COMPETENCY

MAPPING
FRAMEWORK
1. Job Evaluation
By analyzing the key skills to required to do a job a simple job
evaluation can be prepared. It can help in allocating existing or new
resources to the specific job based on the evaluation process
2. Project Planning
What key tasks can be performed by what resources in the project can
easily be identified through the competency mapping process and
helps in project planning.
3. Performance Management
A competency mapping exercise results in preparing Competency
Framework, which in turn helps in allocating desired proficiency for
the job vs current proficiency to do the job. By analyzing any gaps
the performance management can be seamlessly conducted
4. Job Analysis
By identifying the key behaviors required to perform each job role,
competency mapping is really useful in preparing job analysis. Not
to be confused by Job description step in competency mapping
process where the job roles analyzed for allocating competencies
and behaviors.
5. Succession Planning
The analysis of competencies required for a leadership role and
mapping them with proficiency shown by potential leaders a clear
roadmap for succession planning can be created.
Any developmental need can also be ascertained by mapping the
critical competencies with the current proficiency level
demonstrated by an individual vis-à-vis the required proficiency
level for the position.
6. Recruitment
By identifying key skills required to do the job and also developing a
competency-based interviewing process the organizations can
benefit by hiring the most suitable resources while it helps in all
stages of the recruitment process.
7. Individual Development Plan
Any gaps in desired and current proficiency levels help in developing
individual development plans and learning roadmap for individuals
and even job roles and categories.
 Steps to Develop Competency
Framework
• Step One: Prepare
• Define the purpose – Before you start analyzing jobs, and figuring
out what each role needs for success, make sure you look at the
purpose for creating the framework. How you plan to use it will
impact whom you involve in preparing it, and how you determine
its scope. For example, a framework for filling a job vacancy will be
very specific, whereas a framework for evaluating compensation
will need to cover a wide range of roles.
• Create a competency framework team – Include people from all
areas of your business that will use the framework. Where possible,
aim to represent the diversity of your organization. It's also
important to think about long-term needs, so that you can keep the
framework updated and relevant.
 Step Two: Collect Information
• This is the main part of the framework. Generally, the better the data you
collect, the more accurate your framework will be. For this reason, it's a
good idea to consider which techniques you'll use to collect information
about the roles, and the work involved in each one. You may want to use
the following:
• Observe – Watch people while they're performing their roles. This is
especially useful for jobs that involve hands-on labor that you can
physically observe.
• Interview people – Talk to every person individually, choose a sample of
people to interview, or conduct a group interview. You may also want to
interview the supervisor of the job you're assessing. This helps you learn
what a wide variety of people believe is needed for the role's success.
• Create a questionnaire – A survey is an efficient way to gather data. Spend
time making sure you ask the right questions, and consider the issues of
reliability and validity. If you prefer, there are standardized job analysis
questionnaires you can buy, rather than attempting to create your own.
• Analyze the work – Which behaviors are used to perform
the jobs covered by the framework? You may want to
consider the following: Business plans, strategies, and
objectives.
• Organizational principles.
• Job descriptions.
• Regulatory or other compliance issues.
• Predictions for the future of the organization or industry.
• Customer and supplier requirements.
• Job analysis that includes a variety of techniques and
considerations will give you the most comprehensive and
accurate results. If you create a framework for the entire
organization, make sure you use a sample of roles from
across the company. This will help you capture the widest
range of competencies that are still relevant to the whole
business.
• As you gather information about each role, record
what you learn in separate behavioral statements. For
example, if you learn that Paul from accounting is
involved in bookkeeping, you might break that down
into these behavioral statements: handles petty cash,
maintains floats, pays vendors according to policy, and
analyzes cash books each month. You might find that
other roles also have similar tasks – and therefore
bookkeeping will be a competency within that
framework.
• When you move on to Step Three, you'll be organizing
the information into larger competencies, so it helps if
you can analyze and group your raw data effectively.
 Step Three: Build the Framework
• This stage involves grouping all of the behaviors and skill sets into
competencies. Follow these steps to help you with this task:
• Group the statements – Ask your team members to read through
the behavior statements, and group them into piles. The goal is to
have three or four piles at first – for instance, manual skills,
decision-making and judgment skills, and interpersonal skills.
• Create subgroups – Break down each of the larger piles into
subcategories of related behaviors. Typically, there will be three or
four subgroupings for each larger category. This provides the basic
structure of the competency framework.
• Refine the subgroups – For each of the larger categories, define
the subgroups even further. Ask yourself why and how the
behaviors relate, or don't relate, to one another, and revise your
groupings as necessary.
• Identify and name the competencies – Ask your team to identify a
specific competency to represent each of the smaller subgroups of
behaviors. Then they can also name the larger category.
Here's an example of groupings and sub groupings for
general management competencies:

• Supervising and leading teams.

– Provide ongoing direction and support to staff.
– Take initiative to provide direction.
– Communicate direction to staff.
– Monitor performance of staff.
– Motivate staff.
– Develop succession plan.
– Ensure that company standards are met.
 Recruiting and staffing.
• Prepare job descriptions and role specifications.
• Participate in selection interviews.
• Identify individuals' training needs.
• Implement disciplinary and grievance procedures.
• Ensure that legal obligations are met.
• Develop staff contracts.
• Develop salary scales and compensation packages.
• Develop personnel management procedures.
• Make sure staff resources meet organizational needs.
• Training and development.
– Deliver training to junior staff.
– Deliver training to senior staff.
– Identify training needs.
– Support personal development.
– Develop training materials and methodology.
• Managing projects/programs
– Prepare detailed operational plans.
– Manage financial and human resources.
– Monitor overall performance against objectives.
– Write reports, project proposals, and amendments.
– Understand external funding environment.
– Develop project/program strategy.
You may need to add levels for each competency. This is particularly
useful when using the framework for compensation or performance
reviews. To do so, take each competency, and divide the related
behaviors into measurement scales according to complexity,
responsibility, scope, or other relevant criteria. These levels may
already exist if you have job grading in place.
• Validate and revise the competencies as necessary –
For each item, ask these questions:
• Is this behavior demonstrated by people who perform
the work most effectively? In other words, are people
who don't demonstrate this behavior ineffective in the
role?
• Is this behavior relevant and necessary for effective
work performance?
• These questions are often asked in the form of a
survey. It's important to look for consensus among the
people doing the job, as well as areas where there's
little agreement. Also, look for possible issues with
language, or the way the competencies are described,
and refine those as well.
 Step Four: Implement
• As you roll out the finalized competency
framework, remember the principle of
communication that we mentioned earlier. To
help get buy-in from members of staff at all
levels of the organization, it's important to
explain to them why the framework was
developed, and how you'd like it to be used.
Discuss how it will be updated, and which
procedures you've put in place to
accommodate changes.
 Here are some tips for implementing
the framework:
• Link to business objectives – Make connections between individual
competencies and organizational goals and values as much as
possible.
• Reward the competencies – Check that your policies and practices
support and reward the competencies identified.
• Provide coaching and training – Make sure there's adequate
coaching and training available. People need to know that their
efforts will be supported.
• Keep it simple – Make the framework as simple as possible. You
want the document to be used, not filed away and forgotten.
• Communicate – Most importantly, treat the implementation as you
would any other change initiative. The more open and honest you
are throughout the process, the better the end result – and the
better the chances of the project achieving your objectives.
key steps of the Competency
Mapping process
1. Classification of Competencies
Generally, the competencies are classified into two categories.
Functional and Behavioral. However, the competency can be
classified into more categories depending on the overall objective
of developing a competency framework through the process of
competency mapping.
For example, an organization that has decided to focus on enhancing
customer experience may classify a category of competency as
Customer Centricity.
2. Definition of Competencies
It is very important that competency is defined well. This helps in
providing a clear picture of what exactly is the detail about the set
of skills and abilities required to do the job. You can see the below
example, where for a sales team the competency has been
classified as functional and it has been clearly defined.

FUNCTIONAL COMPETENCY DEFINITION

The ability to achieve results by focusing

Drive for Sales Results
on the formulated sales objectives
3. Identifying Behavioral Indicators (BI)
The key element of any competency mapping process and
developing a competency framework is the set of
behaviors that defines that competency. In the above
example, we have already classified the competency as
functional. Also, we have defined the competency, now
the behavioral indicators will be assigned.
It typically says that you need to demonstrate these
behaviors to show that you have the competency of
‘Drive for Sales Results’. Behavioral indicators are also
called Behavioral Descriptors (BD) or simply BI, so don’t
get confused is you see any other way BI is mentioned.
FUNCTIONAL
DEFINITION BEHAVIORAL DESCRIPTOR(S)
COMPETENCY

A. establishes personal sales objectives that are

Highlighted clearly, Ambitious, Realistic and Directly
applicable (HARD).
B. is proactive and takes the required initiatives to
The ability to
achieve personal sales objectives.
achieve results
Drive for Sales C. can identify concrete results of the sales activities
by focusing on
Results undertaken.
the formulated
D. takes personal responsibility for achieving sales goals.
sales objectives
E. monitors the progress of own sales results.
F. Thinks out of the box to achieve sales goals.
G. Is able to manage and overcome objections and
resistance from other departments
 4. Identifying Proficiency Levels (PL)
• Not every person in a department will be at the same level
of expertise or in the context of competency mapping, at
the same level of proficiency. Therefore, it is critical that
within a job role, department, level or grade of employees
the desired proficiency levels are defined.
• Notice the term ‘desired’, in the competency mapping
process the proficiency levels are desired proficiency levels
(DPL) as at this moment you don’t know what proficiency
levels your employees actually are.
• Once you assess and measure proficiency levels then you
would arrive at actual proficiency levels (APL). We have
added the DFL for Level 2 managers in salesforce to give
you an insight. A scale of 1 to 5 is used where 5 is the
maximum level of proficiency as 1 is the minimum.
FUNCTIONAL
DEFINITION BEHAVIORAL DESCRIPTOR(S) DPL
COMPETENCY

A. establishes personal sales objectives that are

Highlighted clearly, Ambitious, Realistic and Directly
applicable (HARD).
The ability to B. is proactive and takes the required initiatives to
achieve achieve personal sales objectives.
results by C. can identify concrete results of the sales activities
Drive for Sales focusing on undertaken.
3
Results the D. takes personal responsibility for achieving sales
formulated goals.
sales E. monitors the progress of own sales results.
objectives F. Thinks out of the box to achieve sales goals.
G. Is able to manage and overcome objections and
resistance from other departments
H. Helps Sames Managers to sell into key outlets
 5. Definition of Proficiency Levels
• As seen in the example above, we have a DPL of 3
that is just two below the maximum. But we do
not know what would define a DPL of 4l.
Therefore, it is extremely important that we
clearly define the meaning of each level of
proficiency from 1 to level 5 in DPL.
• Pretty simple and objective, isn’t it? You have just
seen the competency mapping process in real-
time for a real organization by going through an
example of one competency being mapped, in
this case to one job role.
 Proficiency
Meaning
Level
Is struggling in demonstrating relevant behaviors of
Level 1 = Novice
competency
Knows and understand, however, may commit
Level 2 = Learner
mistakes in applying sometimes

Level 3 = Knows, Understands and applies with a fair degree of

Practitioner consistency

Knows, Understands and applies and innovates with

Level 4 = Expert
a fair degree of consistency
Role model a competency, often quoted when looking
Level 5 = Master
for a standard, can coach others
• The competency mapping and development
of Competency Framework is mostly done by Job Roles.
For example, a customer service executive, team leader,
and manager will have different competency profiles. It can
also be done department wise like sales, customer service,
marketing, production, etc.
In recent times many organizations have also been
developing Competency Framework for the entire whole
organization where they identify 4 to 6 competencies for
the entire organization. The Behavioral Indicators (BI) also
remain the same across roles and function but proficiency
levels vary based on the tenure, seniority or role of the
employee.
 CORE VALUES Competencies
• Core values are principles that infl uence
people’s actions and the choices they make.
They are ethical standards that are based on
the organizational code of conduct and are to
be upheld by all staff. They underlie work
ethics, actions and interactions. In an ever
changing environment, core values remain
constant.