7 Pain Points to Avoid When Implementing Competency Framework

Competency Framework has many advantages in aiding HR to manage talent effectively across the organization.

Competency management enables firms to better manage their employees’ knowledge & skills, resulting in additional possibilities for learning and advancement. It has a favorable impact on your recruitment and personnel retention efforts.

Competency Framework provides employees with a description of what is expected of them in order to succeed. A competency framework, in brief, helps employees understand what is expected of them & how they may improve by laying out expectations and providing guidance on personal development. By providing a basic benchmarking tool per job role, a competency framework assists managers in standardizing employee assessments.

A competency framework can also assist organizations in delivering better data to senior management. Having a standardized evaluation technique aids top managers in developing a clear knowledge of where the organization’s existing talent is located.

🚩 Pain Points in Establishing a Competency Framework

Establishing a competency framework in your organization is a crucial & complicated task with many complexities. Competency frameworks often face pain points after they are incorporated that must be tended to immediately, else they will continue to make the system faulty.

Following are some pain points that can be found in competency frameworks.

👉 1.   Not Integrated with Internal Processes

It’s significant that your competencies must align with the Internal Processes. If they are not integrated with Internal Processes, they fail to define your employees as to what is needed of them. For instance, if the competency framework is not integrated into the recruitment process, the hiring manager will fail to identify the right talent for their organization impacting the talent quality.

If the competency framework is not integrated into performance management, Line managers will observe difficulties in assessment based on the respective competencies.

If it’s not linked to succession management, the organization will lack the readiness to assess the right talent that should be considered for the promotion.

👉 2.   Not Aligning Competency Development with Business Goals

A competency framework is the most effective when it is aligned with business goals. It is the responsibility of the organization to identify critical competencies & key job roles.

If an organization fails to recognize the talents of its individuals and build competencies around them, the competency framework will fail as it will assess the employees on irrelevant competencies.

Irrelevant Competencies will take the organization away from its goal making it unable to build the right capacity to support its growth.

It is significant that leader and employee skill-building focuses on developing competencies that align with the business goals and objectives.

👉 3.   No Proper Roll Out / Communication 

Communication is the key to success in any organization. Failing to develop a proper rollout and communication system through the competency framework will lead to faults in the model later.

It is significant that proper communication is encouraged and practiced in the organization making the framework effective in the long run.

Communication is also important when you roll out the competency framework. Not telling your peers and your employees about it will lead to miscommunication issues that may affect their performance.

It’s critical to explain why the framework was created & how you’d like it to be used to acquire buy-in from employees at all levels of the business.

👉 4.   No Buy-in From Leaders / Seen as HR Driven

Competency Frameworks are often established based on the idea that they are HR-driven. Failing to get buy-in from leaders completely will cause the model to be seen as irrelevant.

A survey showed that 88 percent of the organizations observed better leader and employee performance as very much crucial to the business.

Every organization’s success depends upon the performance of its employees and leaders. If they are highly competent in completing their tasks and making their performance better, they are collectively contributing to the organization’s success. 

According to interviewers, telling your employees the correct job descriptions and identifying areas of performance excellence can help them achieve better results.

If you are looking to establish a competency framework that impacts your business, you must develop it from the perspective of business leaders as well. 

👉 5.   Not Clear on What’s Expected

Establishing a competency framework without an assessment strategy will result in the failure of the competency model. Organizations rely on the framework to assess the employees & predict what skills are needed now and in the future.

Without the ability to predict the skills needed by businesses as they move forward, it will leave the organizations clueless. Defining competencies with the job role is essential and critical for the competency framework to work effectively. 

👉 6.   Not Contextualized According to Employee Context

Not having a competency framework that includes the competencies according to employee context can become a real pain. The framework must be aligned with the roles and responsibilities of business leaders, as well as, the employees.

If the framework fails to define the required competencies for an individual, the whole system will be considered a failure & it will fail to determine the relevant competencies of the concerned employee.

Competencies must be contextualized according to the perspective of employees to help them groom their talent and polish their skills. 

👉 7.   Ignoring Technical Competencies

It happens too often that an organization eliminates the concept of including technical competencies in its competency framework.

Technical skills are as much important as other soft skills. They are highly relevant among engineers, medical professionals, IT specialists, and people who are directly related to complex tasks.

Ignoring to include technical competencies in the competency framework will result in biased assessment, favoring the non-technical staff.

💪 Conclusion

Locating the pain points early in the competency framework can help the organization focus on other objectives rather than facing challenges throughout the process.

It is highly recommended that you cross-check these things before the deployment of the competency framework so that your organization is never bothered by these pain points.

#competencymodel #leadershipmodel #humanresources

Other Competency Framework For Reading Pleasure :

3 Critical Focus Area to Consider Before Rolling Out Global Competency Model

Competency Framework – Making It Relevant for Your Company

Competency Model : When Best to Start?

---

About The Author: See Wei Ngiam

Ngiam’s versatile background in HR management and extensive experience working with MNCs such as Kimberly-Clark and Amway have allowed Ngiam to design Growtribe in a practical way to enable people leader & manager to accelerate people growth through a simple and yet impactful approach.

Want to find other interesting discussions? Then connect with Ngiam now via his LinkedIn Profile and follow Growtribe’s LinkedIn Page.