Importance of Competency Mapping

In the world of management professionals, the term competency mapping has gained more importance today.  Organizations are vying globally and they wanted to create a competitive edge over the other. Companies are investing tremendous amount of time and money to have competent employees or they develop ordinary employees to extra-ordinary employees by developing distinguishable competencies.  Managers and HR professional have realized the importance of competency mapping and they believe that, the future belongs to competent people and competency based organizations.

Introduction to Competency:

Before studying about competency mapping, one should know the definition of competency at work place. It refers to the characteristics required by an individual to perform a given role, task or an activity successfully. In simple terms, it refers to a person’s fitness to his or her job. Competencies can be grouped as following

• Technical competencies or Functional competencies 

• Managerial competencies

• Human competencies

• Conceptual competencies

Competencies take the following forms such as 

• Attitude 

• Skill

• Knowledge

• Motives

• Values 

• Traits etc.

Adapted from Competence at Work by Lyle Spencer & Signe.M.Spencer

Identification of competencies

The competencies are identified using competency mapping methods such as

• Interviews

• Questionnaire

• Group work

• Task analysis workshop

• Performance Appraisal Format etc.

These competencies are identified by Experts, Psychologists, HR Specialists, Job Analysts, Supervisors, Industrial Engineers, Reporting and Reviewing officers and others. After the identification of the core competencies there should be a core competency acquisition agenda. Continuous learning should be provided for building core competency and later it should be deployed to attain and maximize competitive advantage. Finally, there should be a proactive business plan through which core competency skills are protected and defended. 

In this new economy, every organization should perform consistently to remain successful; this can be achieved by multi-skilled, possessing high self-esteem work-force, who is highly competent. The absence of these competencies would lead to increased premiums and undesirable results. 

Author   :  Subburam N.N

College  :  Amrita School of Business, Bangalore

Email id : subburamnn@gmail.com

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