CHAPTER ONE

COMPETENCY BASED-HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

What is Competency?
 The earliest globally accepted definition of competencies was generated in an
international conference attended by several hundred human resource development
practitioners in Johannesburg, South Africa in October1995.
 Synthesized from the suggestions of participants, the definition of competencies
forwarded was a cluster of related knowledge, skills and attitude (KSA) that affects a
major part of one’s job (a role or a responsibility), the correlated with the performance of
the job, that (1) can be measured against well- accepted standards, and that (2) can be
improved via training and development.
 Following this definition, competencies can be viewed as a three-leg-stool- without one
leg, this stool will not stand. Hence, a competency must have these three components
present (knowledge, skills, and attitudes) for it to be considered complete and
effective.
 For Dubois and Rothwell competencies are characteristics that individuals have and use
in appropriate and consistent ways in order to achieve desired performance.
 These characteristics include knowledge, skills, aspects of self-image, social motives,
traits, thought patterns, mind-sets, and ways of thinking, feeling, and acting.
 Competencies form the foundation of competency-based HR management practices.
 Knowledge and skills are the more obvious competencies’ employees use to achieve the
expected outputs or results. Some of the more abstract worker competencies, however,
are those that have been associated with successful completion of select types of work;
such competencies include patience, perseverance, flexibility, and self-confidence.
 Note that competencies have less to do with assigned tasks (work activities) and more to
do with personal qualities. This critical dimension is largely missing or not well
represented in traditional definitions of jobs.
 The appropriate behaviours linked to a competency may differ, depending on the
corporate culture in which that competency is grounded.
 Corporate culture refers to the unspoken beliefs held in common by the people in an
organization about the right and wrong ways to behave.
 Schein (1992) defined the culture of a group as follows: A pattern of shared basic
assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems of external adaptation and
internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to
be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to
those problems.
 the demonstration of a competency is tied to the unique corporate culture in which it
appears in much the same way that national culture determines the demonstration of
success factors.
 For instance, to be successful in a tribe of headhunters, one must collect the most heads,
and to be successful in a capitalist society, one must collect the most money.
  Corporate cultures are embodiments of organizational values, and values are the
underpinning of management decisions.
 Outputs are the goods or services (results) that workers produce and turn over to
clients or constituents.
 A job output is a product of services delivered, they can be measured through metrics
associated with quantity, quality, time cost, and requirements related to customer service.
 Work activities include the performance of a series of tasks or units of work that generate
outputs or results. A group of completed job task that produces job outputs is a job
activity.
 A job competence is an employee’s capacity to meet the job requirements by producing
an outputs or results at an expected level of quality, within the constraints of the
organizational environment.
 Competencies are essential in achieving work. Competency identification or modelling
can be a beginning of strategic point in planning.
 COMPETENCY IDENTIFICATION is a means of clarifying key requirements for a
job category or department and should be completed after the dimensions of the work are
identified.
 Identifying and capturing these success factors in a template allows organization to
cultivate and harness these characteristics to drive performance lead to art and science
called COMPETENCY MODELLING.
 A COMPETENCY MODEL is a narrative description of everything that describe a
person who is successful in getting results of doing work.
 JOB ANALYSIS is the operating system of human resource management. Job
description and specification are outputs of job analysis. Inadequacy of using job analysis
as the anchor for managing and driving human resource management has become
increasingly apparent.
 Competency models can supplement traditional job descriptions and specifications and
become the foundation for an HR system. When that happens, an organization is using a
COMPETENCY-BASED HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT.

WHAT IS COMPETENCY BASED HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT (CBRM)?

CBRH concentrates first on the person and then on his or her outputs ore results. Competencies
are enduring while work activities and task are transitory.
CBRM views the needed outputs and the organization’s work roles or requirements from a
person-oriented rather than a job-oriented perspective. This approach makes competencies the
foundation for the entire Human Resource Management function.
Competencies drive recruitment, selection, placement, orientation, training, performance
management and workers rewards. With all aspects of HR management integrated through
competencies, rather than through traditional notion of job analysis.
Human resource planning serves as a guide for an organization’s HR policies, programs; it is
an important part of the organization’s overall business plan.
Combining strategy and planning creates a greater capacity for change. The challenge continues
to be identifying ways in which to link HR plans and business strategy.
Transforming HR planning to a competency basis requires a major paradigm shift in the way HR
planners think about organizations and people. They must rethink what they doing, why they and
how they should do it.
Putting a competency-based HR planning system in place begins with building the awareness
of the organization’s decision makers.
Competency-based HR planning are appropriate in an organization with a large population of
professional, technical, or managerial employees.
A competency-based approach are also appropriate for an organization that are heavily on
abstract competencies, such as interpersonal skill or achievement.
A competency based recruitment begins when the organization’s leaders identify the key work
roles, positions, or other work designations in need of recruitment efforts. This involves setting
priorities. Decision makes must also decide on the time span over which the recruitment process
will take place.
With the competency-based approach, the criteria for selection are objectively stated. The
process is systematic and disciplined. Perhaps the most desirable method of application is
multiple interviews conducted by trained proessionals, either individually or in teams. The goal
of interviews is to determine whether individual possess the competencies necessary to achieve
exemplary work results.
Competency-based recruitment and selection are results oriented. They make it easier to
concentrate on the results expected of a successful or exemplary performer.
Competency-based approach encourages managers and other decision makers to clarify the
verifiable, measurable results they expect from successful performer before a selection decision
is made.
Competency-based selection also provides some insight into whether or not a new hire will be a
good fit with the organization’s culture.
Competency-based selection help the organization to function effectively even during times of
rapid or unanticipated change.
Competency-based recruitment and selection processes give HR practitioners an opportunity
to plan for developing competencies for new hires and for experienced.
Competency-based recruitment processes can reduce traditional training times by ensuring the
selection of applicant who can perform.
The key to transforming traditional training into competency-based training is thus centered on
the training needs assessment process and its focus.
The goal of competency-based employee training is to discover the difference between
exemplary and fully successful performers and trying to narrow those differences.
Competency-based training involve individual more challenging activities of changing individual
motivation levels and cultivating the development of personality traits.
Competency models provide a holistic approach that acknowledges dimensions to performance
other than knowledge, skills and attitudes.
Competency based training helps to keep team members focused on achieving exemplary
performance.
Competency based performance management approach, employees’ work results are aligned
with achievement of the organization’s strategic objectives, and the contributions of the results
are identified in specific, and measurable terms.
Outputs or results expectations and metric for employees are clarified at the outset of the
performance period in a competency-based approach.
Using a competency based performance management approach is one way to provide
employment incentives for external job candidates and also improve employee retention.
Competency-based compensation management offer major support to other competency-
based HR management practices. The approach serves as a mechanism for raisin the
performance bar in a fair and equitable manner, specifies clear performance requirements and the
rewards for achieving them, and can easily be aligned with a competency-based performance.