Why Competency Management

Forward-thinking organizations always plan ahead to handle the perpetual Damocles Sword called  “Talent Crisis”. Critical functions, services and products need skilled personnel to manage and execute them, and as world markets shrink daily, talent shortage increases.

As these shortages loom larger daily, businesses find it increasingly difficult, even unviable, to recruit new talent. Given this, many are looking homewards, trying to cultivate talent from within their organization to ensure that they never run out of right people to do the right jobs. Most people call this a "Talent Management" strategy.

The ancient adage of "You can manage only what you can measure" has started dawning vis a vis Talent Management, leading to the following questions :

1. What's acceptable as a skill level?
2. What's the best we can hope to attain from our workforce?
3. What skills do I need to do that job?

Nothing answers these questions as well as a carefully defined set of metrics, that provide solutions in a quantifiable, measurable way.

Enter Competency Management.

Competency Management is a fundamental function of an effective Talent Management solution, which enables the organization to catalog and measure various behaviors, skills, and knowledge that are important to measure delivery, and hence, successes.  Competencies give structure to job descriptions, provide much needed yardsticks for performance reviews, and enable the entire organization to speak the same language when evaluating people, positions, and future talent needs.

Competency Management Systems & Services provide the right tools for building an effective competency model, managing changes, and involving stakeholders throughout the organization. Competency Management gives organizations the tools to proactively:

1. Identify skills and experience they need to stay competitive
2. Attract and keep the best-fit people
3. Plan ahead for the retirements of Baby Boomers in critical positions
4. Nurture future talent and develop leadership from within the organization, to reduce turnover costs and conserve knowledge capital