How to identify the core competencies of employees?

Companies at regular intervals should conduct tests to find out the core strengths of their employees. This gives the company a rough idea what kind of employees it has & what can be done with them.

Based on the diverse skill sets proper trainning can be given to the employees to make them more skilled & qualified for the job.

Have simple recognition events every week or every month under various headings and recognize the employee by announcing and delivering the award on the spot. Make sure that the award is something that the employee can actually use.

Simillarly encourage employees to share their best practices on the intra-net postings.

Between these two you should be able to identify the core competencies of the really good ones anyway. Your success will - as a HR person - depend on how transparent you are in the award ddecision process and how many relevant topics on which you decide to recognize the excellence.

The HR department should be smart enough to identify the traits & behaviours of the employees. It should be able to distinguish the employees from each other with different skill sets.

Further,It should have certain tools to examine the employees and see in what they are best at. Once this is done it becomes easy for the company to use their employees in a optimum way.

While there are lot of tools available for assessing basic competancies, there should be tools available for measuring leadership competancies. For example, a leader should have a vision.  Vision is a futuristic thing; one comprehends a thing before it happens.  So there is not much evidence of its being successful during the gestation period. An employee, either is able to express it or not able to express it; it doesnt matter as far as the ability to have a vision goes.

Let us take the example of a person-in charge from NGO background. Suddenly given a target oriented task like business; he/she may falter because of risk aversion. The junior colleagues also will not be allowed to have any vision; only the safest target will be encouraged. This is a no risk situation and things would be considered okay if one manages to scrape through.

In the above scenario, there are two circumstances; to measure risk aversion and to measure the motivation level.   Both are management competancies, the lack of which may sabotage progress.

Step 1 : Ask Employee 

A man is the best judge of himself,so goes an adage.Ask him to jot down his core competencies and scenario where he has proven it.

Step 2 :Ask his colleagues 

Ask each team member to jot down the core competencies of the employee in focus and again the scenario where they feel he has exhibited these traits.

Step 3 : Ask his immediate Boss

Filter common traits from step 1 and step 2 and ask Boss to jot down out of these traits which he thinks the employee in focus has exhibited and in what scenario.

Step 4: Measure this with score of the competency mapping tool  used by the company.

Juxtaposing results of step 3 and step 4 should provide you with very close assessment of your employees core competencies.

"Scenario" word is highlighted to show its importance in getting valid feedbacks. 

A special monitoring team should be well appointed for the same to ensure everything is done to the best of expectation.This will deliver more productivity and efficiency.

The discussion should be on how to identify the core competencies of prospective employees and how to attract the the right talent to our organization to meet the business requirement.

Where as the core competencies of the employees reflect from the track record and behavioural competencies are exhibited in their work methods/ approach, that can be evaluated through feedbacks.

There is no one way to assess and build competencies in employees. It is a continuous process that starts with the company first investing competency modeling.

After having a competency model, the organization must then focus on competency mapping. If there is a person at an entry level, what competencies does the company expect him/her to have as opposed to the competencies expected from a senior manager.

The L&D then should have very clear steps to develop the competencies and assessments along with a 360 feedback from all the stakeholders of the employee should help assess and build an individua's competencies.

How to identify the Core Competencies of employees?

 What exactly is a core competence? At its simplest, a core competence is a unique capability that affords some type of competitive advantage either as an individual or as an organization.

Core Competencies are the key strengths of any individual and needless to say and to optimize the effectiveness of an employee, it is prudent that these competencies of individuals are identified.  Some of the top organizations adopt a meticulous approach to identifying and defining the core competencies of their employees and then single-mindedly pursue them. This helps in right mapping and ensures fully aligned employees.  Today, when the competition is very high and the margins are shrinking, to survive in this environment, companies have to be identified and play to their strengths. This also helps organization as a whole in assessing its core strengths and concentrate on these core competencies.  

Competencies are sets of skills, attitudes, and behaviors that allow employees to excel in their position. It is critical to identify employee competencies that are linked to strategic organizational objectives; then we can use those competencies and related tasks to create job descriptions that find the employees best-suited for the organization.  

Let’s understand the following terms first:

• Competent --Having sufficient skill, knowledge, ability, or qualifications
• Competencies- A set of knowledge, skills and abilities obtained through formal or non-formal education, work experience, or other means required performing a job.

Thus, as a part of Talent Management, competency identifying and their mapping would entail understanding of the above and ensure 100% mapping of all the competent of employees.

Start small initiatives like Kaizen, Quality Circle, Quality Improvement Projects and promote them to participate ....  

Imagine a bright student without any specialization, got recruited and put under 6 months probation. A few responsibilities were given, and he/she comes out with flying colors. Then the responsibilities are given to him/her for some time before another emergency creeps in, and somehow he/she is the most trustworthy person for the job. And again one comes across with the same outstanding performance.

Now, what are the core competencies? I think, it is the attitude of the person for the task at hand. Because of confidence and positive frame of mind, such people can be easily trained and delegated with any responsbilities. They learn from every failure, and earn high respect for themselves.

Personally I have tested this fact few times and succeeded.

ATLEASET QUARTERLY ACESSMENT OF EMPLOYEES MUST BE DONE BY THEIR BOSS AND BY EMPLOYEE HIMSELF. THOSE MUST BE OPENLY DISCUSSED BETWEEN BOTH AND THE NEGATIVES MUST BE CLEARED TO EMPLOYEE WHICH CAN BE IMPROVED BY EMPLOYEE IN NEXT QUARTER.

THIS MAY HELP EMPLOYER GET BETTER RESULTS IN IMPROVING THE EMPLOYERS EFFICIENCY / COMPETENCY. 

An Organization has to set the core competencies list based on the required competencies for each process by taking the views from the owner of the process. This can be placed in the portal or in Intranet which can be accessed by all the employees and can rate themselves in each competency. This should be explained by HR to all the Associates, Mangers and Leaders. The Mangers and leaders who are leading the team should have access to view and edit the competencies list of his/her team. They will monitor the performance of their team members with a target set by the organization, lets say quarterly. By this the bosses will get to know what rating can be given for each competency to their team members. They will review the ratings and provide feedback in which competency their perfroance is low. We can also go ahead and suggest some Learning or Training programs in order to increase the competency levels of the employees where they are lacking.

I hope by this we can maintain a track of competency levels of all the employess and also check the perfromance level of their competencies every quarter. We can also look and change various learning or training methods every quarter, if the compenctecy levels of the employees does not increase

CORE COMPETENCY CAN BE JUGED BY INVOLVING EMPLOYEE IN THE MAIN TASK AND AFTER FULLY SUPPORTING HIM ,OUTCOME CAN BE JUGED IN THE GIVEN TIME.

To identify the core competencies of employees, i think competency based appraisal systems will be most effective.

Core competencies of an employee can be accessed easily through reviewing his/her achievements against Balance Score Cards as well as contribution towards team building.  The employee should be made or to undergo a self-assessment and review by his sub-ordinate, peers and superiors. Lots of organization uses this method to understand the core competencies of employees.

Skillset list in employee CV only lists types of jobs he is capable of executing. Such listing in his CV doesnot convey if by using those skill sets can he do a job better than others having similar skillsets.

Your Core compitancy is those skill sets and by using them you can exeute a job comparatively better and faster than rest of the people in your organization/department/projet/team. Here again you may not love to do certain things or not comfortable woorking with certain type of people or leader or manger and as result you will not be omfortable working in such environment and may not give out your maximum using your skill sets.

It is thus neessary to find out what skills employee has acquired through training and retraining? what skillsets he has acquired through experience? Customer feedback on employees work and performane can evauate what is the skill level of the employee. Get emloyee feedbak to find out if he liked doing suh jobs and if he is comfortable in using the skills and doing the jobs. Find out through the employee feedback if he has enjoyed using the skills and will he work in another project opportunity requiring similar skill sets. If not find out the reason thereof. Many a time employee may not be interested in the project simply beause of the geographical regions where he is required to be present to execute the job. Core compitancy of an organization / team/department will be those skill sets of its employees/group/team put together when all the team members/employees are willing to be in the team and at the propsed location and enjoy the work.

Thus to identify the core compitancy of a person you need to know what skillsets he possess through training and experience, his preferances for geographical locations, his preferances with respect to working with team members, his preferances for team leader/manager.

The core competency of a personnel primarily can be assessed through his/her qualifications. Than frequent focused group discussions FGDs can be organized and that can be the effective method to assess the core competency of a staff.

Organizing FGDs is a continuous process. It is supposed to be that all the freshers while join in any services not to be expected that all of them would be equally competent. But the management has something to do for making their personnel competent. Here organizing FGDs is one of the dependable tools to have views of others. Through interactions visions would be transparent, strength, weakness, opportunity and threats can be discussed and resolved through the continuous process. 

Competency is the vital behavioral skills, knowledge and personal attributes that are translations of organizational capabilities and are deemed essential for success. They distinguish exemplary performers from adequate performers.

to know these component of an employee we must get feedback from 360 degree then counsel them and based on that give training to them...

Employee is like a car which need to be driven in the right gear at the right speed to extract optimum performance.

The best way to identify the core competencies is to allow the employees to experess thier views on various processes happening and planned in the company. Then have periodic One - to - One with line manager,  the  HR manager and have group dscussions where the suggestions and issues could be freely discussed, action points formulated and implemented so that the competent ones are identified, exposed and rewarded.