What Is a Competency Evaluation?

A competency evaluation is the evaluation of somebody’s capabilities against the requirements of their job. These necessities are defined in a competency model. To be valuable, competency models should comprise only tasks and skills which can be critical to success in the function, not every activity they perform in their job (which comes from a traditional job task evaluation).

The evaluation is performed on those recognized tasks and skills for which a ranking is chosen based upon how they try this task, which defines their proficiency level. In other words, a competency evaluation measures how (behaviors) somebody does the what (task or skill). The person’s selected proficiency level is then compared with the goal level, defining proficiency or skill gaps for every task and skill.

For example, a manager assessment without a self-assessment will not provide the outcomes you seek since there will be no purchase-in to the results. Start with a self-assessment, add a manager assessment, and optionally add those from subject matter experts.

Most organizations are blissfully unaware of the quantity and dimension of their skill gaps. They know they’ve them, but they don’t know how massive or widespread they are, they usually can’t inform organizational plans, priorities, and strategy. Think about that for a moment. Should you don’t know what you possibly can and may’t do, how will you be successful? How can you really define your group’s strengths, which opportunities it’s best to pursue, or what it is best to do about it?

In case you are a senior leader and also you don’t have competency assessment data or skill gap evaluation, you have to be scared. You’re making selections which are based mostly on inadequate data. When it involves understanding organizational capability, you don’t have to be in the dark. A competency assessment shows us the light. And then the perfect selections might be made, together with the place we need to upskill and reskill staff.

If you are in a learning, expertise, or effectiveness role, you are capable of eliminating this data void. Delivering competency assessments and utilizing them to create a tradition of learning such that upskilling and reskilling can happen constantly, should be part of your job description. Typically, that is ensuring that folks have the skills required to do their current and future jobs. Without skills evaluation data, you have no ability to mitigate skill gaps effectively.

Once you know who does and doesn’t have the required skills:

You possibly can provide personalized learning to shut these gaps.

You possibly can pair high performers of a specific skill with those who have that skill gap to close gaps quickly with task-based mostly mentoring.

Your talent acquisition strategy will be more centered so that you hire those with the skills the organization lacks.

A competency assessment can be used by people to evaluate their readiness for different roles. Individuals will not make assumptions about their readiness for a task or guess at the necessities—they will really know. They will use the personalized learning suggestions as a career development plan template to take particular action to plan for the role they desire.