For any leader that seeks to gain a deeper understanding of their workforce through getting to know the capabilities of individuals in their organization, competency assessments are incredibly effective tools.
As each and every aspect of modern work remains as volatile as ever, the skills, behaviours, and competencies required for each role keeps changing and evolving.
With new competencies for roles popping up out of the woodwork with each passing year, growing in importance, while some competencies keep waining in importance, reviewing employee competencies on a regular basis can ensure the success of an organization.
To help facilitate the discussion around competency-based reviews at work, we will not only be discussing the meaning of competency assessments and their benefits to organizations and leaders alike, but also go over how you can conduct competency-based reviews or competency assessment in your organization, right inside Microsoft Teams!
What Are Competency Assessments?
When we look at the simplest definition of competency assessments, they are evaluations that compare a person’s abilities, knowledge, and behaviors to predefined performance criteria.
Competency assessments can be used during an employee’s tenure with the organization to identify their skills, competencies, and gaps in both areas.
They can, however, also be used during the recruitment stage in order to ensure the candidate is fit for the organization.
They are designed to establish whether individuals have the requisite abilities to efficiently fulfill their job tasks while also aligning with company goals.
Competencies refer to the combination of skills, knowledge, abilities, and personal attributes that contribute to enhanced employee performance and organizational success.
Competencies are frequently divided between core competencies, which are required by all employees in a company, and role-specific abilities, which are suited to the needs of certain job tasks.
The Benefits of Conducting Competency Assessments
Evaluating employee competencies is a complex process by nature. That being said, it does offer some unique benefits.
Competency assessments go beyond “Does this individual possess these skills?” they help in various different areas such as talent development, recruitment, career pathing, and of course, succession planning.
1. Identifying Skill Gaps and Necessary Competencies
Conducting competency assessments allows organizations to gain a clear and detailed understanding of their workforce’s current abilities.
Evaluating the skills, knowledge, and behaviors of employees against the desired standards, helps organizations identify where gaps exist.
For example, an employee may excel in technical skills but lack proficiency in soft skills such as communication or teamwork.
Competency evaluations shed light on such deficiencies, providing a roadmap for targeted development initiatives.
2. Ease of Succession Planning
Succession planning is a critical aspect of ensuring an organization’s long-term success and stability. Competency assessments play a vital role in this process by providing a clear picture of which employees are ready to take on higher responsibilities.
The insights gained from competency assessments help organizations to identify and nurture future leaders.
Understanding who has the requisite skills and who may need further development allows leaders to both practice succession planning and map out training opportunities for their direct reports.
3. Talent Development and Career Management
Competency assessments play an integral role in talent development and career management. Mapping out competency frameworks in detail for employees before assessing how those employees measure up to those frameworks can serve as a guide for leaders when they are investing in talent mapping and development strategies.
Seeing where their team are and where they could be heading in terms of their competencies, allows leaders to practice career pathing more effectively as well.
There is a direct correlation between employee competencies and how potential next roles and branching career paths are structured in organizations.
Assessing employee competencies in performance appraisals and making talent and career management decisions accordingly is extremely benefitial to organizations.
How to Conduct Competency-Based Reviews?
In order to conduct competency-based performance evaluations effectively, organizations need a digitized performance review platform.
Manual performance review methods such as Word performance review templates or Excel spreadsheets aren’t viable options here.
Each role in an organization requires different competencies. Even those in similar positions that have the same competency framework can simply differ in terms of their level in certain competencies.
Competency assessments should be able to adapt to these circumstances and offer each reviewee a fair test of their competencies.
That is why as we go over conducting competency assessments step-by-step, we will be doing so while utilizing an easily accessible performance review software for Microsoft Teams: Teamflect.
Setting Up for Competency Evaluations
In order to evaluate competencies as a part of a continuous performance management process, you need to use a performance management solution that is in the flow of work.
Your performance reviews should be integrated inside platforms your team uses everyday such as Microsoft Teams or Outlook.
Simply head over to the app store inside Microsoft Teams and look for the app, Teamflect.
Since this app uses your Microsoft account to log in and draws your organizational chart directly from Entra ID, you won’t need to do any sort of setting up or account creation.
Step 1: Determine Competencies
Teamflect’s AI scans your organizational chart from Entra ID and determines all the roles in your organization.
From that point on, you can once again use AI to generate role descriptions and key responsibilities.
The main thing we will be focusing on, however, are competencies:
- You can build a library of competencies you want your employees to possess.
- Create levels for each competency.
- Set expectations for each competency.
- Assign competencies to each role.
Step 2: Integrating Competencies into Performance Appraisals
The next step is to actually conduct a competency-based performance appraisal. There are, once again, multiple different ways you can do this:
Using customizable performance review templates that can be accessed inside Microsoft Teams and Outlook, you can:
- Rate an employee’s level in the designated competencies.
- Ask open-ended questions related to each competency and evaluate their responses.
- Integrate 360-degree feedback and get other perspectives on the individual’s competencies.
These features form a well-rounded assessment of an individuals job related competencies and how they measure up against an organization’s designated competency framework.
Step 3: Succession Planning Based on Competency Assessment Results
Competency assessments are only as effective as the next steps leaders take using the results. As discussed previously, outside of recruitment, the main benefits competency assessments offer an organization are in the talent development and succession planning departments.
Once a review has been completed, the reviewer can use the 9-box talent grid to see where their employee ranks.
Teamflect’s AI assistant evaluates the review results and responses and offers suggestions on where the employee should be placed on the 9-box talent grid.
Based on these evaluations, you can then create individual development plans and set development goals.
Once again, you can use Teamflect’s AI assistant to suggest development goals based on review results.
The results of your competency assessment and the competency framework you define around roles can be used to create branching career paths for your employees, displaying all the different trajectories their careers can follow in your organization.
