Competency Mapping

Over the past 10 years, human resource and organizational development professionals have generated a lot of interest in the notion of competencies as a key element and measure of human performance. Competencies are becoming a frequently-used and written-about vehicle for organizational applications 

Competencies include the collection of success factors necessary for achieving important results in a specific job or work role in a particular organization.

Competency

Any underlying characteristic required for performing a given task, activity or role successfully can be considered as competency

Competency Mapping:

It is a process of identification of the competencies required to perform successfully a given job or role or a set of tasks at a given point of time. It consists of breaking a given role or job into its constituent tasks or activities and identifying the competencies (technical, managerial, behavioral, conceptual knowledge and attitude and skills, etc) needed to perform the same successfully.

Objectives of Competency Mapping:

Competency mapping serves a number of purposes. It is done for the following functions:

ü  Gap Analysis

ü  Role Clarity

ü  Succession Planning

ü  Growth Plans

ü  Restructuring

ü  Inventory of competencies for future planning

Need for Competency Mapping:

ü  Long Learning Curves & Lack of Succession Planning

ü  Want for Organizational Change

ü  High Turnover & Low Retention

ü  Poor Performance

ü  Unrecognized Training Needs

Steps In Competency Mapping:

ü  Decide the positions for which the competencies need to be mapped

ü  Identify the location of the positions in the organizational

ü  Identify the objectives of the function or the department or the unit or section where the position is located

ü  Identify the objectives of the role

ü  Interview the position holder to list the Tasks and activities expected to be performed by the Individual

ü  Collect the Key Performance Areas (or KRAs, Tasks, etc.) of the position holder for the last two to three years from the performance appraisal records

ü  Interview the position holder to list the actual knowledge, attitude, skills, and other competencies required for performing the task effectively

ü  Repeat the process with all the position set members

ü  Consolidate the list of competencies from all the position holders’ by each task

ü  Edit and finalize. Present it to the supervisors of the position holder and the position holder for approval and finalization

Methods adopted for Competency Mapping by Most Organizations:

ü  Assessment Center

ü  Critical Incidents Technique

ü  Interview Techniques

ü  Questionnaires

ü  Psychometric Test