Jeff Griffiths, FCMC CTDP Profession: An occupation in which a professed knowledge of some subject, field, or science is applied; a vocation or career, especially one that involves prolonged training and a formal qualification. - Oxford English Dictionary Creating competency frameworks and competency models is an evolving field that has gained greater prominence over the last 20 or so years, and it is where I’ve spent the majority of my time as a consultant. A lot of the work in the … [Read more...] about Defining Competency for Professions
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Implementing Competencies in Your Business: Setting Up a Competency Working Group
By Peter Andryszewicz Competency Implementation If you’ve been keeping up with our blog, you should now have an understanding of what a competency is, how to organize them, what they can used for, the value of using them and how much detail is needed to make them effective. If these articles have convinced you that applying competency can help you solve some of your pressing business issues, great! The next question is… where do I start? The first step to implementing competency-based … [Read more...] about Implementing Competencies in Your Business: Setting Up a Competency Working Group
Scoping a Competency Project
By Peter Andryszewicz You’ve read our series on competency here. Now you’ve decided that you want the bring in a competency-based system into your organization. Where do you start? The best starting point is to scope the project. This will ensure that you have thought about what you want and, what it takes to get it. This will allow you to make an informed decision about whether or not it is worth proceeding. If you have been part of scoping activities for competency projects in the … [Read more...] about Scoping a Competency Project
Quality: People Before Process
J.L. Griffiths, FCMC CTDP Quality is the key to success. Creating quality – that is, delivering what’s promised to the customer (and then some) the first time, every time should be the aim of every organization. But what drives quality? Is it the process? Technology? People? Something else? I believe that quality occurs at the intersection of human competency and effective process – what Subir Chowdhury has called “people power” and “process power”[1]. Process power is tangible, and … [Read more...] about Quality: People Before Process
Competency Frameworks – How Much Detail is Enough?
J.L. Griffiths, FCMC CTDP Competency frameworks are a fundamental tool for developing your organization and your workforce. They are a vital part of a competency management SYSTEM. Yet… they often aren’t used effectively. Complaints run the gamut from “too much detail, too cumbersome, too complicated” to the other extreme “not detailed enough” Maybe the problem is that people are trying to use frameworks to accomplish things they weren’t designed to address. How much detail is … [Read more...] about Competency Frameworks – How Much Detail is Enough?
Competency 101 – Part 4: SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!!!!
Jeff Griffiths, FCMC CTDP In my previous article, I mentioned some of the facts supporting the use of competencies. Some of you said “prove it” – so here’s some hard data. In Canada, the ground floor level on competencies is based on the “Essential Skills” – what in other contexts have been called workplace literacy, basic literacy, or “foundation skills”. A lot of active research has been conducted to look at what happens when employers focus on these competencies when hiring and … [Read more...] about Competency 101 – Part 4: SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!!!!
Competency 101 – Part 3 Ok… So What Can I Use These Things For?
Jeff Griffiths, FCMC CTDP In the previous two Competency 101 articles, Part 1 and Part 2, I introduced some foundation ideas around competencies. The next question that comes up is “Why should I use them? What makes this better than what I’m doing now?” Well, here’s what we know about traditional hiring practices: The traditional way of hiring someone involves reviewing resumés to find people who seem to have the right skills and experience, conducting interviews to gauge how they … [Read more...] about Competency 101 – Part 3 Ok… So What Can I Use These Things For?
A Brief History of TWI
Jeff Griffiths, FCMC CTDP Training Within Industry (TWI) is the single most powerful system of training ever devised. With so many “flash-in-the-pan” and “flavour-of-the-month” training gimmicks out there, I thought it would be helpful to understand just where TWI came from. Here’s a brief history: To understand TWI, you need to go back…way back… to the dawn of the 20th Century, and the work of Frederick Winslow Taylor. 1911 - Taylor and “Scientific … [Read more...] about A Brief History of TWI
COMPETENCY 101 – PART 2 Profiles, Frameworks, Libraries … Huh? Different ways to organize competencies and make them useful.
Jeff Griffiths, WorkForce Strategies International In the first article in this series, we clarified the difference between competencies, tasks and skills. “Ok” I can hear you saying, “So now I know the difference. So what? What do I do with them?” In this second article in the series, we want to expand on competencies, and look at how we can organize them to be useful. The Competency Profile Remember the pitcher in the first article? Clearly a pitcher needs to pitch, but … [Read more...] about COMPETENCY 101 – PART 2 Profiles, Frameworks, Libraries … Huh? Different ways to organize competencies and make them useful.
Competency 101 – Part 1 … What the Heck are Competencies?
Jeff Griffiths, WorkForce Strategies International The quality movement that caught hold in organizations through the 1980s spawned many different variations on process-based methods for improving organizational performance. Including the various ISO 900x standards in manufacturing, the Capability Maturity Model –Integrated (CMMI: originally created for military software engineering development and integration, but since extended to other sectors), Motorola’s “six-sigma” approach, … [Read more...] about Competency 101 – Part 1 … What the Heck are Competencies?