3 Tips for keeping competency-based learning sustainable
For competency-based learning to be sustainable, the competency model must be agile. Competency models describe what someone in a particular role should be able to do to perform their part of corporate strategy. If your strategy is changing regularly (and I believe that for your organization to continue to survive, it will), then your competency model has to change/adapt as well.
Have a rhythm for periodically re-examining the model for changes. Maybe 2x/year, or after a transformation, merger or acquisition, or product launch.
We recommend sending out the tasks and behavioral examples and targets in a Word document (track changes on) to 4 - 6 high performers, and a manager of people in that role. Give them a few days to review and edit. Consolidate edits and conduct a 1-2 hour virtual workshop to discuss and finalize updates. Then make the updates within the competency assessment tool immediately.
Once you know that your competency model is current, look at the mapped learning opportunities for a particular task or competency that was updated and identify if changes are required. The behavioral examples for a task map to the learning objectives of an activity. If the former changes, there’s a good chance that the latter will also need to change. The good news is that if you have a tool where this mapping lives, and all the data is in one place, you can probably do this in one quick report. Run it, selecting only the tasks that were updated, and compare the behaviors in the target proficiency level for each task with the learning objectives of those activities. Any mismatch in learning objectives will tell you exactly what changes need to be made.
