Benefits of Competency Mapping

According to Catalyst, 2020, the global average staff turnover rate was 27.9%, and it had reached as high as 18.5% in some industries in India (SRD, 2020). According to the findings, over 77% of voluntary turnover could be avoided. Career development opportunities were cited as the most important factor in turnover. Furthermore, consider the painful but costly stumbling blocks of consequences associated with poor performance, poor hiring and selection, subpar job evaluations, poor succession planning, and never-ending training costs. 

Most organizations do not want to cut corners on the above-mentioned critical issues. So, can competency mapping be the answer? As glitzy as competency mapping may sound, it is simply an organized framework for evaluating an employee’s competencies in an organization. Or, to put it another way, competency management is a descriptive tool that scientifically identifies the competencies required for effective performance in a specific job across various occupations. 

In this blog, we’ll discuss the benefits of competency management for organizations and employees.  

What is Competency Mapping?

So, what exactly is competency mapping? Competency mapping is a strategy that is based on evaluating employees’ competencies in order to design “a program that is repeatable, specific, and is expected to engage team members in their own professional development.” 

There are various approaches to thinking about competency management. The best approach is to consider it in four dimensions: 

1. Knowledge areas: These are industry-specific (for example, oil and gas exploration, rubber manufacturing, or SaaS), company-specific (company history and values), and industry-specific regulations (for example, HIPPA). These areas of knowledge should be shared by everyone in the company, from the production worker to the CEO.

2. Functional skills: These are the hard skills required for each role. They are role dependent. Functional skills for a digital marketing manager would include LinkedIn marketing, Facebook marketing, and Google Analytics. These may include data visualization, data modeling, and Python for a data scientist. It should be noted that digital skills are included in functional skills, but some list them as a separate competency management category. It makes no difference where you put them as long as you think about it.
3. Leadership skills: These are the soft skills needed for various levels of leadership, regardless of function. The industry standard here is to think about it in three levels: leading oneself, leading teams, and leading businesses.

Individual contributors require self-management skills such as time management, work-life balance, emotional intelligence, and analytical thinking. Managers must have skills in team leadership, such as conflict resolution, coaching and mentoring, and collaborative team leadership. Finally, business leaders require entrepreneurship and business strategy skills. Competency management helps build such skills. 

HR departments are good at defining these skills; this is where many of a company’s values are reflected. Building sustainable businesses, for example, could be a leadership skill for a company that promises to make environmentally friendly products. For a company with a strong customer-first philosophy, customer orientation could be a valuable leadership skill. 

4. Behaviors: This is where things start to get interesting. The first three categories are all measurable in some way, whereas behaviors are not. Ownership, trust, sensitivity, and approachability are some examples.

Competency management has numerous advantages for both individuals and organizations. For starters, it enables employees to understand what career development efforts they should be making and what result they should expect. 

From the employer’s perspective, competency management raises awareness of existing skill sets as well as skill gaps in the organization. This allows you to make more informed decisions about: 

• Establishing the scope of work for existing roles and new job opportunities 
• Aligning your existing employees’ learning with your required skills 
• Hiring people with the necessary skill sets 

As it becomes more difficult to hire tech talent, recruiters are constantly looking for new ways to make the grass appear greener on their side. It is well known that HR departments are constantly striving to outdo themselves by introducing new perks and benefits. At the same time, very few HR professionals consider what developers truly want, need, and are drawn to: learning new technologies, taking on interesting challenges, and sharing knowledge. 

Once you understand what competency mapping entails, you will be able to better meet the needs and interests of developers.  

Need for Competency Mapping

According to Gallup’s 2017 State of the American Workplace report, only six out of ten employees are aware of their job expectations, and only 41% believe their job description matches the work assigned to them. The statistics demonstrate the critical importance of competency management in organizations. 

A lack of clarity about the workforce’s current capabilities can lead to skill gaps that stymie the execution of the organization’s digital strategy. Spreadsheets are frequently used by businesses to create skill matrices, but they aren’t always the best option. Spreadsheets quickly become overly complicated and have a high error rate, not to mention the difficulties with version control. Keeping track of employees’ skill sets is a major challenge. Leaders can use competency management and advanced tools to help HR professionals support strategic objectives and track employee skill development and professional growth. 

Competency management is a method for assessing employee competencies in an organization. The goal of competency mapping is to boost a company’s efficiency, effectiveness, and competitiveness. It begins with a set of high-level core competency requirements, all of which represent strategic company goals such as innovation, creativity, technical expertise, quality, and a customer-oriented focus. Through the competency mapping process, these objectives become criteria for employee success. Managers use these measurements to identify areas that require training in order to improve employee performance and productivity, as well as the company’s overall competitiveness and efficiency. 

Competency mapping is a complicated but effective method of aligning employees with organizational goals, resulting in a highly productive workforce. It has gained traction, and many organizations are realizing the importance of developing a competency model to help their employees become more productive, skilled, and ready to take on new challenges. The changing business ecosystem and pandemic-driven developments in the L&D industry necessitate the development of distinguished competencies for all organizations. 

The following points highlight the need for competency management: 

• Changing Global Business Ecosystem: The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted the IT industry and overhauled the global ecosystem. In today’s changing environment, it is critical to have a strong competency model that aligns employees and new talent with the organization’s goals
• Recruiting the Right People: Competency mapping highlights the skills needed for each task in a job function. It assists HR managers and leaders in developing a selection process that is focused on hiring the best candidate for the job
• Retaining High-Performing Employees: Because high-performing employees are critical to the organization, it is critical to develop a retention strategy for them in order to maintain effective workplace dynamics. Competency management is critical in recognizing such employees’ efforts and appropriately rewarding them
• Increased Customer Concentration: IT organizations have become increasingly customer-focused over the last decade. With such fierce competition in the global market, it is critical to provide effective and timely project delivery. It is feasible when a high-performance team is available to meet the agreed-upon standards.

Motives for Using Competency Mapping

According to LinkedIn, 64% of L&D professionals believe that reskilling the workforce to fill skill gaps is a top priority right now. Competency management is a complex but effective method of aligning employees with company goals and creating a highly productive workforce. It has grown in popularity, and many businesses are realizing the importance of developing a competency framework to increase employee productivity, skills, and future readiness. The following examples demonstrate the importance of competency mapping: 

Building Organizational Culture: While job-specific competencies define the actions that ensure the success of each employee, core competencies can be used to identify the fundamental actions that support corporate success. When the organization’s core competencies are identified, it is easier to express, enforce, and communicate the behaviors that give the company its primary competitive advantage. 

Empowering Employees: Because they provide an objective basis for evaluating performance, competencies facilitate a more collaborative approach to competency management and career development. Furthermore, competencies use a common vocabulary to describe every job profile in the company, which encourages employees to take charge of their careers, guide their personal growth, and explore their potential not only in their current function but also in future lateral or vertical roles. 

Increasing Long-Term Viability: By assisting companies in preventing errors in their HR activities, competencies provide a higher level of protection from internal and external criticism. Hiring, evaluating candidates, managing performance, and promoting are all part of these procedures. 

Ensuring Consistency: All activities in the talent management life cycle, such as hiring, development, and succession planning, are based on competencies. By using a consistent language to communicate requirements at the macro (organizational) and micro (job) levels, HR practitioners can improve the consistency, coordination, and integration of all HR activities. 

The advantage of competency management is that it establishes standards for employee training and development that are specifically tailored to our organization’s requirements. Developing a competency map aids in narrowing down the skills, knowledge, abilities, and behavior required for the job. 

Finding the key skills and behaviors required for a specific position in an organization is what competency mapping entails. It can be used to establish the organization’s working culture, strategies, and goals, as well as to benchmark the employees’ goals. 

The goal of implementing competency management is to ensure the organization’s competitiveness, efficiency, and effectiveness. These competency marking standards serve as the barometer for employees. 

Performance appraisal forms are duly filled based on the level of skills of employees which makes them suited for a particular role in the company. After assigning the employees based on their competency it is the responsibility of HR to do an analysis of the strong and weak points of employees.  

Advantages of Competency Management for Organizations

• Establishes performance excellence expectations 
• Increased job satisfaction and employee retention 
• Because of their connection to success criteria, training and professional development programs have become more effective
• Helps teams and individuals align their behaviors with key organizational strategies by providing a common understanding of the scope and requirements of a specific role
• Ensures that training and professional development activities funded by the organization are cost-effective, goal-oriented, and productive
• Allows employees to achieve a high level of competence in a timely manner by recording the employee’s acquisition of the skills, knowledge, safety, and other procedures relating to each task

• Reduces cost overruns caused by poor performance or miscommunication of job expectations. 
• Improves employee and management communication 
• Increases internal employee mobility, allowing the organization to scale and flex as needed
• Establishes a framework for management to provide constructive feedback at scheduled training and performance appraisal intervals
• Clarifies job expectations for performance evaluations 
• Outlines employee development and advancement opportunities within the organization

Advantages of Competency Management for Employees

• Determine behavioral performance excellence standards
• Provide a more specific and objective assessment of their strengths as well as the tools needed to improve their abilities
• Improves clarity on job-related issues 
• Assists individuals in understanding how to meet expectations 
• Establishes clear performance expectations for employees, allowing them to make more informed decisions and work more efficiently
• Employees are more engaged and motivated when they understand the overall strategy of their team, department, and organization
• Employees are able to be more proactive outside of their individual roles by learning additional competencies valued by the organization
• Provides a clear path for learning new job skills
• Provides a resource for day-to-day requirements
• Increases the likelihood of job satisfaction 
• It provides a mechanism for recognizing employees’ abilities
• Ensures that the organization records and recognizes individual professional development and training milestones

When organizations map their employees’ talents, it is easier for them to match their training objectives with the overall goals of the company. Effective competency management ensures that their employees are happy and motivated, and it also helps them develop the skills that the company requires to grow.