Designing and creating a competence framework for your organisation
Whilst some may challenge the notion of competences, Talent Management, as a set of integrated activities needs a common language – and a competence framework provides that common language and helps to describe what 'good looks like' in your organisation.
Once developed, the words and statements created for the competence framework take on a new power as they can be combined to create role profiles for each and every role throughout your organisation. This gives you a benchmark to support your workforce planning, recruitment, learning and development and succession planning activities.
Get a competence framework right and your talent management practices will make a real and lasting contribution to your business. Get it wrong – or choose not to have one at all – and risk essential processes such as performance management or personal development planning being undermined. Indeed, if you want to have a successfully implemented talent management strategy, a competence framework isn't just the starting point, it's the pre-requisite.
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What we do
Over the years we've worked with numerous organisations within both the public and private sectors to shape existing, or develop from scratch, competence frameworks. But for some organisations, they want to get going with an up-to-date and trusted framework and, if so, they can access the Head Light Competence Framework. We also license the competence framework from the Chartered Management Institute and so this too is available.
Whether you choose to develop your own competence framework or make use of one of our generic frameworks, you will be ready to begin to make use of competences across your talent management activities. Our Talent® platform is one of the most sophisticated and easy to use on-line systems on the market and, at its core, will be your competence framework and from this, you can launch assessments and appraisals, provide self-service development tools, gather and analyse data, and manage the information about your talent
Our approach is thorough, inclusive and effective.
- Scope, coverage and purpose – the starting point to any of our projects is to agree the scope, the coverage and the planned purposes for the application of the framework - and only move on when you are happy.
- Build on what has gone before – we’ll make use of existing materials, be frugal with the time needed with your people and set our work in the context for the business today but knowing our work needs to stay relevant and take you into the future.
- Apply a range of methods to gather the right information – there are a number of methods and exercises we can take you through to identify and refine the competencies needed, and of course the important part is to know when to use each one. We use Repertory Grids, Critical Incidents and Appreciative Enquires to gather the right information from the right people at the right time.
- Ongoing challenge – as the project progresses we’ll find that themes recur and new themes emerge. We’ll look to challenge their relevance and analyse their importance, discarding those that aren’t going to take your organisation forward.
- Evaluate, test and trial – Evaluation needs to happen before and not after implementation. Obvious but surprisingly rarely carried out. Before we look to roll-out the new competence framework with you, we’ll test it and try it out, look at the information this provides and reshape where necessary.
- Role profile and career paths – For a competence framework to be of value it needs to be within the culture and ethos of the organisation and embedded within day-to-day HR and Talent practices. We’ll work with you to create role profiles, job description, career paths and assessment criteria using the new competences.
