How Competency Based Development Facilitates Talent Management?

With a competency-based approach, the organization develops a much smaller list of critical competencies (seven or fewer), with well-defined skills and abilities that are necessary to achieve desired outcomes.The result is a selection decision that is founded on the achievement of valued competencies and less on a job candidate’s ability to meet a traditional list of qualities.

Competency Based Talent Management boosts the output of the employee as the work becomes a play.They do what they are good at and thats good for the company as each employee becomes a most optimum productive unit involved in that particular job.Say for a shirt making company someone who is expert in making a collar would take half the time than taken by someone who is good for putting in buttons.This was just for example it could be any set of competencies possessed by employee leading to a certain outcome.Now as he grows in organization he continues to be specialized in what he is good at i.e. collar making but this is not what is required when you are planning to put him for the top post.You need someone who can come out of his comfort zone(competency) and prove his mettle in testing waters as diverse as making a belt ! Moreover if somebody continues to do something what he is good at, he turns complacent and his urge to learn and explore diminishes over time.

After defining a job in terms of the competencies required (usually five to fifteen) to perform the job, it is then possible to assess an applicant's skill level in each of the needed competencies to determine their strengths and weaknesses. Competencies can be used to make selection decisions. Once hired, any training that will be needed has already been determined because the data collected during the selection process pinpoints the areas where deficits exist. Properly defined and used, competencies and behaviorally anchored rating scales can be powerful tools for organizations.

competency based development could be strategically relevant if it does not merely become a modern analytical presentation of the knowledge/skills/attitudes needed for a job profile which was done traditionally too - a strategic exercise needs to be done to identify the competitive benchmark global competencies based on the strategic growth plans of the organisation within the framework of organisation vision and values arriving at across the board unique strategic people competencies for the organisation for leading into the future growth in order of longterm organisational priority :

hope organisations have time for a really serious excercise rather than a me too cosmetic maggie noodle model, with the strategic skills of linking all the hr subsystems of induction, mentorship, leadership skills, training, career and succession planning, etc in place taking an integrated view all the time operationalising the same effectively having ample time at disposal with a well trained worldclass managerial cadre not chasing time all the while finishing such exercises under corporate haste not to miss the bus.

regards/kshantaram