Picture this: you're building a high-performing team. You need the right people with the right knowledge and skills.
But how do you know what "right" even means?
A competency model might be just what you need.
Competency models or competency frameworks are crucial in for hr professionals' toolkit. This powerful tool maps out the skills, knowledge, and behaviors needed for success in a role.
And we're giving you the complete guide to creating your competency model, plus a lot of examples and two free templates.
Competencies are a combination of skills, knowledge, abilities, and other characteristics (commonly known as KSAOs) or personal attributes essential for success in a particular job, industry, or organization.
Competencies are observable, measurable, related to the workplace or academic environment, and are critical for a successful career.
The HR department and senior executives collectively decide and define the competencies required for each role within an organization.
Let’s suppose you’re a staffing manager at a renowned MNC.
A key competencies you need to master is workforce planning. Let's define it.
Definition: Workforce planning is the strategic process of analyzing current workforce capabilities, forecasting future workforce needs, and developing strategies to close the gap between the two.
Behavioural indicators:
Levels of mastery:
A competency model is a framework that identifies and defines the key skills, knowledge, behaviors, and attributes required for effective job performance in a particular role or organization.
Your competency model can serve as a guide for various HR processes, such as:
The model will vary depending on the organization, industry, or career level.
A competency model defines:
A competency model helps organizations:
A competency model typically includes the following main components:
These are the broad categories of skills or behaviors that are being evaluated in the model.
The types of competencies that make up a competency model are: core, leadership, and technical/functional competencies.
Core competencies are the unique combination of skills, knowledge, and abilities that give an organization a competitive advantage in the market.
Core competencies are the fundamental strengths and capabilities that differentiate a company from its competitors and enable it to create value for its customers.
They are deeply ingrained in the organization's culture, processes, and operations and are difficult for competitors to replicate.
Some examples of core competencies are:
Managerial and leadership competencies are the skills, behaviors, and traits that individuals in managerial or leadership positions need to effectively lead teams and organizations.
Some common leadership competencies are:
Each competency category is broken down into specific behaviors or skills that employees are expected to demonstrate.
These definitions provide managers and employees with a clear understanding of what is expected in each area.
Behavioral indicators describe specific actions or behaviors that demonstrate that an employee has the desired competency. These indicators provide a clear and objective way to evaluate performance in each area.
This is an absolute must-have for your competency model.
Competency levels describe the different stages of mastery for each competency.
Typically, there are three to five levels, ranging from basic proficiency to expert proficiency.
This helps managers and employees understand where an employee falls on the spectrum and identify areas for improvement.
Discover Zavvy's core competencies matrix. For each of the 36 competencies, you will find 5 levels of mastery—basic, intermediate, advanced, proficient, expert
One of the most important things while creating a competency model is finding examples of how renowned organizations use them. This will help you better understand how competency models work and how you can implement them in your organization.
Here are ten examples of competency models and resources that you can use as inspiration:
Competency models provide the basis for creating accurate and comprehensive job descriptions that outline the essential skills, knowledge, and behaviors needed for each role.
As a result, competency models enable HR teams and hiring managers to identify the right prospective employees during the recruitment process, ensuring that new hires possess the required competencies for their positions.
For example, a startup might expect a manager to find clients for the business. In contrast, a giant corporation only expects a manager to run a project successfully and supervise the employees.
A manager who has primarily worked with industry behemoths and has no prior experience in business development or acquiring clients might find it hard to adjust in that startup.
🏆 Learn how to write meaningful job descriptions as a foundation for role clarity and people development.
Competency models provide a clear and objective framework for assessing employee performance. They enable:
Each employee must understand the competencies required for their current position and be aware of the competencies needed for promotion.
Competency models help people identify areas for improvement. It helps ensure an organization's employees are all on the same page regarding their job expectations.
Once an organization understands which competencies are necessary for specific roles, it can create tailor-made training programs enabling career development.
Identifying gaps will help identify areas where employees need development to prepare them for future promotions or other roles.
Identifying which competencies are required to succeed in a particular role is the first step towards projecting future staffing needs based on internal openings or planned retirements and growth.
Having a competency framework helps employers make better decisions regarding workforce planning.
Competency models act as a repository for all the competencies an organization has across multiple departments, seniority levels. It highlights the emerging and declining skills within the company.
It provides a blueprint for planning the availability of talent for future projects.
A competency framework makes it easier to promote people who have the skills required for the position, which leads to better succession planning. The model provides a guideline for employees on what the company expects from them.
It also helps identify skill gaps that need to be filled before being promoted.
Developing a competency framework can be confusing, lengthy, and challenging.
Your struggle ends now.
Before you start creating a competency model, ask yourself:
The purpose of your model will determine what information and specific competencies you should include in the competency model.
An HR professional cannot have the intricate details and in-depth knowledge about every assigned industry and project.
That's why talking to industry experts is vital for creating practical competency frameworks and defining the critical competencies for your organization.
Some ways you can conduct research:
Tip #1: If you create a company-wide model, ensure that you interview people with varied skills, seniority levels and roles.
Tip #2: Ask your highest performant employees what it takes to succeed in their role or industry.
Tip #3: For levelling, ask a team lead what he expects from an entry-level employee vs a senior employee.
After you've gathered all this information, it's time to put your findings together into an organized list that makes sense for everyone involved.
For example, if most of the top performers acknowledge having "strong analytical thinking," then you can start with "Analytical Thinking" as an essential competency.
Tip: You can use the list of 325 competencies defined by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) for reference.
Additionally, you can look at the list of competency models given in the Competency Model Examples section.
After the HR department has created the competency model, it's necessary to get it gather feedback from the leadership, industry experts, and employees who will be evaluated based on the model.
Based on the feedback received by all the stakeholders, make the changes that will result in the highest probability of achieving the purpose defined earlier.
For example:
Are you looking for a shortcut?
Use Zavvy's role-based competency models. Our learning scientists already took care of the research for you!
You can easily delete competencies that do not match your needs and add any critical competencies that our template did not include. You can also tag each competency with your specific company values.
Creating and using a competency model can be priceless for your organization.
But we know how much time and effort it takes to develop competency models, especially a comprehensive company-wide competency model.
Zavvy will help you build crystal-clear requirements for every role and level. You'll be able to move people from A to B with meaningful pathways based on unbiased data and motivate them along the way.
With Zavvy you will get:
📅 Talk to our experts about creating a custom competency model for your organization.
Skills are developed through specific training or practice and, in contrast to competencies, can be learned much faster.
Typing quickly or image editing (for example, cleaning up pictures) is a skill you can promptly learn after training or attending a course. But competencies, like analytical thinking or empathy, take time to develop.
At the same time, competency encompasses the skill set, knowledge, and abilities required to succeed in a particular role or industry. For example, a skill could be creating complex formulas in Excel, while a competency might be understanding complex data.
Competency = Knowledge + Skills + Abilities
Competency refers to the skills, knowledge, and ability needed to fulfill current needs; capability focuses on developing and flexing to meet future needs.
An example of competency is time management. An example of capability is driving change and adapt to new environments and situations.
Evaluating competencies can help employers determine the most suitable job for an individual. On the other hand, capability evaluations will help organizations prepare and build a workforce that will adapt and grow with the company into the future. It focuses on the insight into an individual's career level and potential.
The five essential core competencies that are often cited for professional success are:
The three must-have characteristics of core competencies are:
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