Impact of Competency Mapping on Business Success

Competency mapping drives organizational effectiveness by driving alignment between employee skills and business goals. It also enhances the quality of talent acquisition, performance management and career development of employees all of which are critical for an organization’s continued success.

BACKGROUND:

Since its inception 15 years ago, the company had become a notable player in providing data migration and governing solutions for enterprise software customers. The company started its business in US and have since then established a global presence with offices in India, Middle East, US and Australian geographies. The leadership team felt the need to better align their business goals and people processes and engaged our services for the same.

OUR DIAGNOSIS:

The company was focusing on scaling their operations in response to opportunities, on account of which there was some lag in ensuring corresponding maturity of their people processes. Over the years, the people processes had scaled up reactively in response to the changing and evolving business needs. There were notable inefficiencies and inconsistencies across hiring, retention, performance management and employee development all of which had a direct impact on the organization’s growth plans.

SCOPE:

The scope involved job analysis, competency identification and definition of KRAs and KPIs for each and every role in the organization with the intent of standardizing hiring decisions, performance decisions (expectations and evaluation) and career growth related decisions.

OUR APPROACH:

We had extensive discussions with the various stakeholders and team heads to understand the responsibilities and to create job description for every role / individual in the system and in the process recommended consolidating some of the roles over the next few appraisal cycles. Detailed job descriptions including role objective, responsibilities and competencies (academic, behavioural, functional, skills and personal attributes) were defined.
This was used as a reference to define the competencies required for success in various roles within the organization. This involved identifying the key skills, knowledge, abilities, and behaviours required to perform different job functions effectively. Competencies were defined based on job descriptions, industry benchmarks, and input from subject matter experts.
The competency definitions were subsequently used to define :

KRAs and corresponding performance criteria for all talent management decisions like training need analysis, promotion decisions and succession planning.
A razor shop hiring process with each interview panel being aware of what aspects they need to focus on.

OUTCOME:

The competency mapping process provided the organization with a better understanding of employee competencies and potential. This information was used to :

Consolidate and ensure that the various aspects of talent management are integrated.
To plan successions for a few key roles.
To increase the efficiency of the hiring process.