Kravetz- Building A Job Competency Database: What the Leaders Do Page 7

Also, each organization may have unique initiatives that do not carry over to other organizations. For example, one organization may be trying to become more entrepreneurial, another changing its management style to be more participative. These initiatives require unique competencies. They must be defined for just that organization. When done, the training staff can hit a home run with subsequent activities such as having training courses that are on target to build these needed competencies.

Categorizing Job Competencies

Job competencies are generally classified by the leading companies into three categories. The names may be different, but the general scheme is relatively the same. These categories are as follows:

Technical--competencies that are, for the most part, unique to each discipline (business unit) in the company. For example, there are technical finance competencies needed by the employees in finance (e.g., financial analysis, setting up accounting systems), and technical information systems competencies needed by IS employees (e.g., programming, systems analysis), etc. There may be some overlap of technical competencies across business units.

Leadership--the competencies that pertain to leading and managing others, mainly for those in supervisory positions except for companies with self-managed teams.

Business--competencies that include areas like communications and teamwork. These competencies are quite common throughout an organization.

The leadership and business competencies will cut across many organizational units. They will also cut across various job levels in the organization. The technical competencies have great "differentiating power." They can separate jobs from one another very easily.

For example, the jobs of accountant and engineer may require the same business and leadership competencies, but would have very different technical competencies. An employee switching from the job of accountant to engineer needs to know what the technical competencies are which underlie that position. Not knowing this would make it difficult to evaluate the career move or prepare for it. And it is these technical competencies that differentiate between the two jobs.

What to Watch Out For

When many are racing out to define competencies, it can be assured that some will take shortcuts. There are probably more negative benchmarks than positive ones. Here are some things to watch out for:

1. Beware of off-the-shelf job competencies. Some vendors do not know how to define job competencies or do not want to take the time to do this. So why not put competencies in a can and sell them to everyone? But where are the technical competencies for a bank teller, software designer, or surgeon in this canned list? If you do not have technical competencies for your jobs, you cannot do the things described previously.

2. Beware of quick-and-dirty job analysis techniques. Some consultants realize that companies will not spend a fortune for a canned product. So they go through the motions of defining job competencies. They pull your managers into a conference room and ask them what the competencies are for their area? Does the manager have job analysis data to work with? No, so managers merely speculate and guess. The laundry list of "competencies" developed usually contains basic skills or personality traits.

3. Beware of consultants who say technical competencies are not important. Since there are many technical job competencies and much work is needed in defining them, some consultants tell you they are not important at all. They say you should just focus on the leadership and business competencies, something the consultant just happens to have canned. But could you imagine hiring an engineer without assessing their technical engineering competence? Or training a heart surgeon on only leadership and business competencies while disregarding technical competencies? Clearly, technical competencies are a very important part of the solution and need to be included in the database.

4. Beware of those who talk a good game but have not delivered. Ask any consultant to give you a vision of competencies. See if that vision includes linking the database to a variety of HR activities. Ask the consultant to show you specific selection tools, training curricula, compensation systems, or other systems they have set up from a competency database. If they have none or say they cannot show them to you, you are not going to get a competency database from the individual. In all likelihood, your competency initiative will begin and end with words on a piece of paper.

Defining job competencies is an important and valuable activity for an organization to carry out. When properly done, the job competency database can be used to link together training, career development, performance measurement, selection, performance consulting and still yet other activities. All of these systems will be more effective than without the database. The time and money spent on defining competencies are clearly worth the gains in performance which will result.