Competency mapping is the process of identifying skills, knowledge, abilities and behaviours. For example, they are under requirement to gain success in a specific job role/position, trade or profession.

Competency mapping provides a clear benchmark for all employees. In addition, it takes the confusion away from the staff member and management. So, it ensures they know the requirements for success in a role. Overall, the process allows organisations and their managers to easily identify those who are:

• meeting expectations
• exceeding expectations
• not yet competent

The process is important for all organisations as it:

1. Identifies the minimal requirement for filling a position
2. Provides consistency across departments
3. Is the first step in creating Learning Pathways for your employees

The process of competency mapping will also aid in attracting and hiring the right candidates for a job, as well as providing upskilling and development opportunities for existing employees.

How to Map Competencies:

1. Understand the roles and positions within your organisation that require mapping

To ensure consistency and accountability across the company, all roles in the organisation will need to have documentation and outline:

• The job descriptions for each role
• KPIs for each role

2. Brainstorm with teams what skills, behaviours, compliances and certificates you require to be successful in each role. Engage those who already succeed in positions, as well as management.

Once you know the desired goals and achievements, you need to work out how to get there. Therefore, engaging those who have reached these goals already and are succeeding in their roles is the best place to start. In addition, knowing their skills, desired behaviours and what types of training, learning and certificates they have completed to get there will help you with the mapping.

3. Understand the different locations your organisation operates in and if there are certain requirements for these locations

Not all business locations will have the same requirements for competency mapping – for example, some states have different legislation and requirements for workers – it’s important to be able to have these listed and accounted for in your competencies.

4. Understand levels of knowledge for each competency: Unfamiliar, Novice, Competent, Proficient, Expert and clearly define the skillset for each level

Being able to identify where each employee is on this scale is important to their growth and development. It provides a clear and precise path for each employee and allows them to see in what areas they require development.

5. Implement an ongoing system of measurement via an LMS (Learning Management System) and Learning Pathways Program

With any type of program implemented for employees, it must not only be consistent and fair – it also needs to be measurable.

Building Competencies into a Training Platform

This is vital to ensure that all new and existing personnel have already achieved or are allocated the appropriate training. For example, this will help to make them compliant with legislation and/or the minimum standard set by the organisation.

Therefore, your organisation will need a platform that allows you the flexibility to create your own competencies. As well as automate the mapping process to ensure everyone is being kept up to date. Put simply, excel and word docs are not the answer anymore and will only cause the process to be bogged down by manual data entry.

A training and compliance platform should always allow each organisation to develop their own competencies and then be able to assign them to others. Such as, individuals, groups, positions, teams, locations and departments or even across the whole organisation. Therefore, this creates a comprehensive overview of the organisations’ compliance standards and subsequent legislative status.

Elements that are necessary in the competencies structure to be customisable are:

• Name
• Code
• Renewal (compliant for how many days)
• Total number of staff allocated (automatic)
• Number of staff who are compliant and non-compliant (automatic)
• Adding individuals, groups, positions, teams, locations and departments or the whole organisation to a competency
• Creating a list showing elements
• Being able to export the list
• Ability to send an email to every member of a particular competency
• Drawing reports
• Tracking viewing of documents
• Ability to upload a document on the competencies

In conclusion, competency mapping is an essential element of any successful training platform. Therefore, incorporating this into your organisation is important to the ultimate success of your training requirements. Book a Live Demo here to see how dita Solutions can be part of your success.