Not All Competencies Are Created Equal

Competency programs form the foundation for performance assessment, talent management, new hire on-boarding and continuous improvement.

Behavioral and cultural competencies are designed to help employees understand what they need to know and how they need to behave to succeed on the job. They help set clear performance expectations and keep both employees and managers on track.

But many competency initiatives do not deliver on their promise. Why? They fail, training needs assessment designers say, because instead of focusing on what employees really need to know to execute on strategic priorities, they list all the competencies that employees might possibly know and use on the job.

Companies that do it right, set up their competencies this way:

1. Critical Few for Your Strategy: They define just the critical few job and cultural competencies needed per job and then they stop adding more.
2. Realistic, Relevant and Practical: They understand that it’s more important to match up not what the employees are able to do but what they actually will do.
3. Outcome-Based: They focus more on outcomes rather than the manner in which these results are reached.