Talent Management

Competency Management Done Right

2011-02-18T21:09:00.001-08:00

A smarter way to develop and implement an effective competency management framework with less time and cost

Managing Competency

The future of a large multinational corporation is heavily dependant on the competencies of its top management. Top level personnel with the appropriate abilities, skills, knowledge, motivations and traits can propel a corporation into its golden era. However, those who do not fit the profile could result in the corporation losing out in today’s ultra-competitive business environment.

With so much at stake, the process of defining, assessing and managing the job competencies of top management becomes more crucial than ever. Hence, large multinational corporations need a good Competency Management Framework (CMF).

Ideally, a comprehensive CMF will accurately map out the job competency profiles or content of senior management positions. The content is essential for selecting the right candidates for the job. Based on the content, competency assessment tools will be developed to identify existing competency gaps. Thereafter, the HR department will draw up a learning plan through training needs analysis in order to bridge these competency gaps.

Through the CMF, training budgets in line with corporate goals can be established. Such an approach will definitely enhance the efficiency and cost effectiveness of managing human capital in a corporation.

Lack of Accurate Content

In reality, the truth is far from that. Most CMF in many large corporations are drawn up manually. In some cases, broad assumptions are made to produce patchwork content for top management positions.

Such a shallow approach combined with the lack of qualitative measures often result in misrepresentation of the content. Therein, assessments made based on this content will be inaccurate, making identifying competency gaps ineffective.

Consequently, training needs cannot be pinpointed. This will in turn waste the corporation’s resources and time in providing the wrong training. Such a vicious cycle can cripple the top management’s ability to lead a corporation effectively.

Cost and Time

Many large corporations have opted to hire HR consultants to develop a CMF. These corporations often wind up spending hundreds and thousands of ringgit in consultant fees and are unable to justify the project’s ROI to its investors and shareholders.

The other option is to develop a CMF internally. Considering the project’s complexity and the heavy HR workload in a large corporation, the HR division will neither have the time nor resources to complete such a daunting task effectively.

Comprehensive CMF Solutions

SandFil offers a complete CMF package that includes job competency profiling and competency assessment solutions. The profiling solution creates a set of detailed and relevant content. Based on this content, in-depth, accurate and timely assessment reports can be produced using the competency assessment solutions.

With the content creation and competency assessment tools in hand, the HR division will be able to find the right candidates for the top level jobs as well as identify competency gaps accurately to establish precise learning plans and realistic training budgets.

Such comprehensive suite of solutions can save corporations hundreds and thousands of ringgit in consultation fees to develop the content. It will also save valuable time to develop the system from scratch besides giving a faster rate of return on investment.

With the availability of complete and comprehensive job competency profiles, large multinationals in Malaysia and the Asia Pacific region will be able to develop the most cost effective and efficient CMF solutions.

Wilson Ten is the founder and executive director of SandFil International (M) Sdn. Bhd., the leading competency-based talent management company. For more information, visit www.sandfil.com.

Recruit with Precision and Speed

2011-01-12T16:24:00.000-08:00

Recruit with Precision and Speed

Weighed down by mountains of resumes, tedious screening and selection processes …

Current Recruitment Trends

Over the years, many online job portals have mushroomed across the Asian job market, promoting fast solutions in managing recruitment processes. Hence, large corporations have invested huge sums of money in this arena, only to face with bigger challenges.

With a blanket of standard recruitment solutions, these online job portals are not able to support the internal recruitment processes unique to individual corporations. Instead, more bottlenecks are created in an already difficult recruiting environment.

Challenging Environment

Scrutinizing hundreds of copies of resumes received from newspaper recruitment ads and on online portals is very time consuming. With the candidates’ data still in its raw form, more time is needed to enter the data into the organization’s internal system. The extra work slows down the recruitment process.

Sorting out large pool of resumes in various formats – MS Word, Excel, Pdf – can be exhausting. With the mounting pressure to hire quickly, this painstaking task could undermine the HR’s efforts to shortlist the right candidate for an interview. Some even end up interviewing the wrong candidate for the job.

The HR department is also under pressure to achieve one of the many KPIs; to recruit a certain number of candidates in line with the growth plans of the company. They normally depend on the company’s system to generate as many resumes as possible for the selection and interviewing process. The stress to obtain the right number of resumes rapidly could result in errors in the selection.

The Ideal Solution for HR Directors

An ideal solution to the above problems would be a system that can support your company’s internal recruitment through the whole screening, selection and interviewing process.

This system must be able to import all the candidates’ resumes in different formats and integrate the information

1. into a searchable database to save precious time in data entry. Comprehensive searches can also be made based on parameters such as candidate’s qualifications, work experience or demographic profile for faster and more accurate selection.

2.     It should also be able to record information on the competency levels of each candidate after the interview. This feature is vital for a recruiter to perform a detailed assessment on the suitability of a candidate.

3.     An efficient staff requisition workflow and reporting system is also crucial to increase the speed and efficiency in communication between departmental heads on job opening requirements; placement of vacancy advertisements; short listing of candidates and scheduling for interviews. This streamlined process will enable the HR department to hire the right candidate within a tight timeframe.

4.     For high volume recruitment, an online pre-qualification interview process can narrow down the candidates with the appropriate qualifications to help the recruiters make better and faster choices.

5.     A built-in candidate bank with profiles and rankings accessible at a click of a button will cut costs and lead time of recruitment. Consolidated into one single reporting system for easy reference and management, this internal data bank can facilitate a quick search for potential candidates to fill future job openings in the company. This approach cuts back recruitment costs such as newspaper advertising costs and online portal subscription, increasing efficiency and ultimately finding the right candidate for the job.

Competency-based Talent Management

2010-12-10T16:31:00.000-08:00

Working with the right fit

Competency-based management model helps keep organizations focused

What does it take to have the right team for your organization?

Or the more pertinent question is, how do we know that the person we hired has the right attitude and aptitude to work in the job?

The answers lie in competency-based management.

Competency-based management is the HR professional’s best partner; while the interview process in itself can highlight the skills and talents of the potential recruit, it is competency-based management that provides the tools to set the right expectations for each position, and ensures that job descriptions result in more effective and successful recruiting efforts. In this way, hiring decisions are improved, and the headache of having to repeat this process every few months for the same position is greatly reduced.

Performance And Learning Management

The value of competency-based management of course does not end there – it is also very useful for performance and learning management. Performance management helps provide the level of knowledge, the skills, and the types of behaviors expected from the employee who fills each position. With learning management, the employee competencies are improved to meet performance, career development, or succession goals. This way, the gap between present skill sets and future skill requirements are identified and addressed, as well as areas for employee development that are directly linked to desired organization objectives.

For the employee seeking to get ahead in his or her career, competency-based management helps the employee map out his or her future goals and desired positions; and he or she can view the specific competencies required to achieve them. Competency-based management focuses the employee to engage in learning activities that are directly tied to those competencies. In addition, the observing manager can find this useful when seeking candidates for future succession planning.

The observing manager would be able to compare the competency requirements of that position, and seek candidates who meet or nearly meet those requirements; in addition, by observing employees who use competency-based management seriously, managers can also provide inputs in compensation management, as bonuses and merit increases can be tied directly to individual competency ratings.

Power To Keep A Good Team

But the best result of competency-based management still lies in the power to get and keep a good team – because competency-based management Increases employee satisfaction leading to reduced turnover rates. There is increased employee productivity and operating effectiveness leading to a strong and cohesive organization.

The success of competency-based management in making all these possible lies in the fact that this is one of the key processes, when effectively carried out, helps employees know that their contributions are recognized and acknowledged. Performance management is an ongoing process of communication between a supervisor and an employee that occurs throughout the year, in support of accomplishing the strategic objectives of the organization. The communication process includes clarifying expectations, setting objectives, identifying goals, providing feedback, and evaluating results.

So for the HR professional that works with teams that need members to work well with each other, competency-based management becomes a way to reduce not only conflicts, but the unnecessary related costs such as the need for replacements, mediation, etc. – because from day one, competency-based management ensures the right person is hired, kept and nurtured – from strength to strength.