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How to manage competency assessment with technology

Head of Business Analysis, ScienceSoft

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Editor's note: Competency assessment is a complex process that can be streamlined with custom competency management software. Read on to learn more about how such an application can become a powerful supporting tool for all-round, regular and transparent competency assessment and feel free to address any of your questions to ScienceSoft's software consultants.

For 1,000+ staff organizations, selecting the best candidates and regularly evaluating employees’ skills and knowledge in their dynamics are rather heavy tasks – the more job positions, the more complicated the organizational competency tree becomes.

Competency assessment

Luckily, software development companies offer custom competency management systems from the HRM domain, which can include useful features related to competency assessment, thus helping to tackle the challenges described in more detail below.

The challenges of competency assessment, and how technology helps

Assessment is subjective and one-sided

It is hardly possible to assess an employee’s skills on one’s own. HR managers usually can assess some general competencies (e.g., active listening skills or stress tolerance); in addition to it, line managers can evaluate some specific technical skills (e.g., using job-related software) and observe how efficiently an employee collaborates with his/her colleagues, among other important criteria.

But, as humans, even talented and experienced managers can sometimes miss some valuable capabilities or draw wrong conclusions about their people’s behaviors.

The tech response: Productively engaging relevant feedback givers for evaluation purposes, using automated or semi-automated assessment and retrieving relevant data from other enterprise systems can help to avoid subjectivity and one-sided view.

In particular, the intranet can include a collaboration space for quick manager’s feedback surveys. Answers marked by them can be automatically processed and all results stored in a single directory.     

Tests linked to specific competencies (e.g., foreign language proficiency or using some software) can be developed and sent out to different job holders automatically and regularly. Once a test is completed, its results are quickly calculated by the system and then available in the central database to HR people.

CRM can provide details about a salesperson’s communication with customers; the accounting system, about employee-related costs; the intranet, about an employee’s social activities.

Assessment is time-consuming

To make assessment as unbiased as possible, managers tend to turn to the 360-degree feedback approach. However, getting feedback from all engaged ‘stakeholders’ – especially from those located remotely, let alone processing it, takes time and efforts.

The tech response: It is possible to save HR personnel’s time and cut the organization’s costs by taking advantage of data processing capabilities of the competency assessment solution. The software can take care of many routine operations such as creating and processing tailored appraisal forms based on job profiles with relevant competencies and mastership levels included.

Assessment is not frequent enough

Competency assessment is often carried out irregularly or only during annual or biannual performance reviews. Since significant changes can happen within the enterprise and/or the market even in 6 months, such information can be not timely enough.

The tech response: To ensure continuous evaluation of work skills, the HR or line manager can schedule assessment events periodically and configure the system to that it sends to the staff automatic reminders about upcoming appraisals or competency tests to be taken; employees can be automatically notified about the test results and provided with follow-up action plans in case of a failure.

Assessment lacks transparency

By the time of assessment, it can be complicated for people to remember why they made a certain conclusion about their colleague’s competencies. In addition, assessment results which are not supported by facts can be perceived as biased by employees, especially when it comes to promotion or bonus distributions.

The tech response: To make the assessment process more transparent, all relevant data (e.g., employees’ performance dynamics, competency development based on test results) can be aggregated in dedicated dashboards per employee and, if needed, tracked. Located in a single place, the assessment results become more visible for employees, which facilitates competency-related discussions between subordinates and their managers. Also, employees can look up their competency-based job profiles at any time in a central competency repository in which competencies are linked with specific roles. It can help them to understand exactly the management’s expectations regarding their skills and behavior. Managers can take advantage of automatically generated reports, such as personal development reports or aggregated views of competencies and gaps.

On a side note: Preparing for a takeoff

A basic competency structure within the enterprise is a prerequisite for implementing competency assessment software. It implies the organization has previously developed its competency map (the list of well-defined competencies) and has a tested and documented assessment process in place.

Mapping competencies

Competencies are usually divided into general and key job ones; for higher job levels, they can be added with leadership skills and behaviors. They can be defined either by HR staff or adapted from specialized dictionaries (libraries). 4-6 competencies of each type usually can be enough for a job profile.

Defining and structuring competencies can seem too complicated and labor-intensive. Yet, for a pilot version of a competency management program it is enough that just some part of the organization’s job positions is described in detail.

Assessment criteria

Competencies are normally evaluated based on assessment criteria for which some mastership levels (proficiency levels, rating scales) are set. The mastership levels can differ significantly depending on specific jobs and job levels. For example, a sales manager is expected to demonstrate excellent communication skills whereas it is not a “must” for an engineer; a manager is expected to focus on strategic matters (and not on details) much more than his/her team members.

Drawing the line

Even though competency management applications can’t totally replace humans in the skills evaluation process, they can facilitate this task by providing the managers with:

  1. automated tools for receiving, processing and assessing data about employees’ skills (e.g., through competency tests and quick intranet surveys)
  2. a comprehensive view of these data in dedicated employee dashboards and automatically generated reports)
  3. the possibility to ensure continuous competency assessment with timely schedules and notifications
  4. performance tracking and a more transparent assessment process.

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