Competencies for human development in the company

Competencies and human development

I want to start this exposition by making explicit the human approach on which the discourse and practice of everything explained below is based.

A while ago I had the pleasure of attending a conference where an illustrious speaker argued the following:

"When an animal is born, it is born with all developed animality, if it is a dog its perreity reached the limit of the dog from the moment of its birth. But when a human being is born, a project is born, a dream, an infinite possibility of growing in humanity throughout his life. "

This is the approach to man on which my exposition is based: man as a project.

Then emerges the mandate to grow in humanity, to carry out a project, to make an act of constant faith in human perfectibility and in the commitment to grow as a human being throughout life. From the cradle to the grave as Gabriel García Márquez affirms. Also see education and ongoing training as an inalienable human right.

Thus, the competencies approach appears as a logical deduction from considering man as a project. It is necessary to discover the potential of each human being and create the favorable environment to love, know and be able to develop them according to the needs and demands of the time and the development of humanity.

In the present day it would seem as Einstein affirms that "Our technology has surpassed our humanity".

The achievement of a growth in humanity consistent at least with the growth of technology, is one of the challenges of today's world.

Growing up in humanity becomes the common thread of human development and, of course, the skills of the child, the young, the adult and the elderly.

Growth in humanity is based on the development of being, doing, knowing, living together. The competences emerge as the abilities, skills and knowledge that allow man to be a contribution to the construction of society according to the demands of the environment.

In this way, education is for life and today, that is, the here and now of each human being is the opportunity to turn their life project into joy and constant enthusiasm when facing challenges, solving problems, joining efforts, finding formulas, open horizons… in a word, feel useful in the world.

At this point you can ask what is the role of the company in the development of skills. Is it not a subject of schools especially and of the possibility of evaluating and comparing the education of children with others of a similar age?

Of course not. The company receives its collaborators in the degree of personal and academic growth that it considers acceptable in its selection process. But from that moment you must assume the commitment of every intelligent company, which manages knowledge, that is, make everyone grow by finding a fertile field in the daily work performance, where it is important to learn from mistakes, qualify performances and grow comprehensively in carrying out productive tasks.

The culture of competencies has a path and a history in schools, but not in universities where theoretical knowledge continues to take precedence over putting what has been learned into practice. Therefore, those who reach the companies graduated from higher education, have a very big challenge in the development of business skills.

The field of work is the fertile land where the abilities and shortcomings of employees are evident in the work routine. It is no longer about random evaluations, where subjective fear and judgment distort reality. The action and daily work in the company is the mirror where the knowledge, abilities, skills and developments of each one are reflected. Where it is easy to compare business or managerial demands with performance, and by seeing the distances, summon the forces of monitoring, training and recognition towards the expected development.

Competencies for achieving strategic goals

It is now better understood how competencies are an integral part of all human development management in companies.

Competencies comes from Latin words related to: power, together or in comparison.

In other words, it is the power of each person but compared to the power of others. It comes from the verbs "competer" and "compete".

It may mean;

Competence as authority Competence as training Competence as competition Competence as qualification Competence as incumbency Competence as sufficiency

The term competencies is as polysemic as it is polyvalent.

However, everyone agrees that it is a real and proven capacity, it is a consequence of experience and they constitute articulated and integrated knowledge; they are anchored in observable behaviors.

Perhaps the most novel concept is the relationship between individual characteristics and missions that the individual must carry out in the company.

Another important facet of the competences is related to the concept of permanent modification, which must be subjected to the test of solving specific problems in work situations involving certain margins of uncertainty and technical complexity.

Competition involves:

potential to learn to do a job, power, the actual and current capacity to carry out the job, knowing, willingness to do it, that is, motivation and interest, wanting.

For the company, then, it has a high impact strategic power to define, measure and implement a competency model.

This is unique in each organization, the competencies must be chosen as their own and also consider them as factors of success.

They must be difficult to replicate and highly differentiated in the market. In this way, effective communication competence must be totally differentiated for a service company or a production company or a research and development company.

Therefore it is essential to measure them. Initially to generate a measurement or a measurement parameter.

The organization allows you to identify the current status of the positions and the people who hold them and identify the adjustment or gap between them with the projection of the company into the future.

The measurement provides useful information for the person to make a diagnosis of himself, his abilities, skills, motives and can take specific actions to take advantage of what he has and improve his weaknesses. See how well located each person is in their job and in the same company. It provides the possibility to feed back personal and institutional results. The evaluation allows each person to be shown how their personal project is going, their potential and, of course, how the company constitutes a source of motivation and growth.

It is important, whatever the tool for measuring skills, to promote a specific development in art and observer skills.

It is assumed that everything that is viewed with interest becomes interesting. Of course, there could be nothing more interesting than seeing how all the processes of human management in companies are reflected in the successful work of employees. But for this it is necessary to sharpen the gaze of the observer. As Fernando Vásquez affirms, “Seeing is natural, immediate, indeterminate, without intention; instead, looking is cultural, mediate, intentional. With seeing one is born; looking, you have to learn it ”.

It is necessary to learn to observe since the competences must be visible in facts, in specific situations, therefore an evaluation must be based on concrete facts, with the certainty of finding attentive observers and development companions who assess progress on a day-to-day basis., in the solution of problems, in the creativity, in the overcoming of the limit situations There the competitions are born.

The need to update the competencies to the rhythm and demands of the company, is another of the consequences of visualizing the competencies approach related to the achievement of the organization's strategic goals.

A company that changes, that seeks excellence, or adaptation to change, or concrete comparative advantages, must adapt the competencies to achieve its strategic goals.

Competences in a smart company

Today there is talk of smart companies, that manage knowledge, that learn from their own experience, where relationships between colleagues are governed by the diastole and systole of knowledge, that is, by learning and teaching. Peter Senge in his book the “Fifth Discipline” does not hesitate to affirm that it consists of the systemic thought that manifests itself in the art and practice of the organization open to learning.

"An intelligent organization is the area where people continually discover how they create their reality and how they can modify it" Senge.

It is also said that today the comparative advantage between several companies only comes from the speed with which you learn and change. That continually discovering reality and modifying it, becomes reality through the focus of competencies as the common thread of human development and the fulfillment of strategic goals.

The skills approach seen as a common thread of human management in the company helps to:

In Selection, it allows you to select quickly and efficiently. Succession planning, by identifying who is suitable to occupy positions of greater impact in the organization. Training and development processes by identifying training needs, growth and designing processes for rotation and learning.In designing the career plan, by being able to design trajectories based on the competences required to hold current and potential positions. In remuneration, by rewarding for competences that add value and for the results obtained and that are key to the organization.

I want to refer a little more in detail to the implications of the system in the ongoing training of collaborators.

Each company has accumulated knowledge through its management that is not always valued, nor is it preserved, and even less is it transmitted.

As competences are developed especially by “learning by doing”, it is necessary to look for spaces and times where knowledge joins practice and becomes true learning that reaches the heart of what it means to be human. Through learning, the worker re-creates himself, learns to do something he could not do before, and has a different and enriched vision of his capacity for change and creative generation.

In the evaluation of the competences, strengths and weaknesses are revealed that can give rise to knowledge practices such as:

share good practices.involve the majority of the company in induction and training tasks.implement voluntary accompaniment for those who need it.convert tutor of the weakest to the one who has the best performance in a competition.implementation of error discussions where turn them into opportunities for improvement and solutions for all, not only in the search for culprits, as often happens, losing the educational power of mistakes, valuing the possible internal teachers of each company, training them in pedagogy and strategic issues of the organization. for the key positions in the organization.

Another important element for the development of competencies refers to promoting difficult experiences that challenge and test each person. In which you must deal with new issues and conflictive situations, which require initiative, imagination, detach yourself from those who dominate and know. In a word, place each person in extreme situations that demand the most and the best they can give.

It is the transition towards the paradigm of “learning to learn” where each person gradually manages their own development, but based on the offers of significant experiences that the daily business life provides to officials.

According to Leonard Mertens, training is the set of "all training acts or events directly or indirectly related to the improvement of job performance and the professional development of the person".

Therefore, the fundamental challenge of competency training is to generate the evidence that it works.

In this way, the evaluation of the training will be based not only on the satisfaction of the same by the student, but also on the differentiation of the practice together with the knowledge that will be reflected in the day-to-day learning. After training, the participant does more, does better, does differently.

But above all, the great source of evaluation of training is given by the fulfillment of strategic goals, productivity, higher sales, decreased complaints, improved work environment, among others.

conclusion

As competencies are the manifestation of power, love and knowledge of the officials of an institution, they are manifested when a job is successfully executed.

When executed successfully, it is easy to foresee the fulfillment of strategic goals.

It also has effects of personal satisfaction that results in the work environment, recognition, the growth of self-esteem and the security of being able to adequately perform the job requested.

The holistic view of man as a project finds a scope for growth in the core of humanization and in the specific performance of each company.

Linking human management processes around competencies gives efficiency, coherence, transparency and effectiveness to their performance in the organization.

In addition, it is contributing to the development of the Country by working around the growth of the citizen who finds in the business environment the way to grow in humanity, productivity and personal satisfaction.