What is a competency assessment?
Some common questions people ask are, “What is a competency assessment? Why do I need one? And how do I get started?”
A competency assessment compares an individual’s skills to requirements
A competency assessment is the assessment of someone’s capabilities against the requirements of their job. Those requirements are defined in a competency model. To be valuable, competency models should contain only tasks/skills that are critical to success in the role, not every activity they perform in their job (which comes from a traditional job task analysis).
The assessment is performed on those identified tasks/skills, where a rating is selected based upon how they do that task, which defines their proficiency level.
In other words, a competency assessment measures How (behaviors) someone does the What (task/skill).
The individual’s selected proficiency level is then compared with the target level, defining proficiency or skill gaps for each task/skill.
Competency Assessment Best Practices: A manager assessment without a self-assessment will not provide the results you seek since there will be no buy-in to the results. Start with a self-assessment, and add a manager assessment, and optionally those from subject-matter experts.
Competency assessments quantify the size of your skill gaps
Most organizations are blissfully unaware of the quantity and size of their skill gaps. They know they have them, but they don’t know how large or widespread they are, and they can’t inform organizational plans, priorities, and strategy. Think about that for a moment. If you don’t know what you can and can’t do, how can you be successful? How can you truly define what your organization’s strengths are and which opportunities you should pursue, or what you should do about it?
If you are a senior leader and you don’t have competency assessment data/skill gap analysis, you should be scared. You’re making decisions that are based on inadequate data. When it comes to understanding organizational capability, you don’t have to be in the dark. A competency assessment shows us the light. And then the best decisions can be made including where we need to upskill and reskill staff.
Competency assessments tell you what action to take
If you are in a Learning, Talent or Effectiveness role, you are capable of eliminating this data void. Delivering competency assessments, and using them to create a culture of learning such that upskilling and reskilling can happen continuously, should be part of your job description. Typically, that is ensuring that people have the skills required to do their current and future jobs. Without skills assessment data, you have no ability to mitigate skill gaps effectively.
Once you know who does and doesn’t have the required skills:
You can provide personalized learning to close those gaps
You can pair high performers in a skill with those having skill gaps to close the gaps quickly with task-based mentors (Read The Value of Task-Based Mentors)
Your talent acquisition strategy can be more focused, so you hire those with the skills the organization currently lacks
Competency assessment is not “one and done”
While some C-level executives think that you can do a competency assessment once every few years, that’s like saying you need only report company financials every 5 years. How could someone possibly want to invest? And in this case, how can you invest well in your talent, your greatest asset?
According to Rob Lauber, CLO at McDonalds, “Change is happening so fast that by the time we upskill or reskill employees, some of those new skills are already obsolete. We are looking at a future where millions of people will constantly have to re-invent their skills.”
If you want to “say” you’ve done a competency assessment so you can check the box, then just do one.
But if you want to actually drive capability in your organization, you must create the cycle of assessment, ongoing development, and reassessment ONLY on the tasks/skills they’ve worked on, so that you have a current picture of capability at any time. Plus, you get the benefit of creating a culture of lifelong learning, driven by competency assessments, that drives real growth in your organization.
Additional competency assessment uses: career development and rapid onboarding
A competency assessment can also be used by individuals to assess their readiness for other roles. People will no longer make assumptions about their readiness for a role or guess at the requirements – they will really know. They can use the personalized learning recommendations as a career development plan template to take specific action to plan for the role they desire. (More about Career Planning)
A competency assessment during the first few days of onboarding tells the new hire exactly what it looks like to be good and great in the job. No more fumbling. It shows them what action to take to close any gaps so they can own their development. Not only will it speed their time to proficiency, but it will eliminate the fear, uncertainty and doubt that leads to early exits within the first 6 months.
How to get started assessing
You need at least 2 but preferably 3 elements for a competency assessment:
1) A role-based competency model for those to assess
2) A competency assessment system to facilitate scale, privacy, and capability analytics
3) Personalized learning to create individual reskill and upskill action plans
The system is important because historically-used tools, such as spreadsheets you send around, lack the privacy and control required globally (e.g., GDPR). And the volume of skills inventory data will be substantial. You need a system that will crunch it and create data visualizations you can use without manual effort, or else you’ll have lots of insightful data that is never used.
While you could capture capability data with only the first 2 elements, you can’t impact skill gap closure. Knowledge without an action plan will get you only so far.
Recognize the self-awareness that comes when an individual realizes that they can’t do their job as well as they need to. They will buy into the fact that there is action they need to take. If you provide personalized learning they can use to create and work an individual development plan/action plan, you have the opportunity to set each person on a path toward continuous learning.
If you’re looking for support in measuring capability in your organization, SkillDirector can provide you with role-based competency models, and a competency assessment system that both assesses and points to personalized learning.
Also at ATD.