How can an organization effectively build a professional post competency model?

In China, the application of competency model in human resource management has been very common. We help different customers build dozens of competency models every year, and we also observe a very obvious trend: organizations are more and more willing to build professional post competency models, while the demand for building general competency models, leadership competency models or complete competency model systems seems to be declining.

Why does the competency model of professional posts become the mainstream of competency model construction in the future?

We think there are several key reasons.

Many organizations already have a good foundation of competency model: the concept of competency model originated in the United States in the 1970s, and has gone through the globalization and popularization for half a century. Many large organizations basically have competency models. We conducted two talent management surveys involving more than 200 enterprises on 20 14-20 16 (see figure 1). About 80% of enterprises have competency model. This data shows that competency model has been very popular in many successful enterprises. Because the early competency model focused on the construction of general competency model, management level and leadership model. When many organizations have these competency models, they will consider further capacity building. Therefore, the professional post competency model has obviously become the mainstream direction for enterprises to build competency models at present and in the future.

(Figure 1: Quantitative Statistics of Organizational Capability Model)

Organizations pay more attention to the development of talents in key positions: as more and more enterprises evolve from human resource management to talent management, organizations are more willing to invest their main resources in key talents and key positions. Therefore, more organizations are concerned about the development of key talents, including the construction of core sales management team, the development of high-potential talents, the development of core R&D personnel and so on. When enterprises consider developing these talents, the first task is to build a successful model (competency model) of key talents. The demand for key post competency model construction has been greatly improved.

The important difference between talent management and human resources is to build a competency model for specific positions rather than full coverage: Wen Hai jointly put forward four signs of talent management, namely, a. talent management is based on organizational strategy and business objectives; B. Talent management is the complete management of the whole talent life cycle; C. talent management is a management that varies from person to person; D. talent management is based on talent data. In the past, influenced by traditional human resources consulting companies, many companies tended to build a full coverage competency model system, hoping to build a project through a one-time competency model, which can cover every position and level in the organization. But the problem is that no enterprise has the energy and financial resources to really ensure that these competency models can be applied to all aspects of human resources. In addition, today's enterprises often face organizational restructuring. Systematic capacity building models often fail as soon as they are established. Therefore, people often feel that the construction of competency model is large, involving a wide range, difficult to land, and sometimes can not keep up with organizational changes, thus fearing the construction and application of competency model.

Therefore, organizations should not covet the big and complete when building competency models, but should seriously consider the following key issues from the perspective of talent management:

-Can the competency model reflect the strategic requirements of the organization and can it be combined with specific business development goals?

-Are there resources in the organization to apply competency model to all aspects of talent management?

-Can the organization closely link the competency model with the relevant employees and use the competency model to identify the competency level of employees?

-Can the competency model constructed by the organization be related to an appropriate talent evaluation system to generate valuable talent data?

Last year, we built a professional post competency model for the retail team of a Fortune 500 food processing enterprise. The task of establishing this capability model is based on the business strategic requirements of the enterprise that wants to transform from B2B to B2C. Through the construction of this competency model, enterprises hope to effectively cover all aspects of recruitment, development, performance appraisal and promotion of related professional sales talents in the future. At the same time, the construction of this competency model is a complete in-depth project, involving a series of future talent management activities such as the definition, evaluation and development of professional sales positions. The ultimate goal of the whole capacity development project is to help the whole company achieve successful business transformation.

The Category Definition of Professional Post Ability Model

Defining the scope of professional post competency model effectively is a question that any human resource professional needs to answer clearly before carrying out related projects.

When considering the construction of professional post competency model, how to distinguish it from other competency models? How to define the scope of professional post competency model, such as whether professional knowledge and skills need to be covered in professional post competency model?

The concept of competency model was formally put forward by McClellan in 1970s, and it is widely known. The first competency model he proposed was actually a professional post competency model, which helped the State Council shape the orientation of FSIO. He believes that intelligence is not the only factor that determines an individual's job performance, but also includes his attitude, characteristics and cognition, that is, competence is the key factor that affects his job performance. In the following decades, different scholars put forward their own understanding of ability.

Competency refers to the knowledge, skills, abilities, traits or motivations directly related to important achievements or work performance. (mcclelland 1973)

Competency refers to any individual characteristic that can be reliably measured, such as motivation, traits, self-concept, attitude or values, knowledge or skills, and can distinguish high-performance employees from ordinary employees. (Spencer, mcclelland & Spencer 1994)

Capabilities can add value to enterprises, and can focus on the process that causes enterprises to change their environment to support their competitive advantage. (ulrich, Brockband & Yang 1995)

Competency refers to the basic key characteristics that affect individuals to show higher performance and achievements in their work. (Boyatzis 1996)

Competency refers to knowledge, skills, talents, values, personality, motivation and other characteristics (KSAOs) that lead to high management performance. (Wang Zhongming 2000)

Based on the research of many scholars at home and abroad and our decades of practice, we believe that the professional competency model should have four key signs:

—— Competency model is the systematic requirement of the organization for relevant talents based on environmental requirements;

-Competency model can distinguish high-performance employees from ordinary employees;

A person's ability comes from his own knowledge, experience, skills, motivation, characteristics and values.

-Ability is manifested as a series of excellent behaviors that can be observed.

Distinguishing ability and developing ability

Have different abilities. For any professional post, in the process of building competency model, we need to make clear which competencies are benchmarks. What are the discriminations? What is development?

(See table 1: basic ability/discrimination ability/development ability)

Basic ability characteristics-the most basic ability characteristics required in the work, but these abilities can not distinguish between general performance and excellent performance;

Distinguishing ability characteristics-the ability to distinguish excellent performance from general performance;

Characteristics of development ability-the remarkable characteristics that can make high performers develop into high performers.

In the competency model, the competency model of professional post focuses more on distinguishing competency items, and also contains some developmental competency characteristics. This concept can also help us distinguish between competency model and qualification. Qualification actually covers many basic competency model features, including those basic knowledge, skills, experience, ability and other requirements.

(Table 1: basic ability/discrimination ability/development ability)

Industry-specific, company-specific and task-specific capabilities

According to task specificity and industry/company specificity, we can also define capabilities into six categories: meta-capabilities, industry general capabilities, organizational capabilities, standard technical capabilities, industry technical capabilities and special technical capabilities.

-Meta-ability: It is non-company or industry-specific and can be used to accomplish a lot of different tasks, such as communication ability, collaboration ability, learning ability, etc.

-General ability of industry: low task specificity, low company specificity and high industry specificity, mainly manifested in the personnel engaged in senior management, such as competitive analysis ability and structural knowledge of specific industries.

-Organizational ability: the ability of low task specificity and high company specificity, such as practicing organizational values.

-Standard technical ability: high task specificity, low industry specificity and low company specificity, which is a wide range of directional operation ability, such as financial management ability and legal knowledge.

-Industry technical ability: the ability with the characteristics of task specificity, industry specificity and non-company specificity, such as aviation instrument operation ability.

-Special technical ability: the ability to solve specific tasks or very scarce tasks only in specific organizations with high companies and high tasks. Special technical capabilities can only be generated within the company, such as the ability to develop launch vehicle technology.

Under this concept system, the competency categories we need to include when constructing the professional post competency model often focus on standard technical competency, industry technical competency and industry general competency, but the lowest competency also needs to be linked with meta-competency and organizational competency.

Therefore, when we build a professional post competency model, we need to use the above two criteria to define the scope:

-Professional post competency model is more of a discriminating ability.

—— Professional post competency model mainly covers standard technical competency, industry technical competency and industry general competency requirements.

Nowadays, organizations often use competency card method when establishing leadership model and general competency model. Because leadership and general ability have the characteristics of low industry attributes and low task specificity, they are more common. Many consulting companies have formed different leadership/general competency libraries by summarizing their capabilities, which is convenient for quickly building competency models within organizations. However, when building the professional post competency model, the common competency cards in the market can hardly meet the task of building the professional post competency model because of the relatively high task specificity and company/industry specificity.

However, competency card can still be used as an effective tool (prop) to build a professional post competency model. The practice of Shanghai-Wenzhou Alliance is based on our rich experience in professional post capacity building. (In addition to the 60 general/leadership cards we summarized), we also collected a series of professional abilities in different occupations and industries. However, these professional abilities need to be customized in the specific modeling process before they can be used. (See Table 2: Catalogue of Professional Post Abilities of Wenhai Union)

(Table 2: Catalogue of Professional Post Ability of Wenhai United)

The process and method of constructing professional post competency model

Three main methods of constructing professional post competency model

There are usually three methods to construct professional post competency model, namely, strategic orientation method, behavioral event interview method and benchmarking method. (See Table 3: Construction method of professional post competency model). These three methods all have their own advantages and potential disadvantages. As far as limitations (shortcomings) are concerned, the limitation of strategic orientation method is that the strategic objectives of the organization need to be clear and definite. In addition, the strategy-oriented method is an ability derived from strategy, and there may be artificial influence in this process. The limitation of behavioral event interview is that there may be fewer people in this position, or there are not many excellent existing employees, which will result in insufficient sample data and cannot effectively support the construction of competency model. The problem with benchmarking is that it will lack the support of behavioral data from organizations. However, if the three methods are effectively superimposed, it will make up for the shortcomings brought by the single use of these methods.

(Table 3: Construction Method of Professional Post Competency Model)

Construction process of professional post competency model

Therefore, the construction of professional post competency model of Wenhai Trade Union covers the above three methods. When we build a professional post competency model, we usually take the following key steps. (See Figure 2: Construction Steps of Professional Post Competency Model of Wenhai Trade Union):

Discussion on Capability Based on Strategy

1. Clarify strategic and business objectives.

2. Strategic goal decomposition and capability derivation

3. Capability research based on strategic needs (combined with customized professional post competency card and benchmarking research)

Behavioral interview

1. Behavior interview of outstanding talents in key positions

2. Wider capacity research

Drafting and verification

1. Ability model writing

2. Internal discussion and verification of competency model

3. Planning and implementation of internal application of competency model

(Figure 2: Construction steps of professional post competency model of Shanghai-Wenzhou Alliance)

Several technical problems in the construction of professional post ability model

In the process of building the vocational ability model, we need to establish a clear understanding of the following key technical issues to avoid possible pitfalls in the modeling process.

A. what is the most effective modeling method? There is no perfect method to help us build a professional competence model. Therefore, we suggest that the effective superposition of several different methods can help us overcome the limitations in modeling and produce a more effective capability model.

B.can we benchmark the industry? Through interviews with industry experts, professional literature research, and the accumulation in the process of vocational ability construction, professional posts (especially some general industries and occupations, such as IT, medicine, marketing, sales, etc. ) benchmark data can be established step by step, or benchmark ability data can be formed for reference. However, benchmarking often requires huge investment, which also limits the wide application of this method.

C. How to verify the validity of the model scientifically: Due to the particularity of the enterprise/industry, the professional post competency model often needs to be verified at a certain level. The usual verification methods include content validity, face validity and predictive validity.

Expert discussion (content validity)-Confirm the content validity of the model by inviting experts to discuss. The advantage of this model is that it can collect experts' opinions and check the effectiveness of the content in depth. The disadvantage is that the collected data is qualitative and cannot be quantified, and the participation and professionalism of participants also fluctuate.

Questionnaires (face validity)-Investigate the correlation between competency model and reality through questionnaires. The advantages of this method are simple, effective, easy to implement and quantitative analysis of data. The disadvantage is that there is no room for flexible answers and you can't ask for supplementary information.

Predictive validity method/predictive validity method-the completed competency model is used to track the actual performance of employees, or the evaluation center evaluates the competency performance of employees, and the predictive validity of the competency model is investigated through correlation research. The advantage of this method is scientific, but the disadvantage is high cost, time-consuming and laborious.

D. Ask an external consulting company to do it or do it internally: The competency model of professional positions should consider the internal capabilities of the organization and the availability of external resources, and comprehensively decide whether it should be built by an external consulting company or an internal expert. If a consulting company is invited to build it, it is necessary to carefully consider the professional experience, construction methods and the accumulation of professional capabilities in the past. In internal construction, it is also necessary to have professional internal personnel to lead, and to maintain a certain amount of input within the organization can have more effective output.

How to make the competency model succeed within the organization?

How to ensure that the professional post competency model can be successfully constructed and used within the organization? This obviously requires the organization to have a high talent management maturity. Judging from McKinsey's 7S model, such an organization should be multi-dimensional and mature.

1.*** Same values: We find that enterprises that widely use competency model must be organizations that pursue Excellence. Such enterprises are willing to constantly challenge their own limitations, dare to develop valuable employees, and constantly pursue better performance.

2. Strategy: The organization that constructs the professional post competency model must have a clear strategy, and strive to turn the strategy into competency requirements and practical actions for employees.

3.？ Organization: An organization that advocates competence must have many characteristics of modern organizations, such as flat organization, clear organizational functions, advocating authorization and empowerment, and respecting individual talents.

4.？ System: Competency-oriented organizations will effectively implement competence in every aspect of talent management through systems, including talent selection system, talent development and promotion system, talent succession system, salary system, counseling system and so on.

5. Skills: Competency-oriented organizations attach great importance to the skills training of everyone's application ability. These measures include internal lecturer mechanism, internal ability evaluation mechanism and internal coach.

6.？ People: People in organizations concerned about competence will cooperate and support the promotion and landing of competence, understand the significance of competence management, and are willing to continue to carry out competence landing work at different levels of the organization.

7.？ Style: A competency-oriented organization must be a learning organization. They regard ability development as the key cornerstone of building a learning organization. And start learning activities around ability.

If your organization expects to build a professional post competency model, you need to examine whether your organization has a certain maturity of competency model construction from these dimensions.

To sum up, the construction and application of professional post competency model in the future will become more and more mainstream. Relevant talent management professionals need to understand the reasons, processes, methods and success factors of competency model construction, so as to ensure that organizations can fully start, scientifically build and professionally land when building competency models for related professional posts. Really let the talent management of the organization be implemented.

(The author is the co-managing director of Wenhai and the chief lecturer of SIAC leadership development simulation module. )