have encountered in relation to competency frameworks that have led me to believe they are one of the great white elephants in the HR community. They occupy this position for several incontrovertible reasons. Let’s look at just a few of them:
ReplyDelete1. They are out of date as soon as they are created.
The commercial environment we occupy today is virtually if not completely different from the world we occupied 2 or even 1 year ago. The pressures which affect our organisations alter and change on a daily if not hourly basis. The plans and objectives of departments/sections flex and alter increasingly frequently and the people and staff we employ constantly change if not by turnover then by development. We live in a sea of flux and instability, attempting to create a rigid structure which will stay in synch with these variables is impossible. A competency framework is actually a ‘compromise framework’, we pick those skills that we think will be the most appropriate but unless the creators are equipped with a crystal ball it is unlikely that they will be that lucky in their choices.
2. One Size does not fit all
The idea that everybody needs a particular range of core skills is an attractive one. It means we have structure against which we can recruit, induct, train, promote or out source everybody. In my experience however there is such a level of diversity within organisations that this approach is rendered inoperable. Unlike Handy who appears to propose a singular culture model I find that in organisations larger than an SME they are pluralistic and varied. It is also my experience that departments or sections of businesses have completely different core demands and the force fitting of a standardised set is like selling shoes in one size.
3. They don’t do very much.
Observance and application of the competency framework seems to be the exception rather more than the rule which is strange but once again in my experience generally true. Having spent time and effort on the competency framework the only place it regularly appears is on the appraisal document, I hesitate to call it a Performance Management System because I think that would be contrary to the Trades Description Act. In many organisations the appraisal interview takes place once a year; you get assessed against a range of competencies which were defined as appropriate back in 1989 just after the Berlin Wall fell and then it gets forgotten about for another 6 or 12 months, how good is that?
So, what’s the alternative? You could downgrade the status of the competency framework from a ‘Grade 1 Ancient Monument’ that cannot be changed or altered to a flexible collection of skill sets which are tailored to the unique demands of the current times and the function. Alternatively if you wanted to be completely radical you could move away from a menu driven approach to training with the competency framework influencing the training delivered and instead move to a consultancy driven system with just a few core programmes and a much more bespoke and developed range of responses aimed at the particular and exclusive demands of specific groups or departments. But the key thing here for the trainer reviewing their approach to training is to think the unthinkable, question the received wisdom that competency frameworks are a good thing, they might be in some organisations and some cultures but not every organisation and not every culture.
The respondents here seem to be forgetting about the reward element of competency frameworks. Typically using the framework to demonstrate how you have gone about achieving the necessary will give you some kind of performance score which will relate to bonus/pay increase etc.
ReplyDeleteI would like to see how some of the idealised methods for implementing competencies suggested here will provide an consistent organisation wide performance score for each individual.
For any kind of performance reward to exist some kind of performance management process which uses a generic comp framework has to be in place, unless the jobs in the organisation have a directly measurable metric i.e. number of sales, revenue generated etc, for those that don't have this you need a competency framework. If you don't have one your staff will move elsewhere in seek of fair and unbiased performance reward.
I've been employed for over 20 years in large corporates, now at a Head of level. I have never once used or had competency frameworks used on me with the exception of one company where it was a one pager.
ReplyDeleteThese things are mostly put together by HR and ignored by the rest of the business. Most people for most of the time just get on with their jobs - if you want to have any impact of change then make it as brief as possible. These documents are usually long and bear little resemblance to the daily situations people find themselves in.
If you want to change behaviours time would be better invested in personally tailored advice or guidance, rather than a one size fits all long winded document that employees will rightly ignore.