About four years ago the subject of “Human Competency-Based Management” was introduced among us and today we are inundated with its design and deployment.
Some convinced of its true benefits, others excited by a trend that should not be left behind, its application has been increasing.
These four years are enough to appreciate the evolution of the practices of this way of managing people and their respective contributions to business. We have known of organizations that, systematically, advance their implementation, review and adjust it, as well as many others that, unexpectedly, immerse themselves in a sea of approximations and imperfect imitations and many others that cautiously wait to learn more about the benefits of such proposals.
The fundamental reason that has induced companies to adopt the competencies model has almost always been the requirement of ISO standards for business certification, some assuming it as an opportunity to develop more systematic human processes and others as an obligation that must be comply.
Without having carried out any technical inquiry process (we hope to do so later), we have been appreciating some lightness and excesses in the construction and development of the so-called “competency models” that have aroused concerns and concerns.
We have often wondered if the people who are advancing the processes of design and implementation of competency approaches really know the scope of such a concept. It has seemed to us that we have continued working with the traditional psychological constructs provided by differential psychology and that they have only been “re-channeled” with the name of “competencies”.
And there would be nothing wrong with this if the approach was based on systematic analyzes and practices whose validity was explicitly demonstrated, since, precisely, one of the precautions that must be taken into account when starting the implementation of the competencies model is not to ignore what exists in the company. What we mean is that the traditional management schemes are valid for the moment, because they have also had the purpose of achieving the effectiveness of people at work.
We are surprised by the lightness with which projects are started that aim to focus on human management by competencies, little determined by the particular characteristics of each organization, by its strategic needs and its cultural particularities. The managerial discussion that should give rise to a well-founded conclusion of the essential or organizational competencies that must be developed in employees is underestimated and the conduct of the so-called “expert panels” is carried out in an unsystematic way and vitiated by partial or superficial assessments.
The misunderstanding of the concept of "role" and the lack of analysis of organizational structures, to determine which are the roles for which it is necessary to define competencies, is another flaw that we have appreciated. Designing competency profiles for each job is to perpetuate the alienating conception of "job specialization" and thus reduce the possibilities of growth and development of people, with a view to increasing their employability.
The exclusion of the functional model (English) or the behavioral model (American) has led to an incomplete definition of role profiles. Disregarding the importance of basic personal competencies, which because they are so difficult to develop become determinant of the others, would be almost equivalent to working with the traditional approaches of functional analysis. However, neglecting the contributions of the functional approach that allows the definition of labor competence standards, would be as inconvenient as moving away from the standards that will allow, later, the certification of people in their respective occupations.
But although we have appreciated lightness in the phase of the "identification of competences", much more could be said in relation to the "evaluation of competences". The lack of objective criteria and the scarce availability of equally reliable and valid instruments to measure what is intended to be evaluated has had repercussions on subjective considerations about the level of competences of people. Little knowledge of the most effective methodologies and those with the greatest predictive capacity in the assessment of competencies is very general.
And what is being done in order to develop skills? It is here where we see the greatest challenge and, paradoxically, where there is less availability of experiences and successful practices, which allow us to obtain applicable conclusions for those interested in these approaches.
The desire to follow the dictates of the "managerial fashions" prevents reflection on whether there will be some organizational prerequisites to implement an approach such as competencies. We believe that there are certain conditions that must be met prior to the decision to undertake this project.
Pre-requisites for the implementation of management by competencies
1. Top management must fully understand the model, spend time planning and guiding it, and should exemplify with their style what it means to “manage competencies”.
2. The strategic guidelines of the organization must be sufficiently clear and completely assimilated or understood by the management levels. From this full understanding, the priority competencies in the organization can be determined with full awareness.
3. In the culture of the organization, commitment to work, interest in personal and work improvement and a favorable attitude towards measurement must prevail.
4. The organizational structure should be clearly designed and immediate changes to the position and / or role structure should not be announced.
5. The organizational climate must be favorable and, as far as possible, free of tensions that slow down or hinder the development of the process.
6. There should be a provision to set up internal consulting teams that provide analysis and data on labor, professional and organizational demands, which in turn become inputs for the construction of skills maps.
7. The availability of the members of the consulting teams presupposes the allocation of the time and attention necessary for the study and development of the model, in order to avoid the prolongation of a process that can easily fall into obsolescence, given the rapid transformations of the roles. of work.
Criteria for the effective implementation of a human management model by competencies
Once these prerequisites have been met, the model implementation process can begin, for which it is essential to meet some criteria that outline its development and define the effectiveness of its application:
1. Organizational competencies must have a high identification with the strategic guidelines: generic competencies must correspond faithfully to the behaviors that the strategic imperatives demand from people. In the enunciation and description of the competencies, the strategic and cultural component of each organization must be impregnated and should not be limited to a “simplistic” copy of the textual definitions of the generic glossaries of competencies or traces of other companies.
2. The map of competencies will be based on roles and not on positions. Without ignoring functional specificity, there will be clarity in the design of profiles by roles, which means working on broader categories of responsibilities that facilitate the versatility and multi-functionality of people and promote employability.
3. The methodology to raise the profiles of these roles should not be based solely on the information provided by the best performers of such roles (behavioral approach), because we would run the risk of designing profiles for today's demands and we would underestimate those that are required. for the organization of the future.
4. The operationalization or description of the competencies must be done after a wide recognition by authorized experts to determine key success factors in the positions and the debate on the semantic details that allow the construction of a system of common meanings and the obtaining of criteria homogeneous and objective evaluation.
5. The methodology for constructing the competency profiles should be of a mixed nature, in order to integrate the particular values of each of the approaches proposed by the American and English schools. Behavioral competencies are more consistent, and therefore, it is necessary to identify them. Labor or functional competencies have more to do with the knowledge applied at work and, therefore, are also key success factors.
6. Building the map of competencies with precision and validity criteria does not mean prolonging its applicability over time. The rapidity of the evolution of the organizational and occupational demands demands that these tools be timely and practical, in order to avoid that their excessive and meticulous planning makes them obsolete and little digestible.
7. The evaluation mechanisms should be chosen based on the knowledge of their relevance to the variable to be evaluated and their applicability in the organizational culture in which the evaluation is deployed. The application, for example, of multi-user or 360º systems demands a specially developed culture that facilitates their assimilation. The design of specific instruments, with their due pilot studies, the training of evaluators and the preparation of the appropriate environment for such purposes is a fundamental condition to obtain better results in such a demanding and delicate task.
8. The advisers that support the construction of the human management model by competencies must be possessors of the professional solvency that experience grants, beyond the theoretical knowledge that is so easily accessible these days. They must also be aware of the limitations that any administrative strategy, such as the one analyzed, poses and must be supported by their own methodologies and applicable to the nature of our organizations.
The foregoing observations are the sole responsibility of the author and arise from the experience gathered particularly in these days, in which, as mentioned at the beginning, lightness has been observed that threatens the effectiveness and usefulness of a management model that in many transnational organizations and in developed countries has been demonstrated.
We are still interested in continuing to carry out these analyzes and therefore it is likely that on a new occasion we will be sharing new conclusions with them.
