How Competent is your Company?

A recent survey by Human Resource Executive found that two of the top five challenges facing organisations today are:

1. aligning people to business objectives.
2. driving culture change.

Clearly these are no easy tasks to accomplish. But DDI (Development Dimensions International) have created a framework to tackle these head-on, and it revolves around competencies.

It starts with looking at the key business challenges of the organisation. In other words “what are the big issues that we need to address so we can drive and achieve the strategy of our company?”

From here we can build the competency profiles that align with these business challenges. And here’s where it gets interesting. Some staff may already be competent in certain areas. Some may need help and sometimes we might need to recruit externally to plug the gaps.  Working with a DDI facilitator can help identify the leadership behaviours staff should ideally possess based on the competencies required, to meet the business challenges and to drive a cultural change.

Once clarified, these competencies will help provide a framework for all future hires and internal talent management systems. They will underpin all of your human resource processes and can be used as a metric against which every individual can be selected, developed and evaluated fairly and consistently.

Specifically it will help in the following three areas:

Selection – knowing the crucial leadership behaviours, skills and experiences that candidates will need to achieve your business goals, means the recruitment process is more targeted

Development – no matter what level your staff are at, each individual can have a development plan aligned to their role. Competency frameworks provide a useful platform for career development conversations.

Evaluation – Competencies can then be integrated into the Performance Appraisal Process and desirable leadership behaviours are managed accordingly.

And just remember these are not simply nice-to-have competencies for your staff. These are aligned with the strategy of the company. This process works and can help with all areas of your business. Like all good strategy it starts from the top.

So what are your business challenges? Do you know whether your staff are competent to meet those challenges? And if they’re not, what are you going to do about it?