Competencies are observable abilities, skills, knowledge or traits defined in terms of the behaviours required for an employee to excel in his or her job profile.

When applied to an organisation’s learning and development programme, competence-based development can lead to more effective and efficient personal development.  

Step 1

Self assessment to understand job profile requirements and to maintain personal effectiveness

• Continually self-assess and seek feedback from others to identify strengths and limitations.

• Pursue training and development opportunities. 

Step 2

Seek to develop personal competencies to fit current job profiles

• Try new approaches to maximise learning in current situation.

• Take advantage of internal learning opportunities.

• Integrate new learning into work methods.

Step 3

Seek development opportunities beyond current job profile competency requirements

• Set personal and professional goals and targets for self in view of growth beyond current job.

• Actively pursue self-development on an ongoing basis (technically and personally).

• Pursue projects designed to challenge personal abilities.

Step 4

Align personal competence development with organisation objectives and goals

• Design personal learning objectives based on evolving needs of the portfolio or business unit.

• Use organisational change as an opportunity to develop new competencies.

Step 5

Align personal learning with anticipated change in organisational strategy

• Identify future competencies required by the organisation and develop and pursue learning plans accordingly.

• Continuously scan the environment to keep abreast of emerging developments in the broader business context.

With S$5.5 billion committed over the next five years to raise productivity, the government is taking bold steps to achieve its goal of 2% to 3% productivity growth over the next decade.

A key measure highlighted to increase productivity involves raising the skills and creative potential of every worker. 

"We will progressively build up a first-class system for Continuing Education and Training (CET) over the next decade. This will be a major investment in our people, up and down the skills ladder.

“Our employers must also empower their people to find new ways to create value, and help unlock every worker’s potential. The best companies already do this; we must spread this enabling culture across all businesses,” said Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam.

CET and investment in development of the workforce is now more important than ever. At Comaea, we fiercely believe in making human capital work. A competence-based training and development programme can make the difference between a run of the mill and a value adding, strategic based development programme.

A competence-based development programme lets you define employee job profiles that are specific, comprehensive and consistent throughout the organisation. This helps to ascertain if employees possess the required competencies for each job profile he or she is involved in. 

By applying this framework, strategic development decisions that are backed by facts can be made. Increase productivity today by developing a job profile specific competent workforce. 

Hay Group had found that 29 per cent of employees in Singapore feel frustrated in their jobs while 35 per cent feel detached. In the current climate of slow yet cautious recovery, it is imperative that firms have a satisfied and motivated workforce.

This, however, is easier said than done. Tight budgets and cash flows suggest that the year-end variable performance bonuses will be kept to a minimum. How then can firms keep their employees motivated and happy? Speak with any HR practitioner or coach and words like respect, incentives, recognition and communication will without doubt be brought up.
What is truly important though, is the understanding by employees that they are significantly contributing to the success of the organisation. This is followed up with due recognition and is based upon constant two way communication.

Due recognition: Recognition not only comes in the form of financial benefits. In fact, most of the top executives studied in Jim Collins’ book Good to Great found that there were no correlations between the types of financial compensation packages with the success of these management executive teams. There are many suggestions on how to confer recognition such as thank you notes and public recognition but generally, a sincere and genuine show of appreciation by a superior would suffice.

Two way communication: Communication is an often harked, yet highly unheralded value. This goes beyond the usual contrived annual performance management review. The true value of communication often comes from places outside the office: a meal in a restaurant, after dinner drinks or even at the bi-annual department outing. A constant and continuous form of dialogue over the work year also shows employees that their manager is actually interested in them, instead of simply going through the motions.

Employee contribution and empowerment: The single greatest element of keeping employees motivated is to assign to them responsibilities that have an actual effect on the organisation’s bottom line. With the right form of empowerment, a positive work environment can be created where employees are motivated by their actions which they know directly impacts the organisation, rather than a punitive work environment where work is purely done to avoid punishment.

Where does Comaea come into this picture of keeping employees motivated? With a complete and proper competence profile of your department, it is easy to see which areas your employees are excelling in and which areas they would need some development and training. By managing each and every one of your employees as human capital or actual resources, you allow them to feel like they matter and that their skills are being strategically aligned and deployed according to the organisation’s needs. In addition, Comaea is web-based and removes large chunks of paper based administrative tasks, leaving more time and energy for communication between line manager and employees.

Do consider the effects the past year has had on your employees and ask yourself the critical question of how your em
ployees are feeling right now; are they ready to work together with you to ride the wave of recovery. Give us a call if you think you need help.

Mattson argues quite rightly that making the wrong decisions about employee layoffs can put a company in a serious state of disadvantage especially as the economy starts to rebound. After all, employees that remain following an organisational restructuring effort will determine its future success. The bottom line is that in times where layoffs are necessary, it is imperative to retain the best, most motivated and high potential employees.

That said, it is of common sense and knowledge that in order to do well, an organisation must retain its best employees. The problem many managers face is the lack of data to make informed decisions. This is exactly what Mattson means by seeing a need to "democratise" human capital management. Human capital management these days is purely a HR process where the rest of the organisation contributes information once or twice a year. A transformation in this process is required to help managers identify their best performers with vital information and statistics and do their best to retain these top performers.

To "democratise" this process would mean to empower every employee to make performance and competence measurement part of their daily routine. This will help managers identify employees who have both potential and motivation. After all, people perform differently under different conditions; differentiating the 'once a year' top performers from the all year round top performers would provide excellent intelligence to managers.

With the right tools, human capital management can be transformed into a democratic process where vital information is passed on the the strategic decision makers. In the weeks to come, I will discuss more about Mattson's views on the democratising process itself. I hope that with today's article, some seeds of doubt have been raised with regards to your organisation's human capital management processes.

Edit: In my article I had neglected to add in the "Asian context" of Mattson's views. What I meant was that, these views are especially applicable to Asian companies, where many HR processes are driven from top down, there to fulfill administrative functions. Companies go through the motions once a year to fulfill their HR departments' performance management requirements. By democratising these processes, these would cease to be an annual pointless exercise and present top management with very good data to help with decision making.

Instead, in these times, we find it important that firms re-think their HR management strategies. Turbulent times require active performance management initiatives, creative methods, innovation and out of the box solutions.

For example, instead of totally stopping all non-core training sessions (ie. leadership programmes), firms can switch the method of training to a webinar style training course where the value of the course is hardly compromised while costs can be kept to a minimum.

The basic principles of performance and competency management remains the same:

1. What we have - in terms of employee competencies and skills
2. Where we want to be in the future - overall organisation goals and targets
3. How do we bridge this gap and get to the future point successfully - training, development, recruitment etc.

This core methodology can still be adhered to in these times with limited budgets and resources. We believe that a measured approach is needed here.

First, a review of the organisation's goal and target setting process is required. New targets have to be set which take into account the current business climate.

Second, a tool is required to understand the firm's current standing and the gaps it is facing to reach the revised target.

Upon which, a strategy to align all resources, current and future, towards this revised goal via creative and innovative methods is needed.

Try this out at a department or unit level and you may be surprised at the results!