Editor's Note: Work is changing, having been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and the necessity of remote work along with many other factors. Many of our organizations use competencies to signal how work should be approached and to assess how well we are doing our jobs. Are your competencies up to the task ... or are they well past their expiration date? Margaret O'Hanlon lays out the case and some process suggestions for updates in this Classic post.
The competencies you use for employee development or assessment need updating in 2015. Odds are, you could make a big impact on your company if you did.
Most companies do not use competency-based pay. But they do include competencies in their performance expectations, to guide employees to look beyond the numbers to a deeper level of understanding of how they can contribute to achievement of the business strategy.
As any of us who have worked on a team for more than a month knows, it's not just what people know or even whether they hit deadlines and numbers, it also how they behave with other employees, customers and as members of your company. For example, we all know that employees of Apple and Comcast behave very differently towards customers. There are big differences between the two company's cultures, so odds are that employees' competency expectations are very different, too.
Those behavioral differences reflect the company's different business strategies. And that's exactly why you must look into updating your employee competency expections, however you use them. If the competencies you are referring employees to are more than three years' old, odds are they are not aligned with your business strategy.
If your business is coming out of the recession, do you want employees making the same decisions as they did in 2011? Doubtful. It feels like so long ago and it's a pretty good bet that your business is far more robust these days. While cost is still a priority, most companies now want employees to be just as focussed on flexibility and innovation.
In fact, many companies are redesigning the way they work. Outsourcing is no longer a pure cost issue, now it's morealso likely to be a strategy to unburden knowledge workers so they can pay more attention to their own areas of expertise. Company's that outsource or engage local contractors need employees who know how to collaborate with these alternate workforces effectively. Others that are introducing entry-level internships and apprenticeships need employees who will make the most of these talent sources.
These new staffing strategies mean that internal employees can't just drive for results. They need to behave effectively towards the new resources and strategies. Plus, they need their leadership to acknowledge "there is a new way to do things around here," and reward those who make the most of it.
So, here's what I'm suggesting. Check on the date your competencies were introduced. Meet with your colleagues to brainstorm all of the organizational shifts that have occurred since then. Analyze the organization's strategy and how it is leading your company forward. Review your talent projections. Taken together, what do they tell you that about not only needed skills, but also the types of decisions and behaviors employees should prioritize?
Next, look closely at the competencies you are using for performance management and career development. If they are truly designed to help employees understand how to advance your company's work (and, as a result, grown their own capabilities and career), your competencies should tell employees how their own behaviors need to adapt if they -- and the company -- are going to succeed.
Margaret O'Hanlon, CCP brings deep expertise to discussions on employee pay, performance management, career development and communications at the Café. Her firm, re:Think Consulting, provides market pay information and designs base salary structures, incentive plans, career paths and their implementation plans. Earlier, she was a Principal at Willis Towers Watson. A former Board member for the Bay Area Compensation Association (BACA), Margaret coauthored the popular eBook, Everything You Do (in Compensation) Is Communications, a toolkit that all practitioners can find at https://gumroad.com/l/everythingiscommunication.
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