Are we competent with competencies?

Are you thinking of having or reviewing a competency model? Here are some tips on it

UNFORTUNATELY, the answer to this question, for many organisations, is a resounding NO!

Ever since psychologist David McClelland suggested that we should move away from the traditional measures of predicting job performance in Testing for Competence Rather than for Intelligence, in the early 1970s, many businesses and organisations have used some form of competency model as a key business tool.

Think about your own business or organisation, I am sure that you “have had, have, are thinking of having or are reviewing...” a competency model at this time.

Where are you on that continuum? The key questions are, “Why hasn't competency modeling delivered on its promise for many organisations?” and “Do competencies really add value to businesses and organisations?”

Have competencies been “a HR toy” and not a business tool? Let's look at some of the research behind competency modeling and see if we can answer these questions.

The use of competency models started with McClelland's work in the early 1970s.

A decade later, in 1982, Richard E Boyatzis illustrated a logical, integrated model of managerial competence in his seminal book called The Competent Manager.

His model provided a context for understanding the demands of management, and helped managers understand the competencies required to be more effective.

So, given that we had a reasonable start to the use of competencies in business why haven't competency models delivered greater impact into organisations?

In The Leadership Machine, Lombardo and Eichinger showcase research indicating that most organisations and their leaders identify the wrong competencies for success they don't know how to get at the essence of competency requirements.

They also show that many competency models are too compound trying to cram too many competencies into just five to 10 statements and hoping that will do the job!

In addition, a set of “Core Competencies” can't do the whole job for an organisation either jobs and roles are unique and generally require 20-25 competencies to describe the “Success Profile”.

The truth is all organisations need multiple competency models to fit their many different needs.

Yet, many organisations seem to think that a “one size fits all” approach will work. It's not that easy, I'm afraid.

A great starting point for an organisation, however, is a “Strategic Leadership Model”.

At least, that will let your leaders and aspiring leaders know what the organisation (normally the CEO and the board) thinks is going to be required to be a successful leader over the next five years or so.

A global Conference Board study from 2012 asked senior executives what were the most important items on their talent agenda. The top four (in order) were:

• Grow talent internally;
• Improve leadership development;
• Provide training and development; and
• Hire talent in the open market.

These are all great things to do high on your agenda, too, no doubt!

My question is the same for each point grow to “what”, improve against “what”, develop to “what”, hire against “what”?

I'm sure that you get my point.

Unless you can clearly define what you need in each area usually through a good Competency Model then you really don't know how to direct, focus or orient your growth, leadership development or hiring. Competency models are very powerful tools in this regard.

There are many good researches that show how the effective use of competency models can make a powerful business impact for an organisation.

Here are just a few. A longitudinal study by Russell in 2001 showed that top-level corporate executive performance can be reliably predicted by a leadership competency model. In addition, he showed that a competency-based executive assessment and selection process lead to an increase of US$3mil (RM9.29mil) in annual profit per candidate selected into the organisation.

Pluzdrak conducted a study in 2007 on the effectiveness of a Leadership Development programme and showed that positive changes on the key leadership competencies of individual leaders were positively correlated with both increase in net revenues and profitability!

A 2008 study by Clark and Weitzman used regression analysis to show that the demonstration of 13 core management competencies accounted for 54% of the difference in first-year sales commission and 30% of the difference in levels of retention.

They also found that developing people to be one standard deviation better on the key competencies driving performance generated an additional US$467,000 (RM1.45mil) per person every year!

The original question for this article was “Are we competent with competencies...?” Take a good, hard look at your own organisation and ask the same question.

If your answer is “No, not really... Not as good as we should be...” then remember that you can be and that there is every reason “Why you should be” and “Why you need to be”.

Talking HR with Graeme Field

Graeme Field believes that doing the basics' right getting the fundamentals in order is key to driving organisational success in the future. What we do operationally' today really does impact what happens strategically' tomorrow!

Performance culture lacking, Malaysian workers!

PETALING JAYA: Malaysian workers lack performance culture and generally spend half their working hours on matters unrelated to their job, said experts.

Leaderonomics chief executive officer Roshan Thiran said the laid-back working culture was partly to blame for the country’s low labour productivity.

“We tend to mix our working hours with bonding with colleagues and relationships whereas in other countries, working hours are made full use of,” he said.

He advised employees to perform self-audits to identify unproductive activities in the office that drained their working hours.

A check by The Star with several human resource practitioners revealed that Malaysian workers in general only spend four hours in a regular nine-to-five work period being productive.

Another two hours are spent on social networking sites or browsing through the Internet, whilst long lunches, cigarette breaks, tea breaks and office chatter make up for the other two hours.

Malaysian Employment Federation executive director Shamsuddin Bardan said our low productivity levels could drive away investors to neighbouring countries.

Shamsuddin said the unprofessional attitude among workers was in stark contrast to high-performance nations which encouraged a professional working culture with a focus on developing human capital.

“Some here have the ‘so long as I show up to work, it’s enough’ attitude, which shouldn’t be happening,” said Shamsuddin.

Human resource consultant Dr Asma Abdullah said Malaysian culture generally regarded the workplace as a social unit where work and social interaction mixed.

Meca Employers Consulting Agency executive director Dharmen Sivalingam said some employers had difficulties addressing their under-performing staff.

“Malaysian employers generally find it hard to converse with their employees on the matter of their productivity. It may be because they don’t want to be put in positions where they have to confront their subordinates,” he said.

Sivalingam also said workers in foreign countries were constantly under probation which keeps them performing at their best.

He said managers need to develop a proper key performance index system and see to it that employees understand how they are being assessed.

By NICHOLAS CHENG The Star/Asia News Network

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Malaysians lag in productivity

PETALING JAYA: Malaysians work longer hours than their counterparts in many benchmark countries, but produce less than them.

According to the Malaysian Productivity Corporation, our employee productivity levels are a lot lower than those of countries like the United States, Japan, United Kingdom, South Korea and Singapore.

MPC director-general Datuk Mohd Razali Hussain, citing the 2011 Productivity Report, said Malaysian workers had a productivity value of RM43,952 a year.

“But compared with Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and the United States, we are still far behind,” Razali said.

He added that the country was still recording an average productivity growth of 4.5% annually, which was lower than that of Indonesia and India.

Labour productivity levels are measured by the real gross domestic product over the number of workers in the country.

“In other words, it is how many workers it takes to produce a profit,” said Razali.

According to the report, which analyses information from the Department of Statistics, workers in the top benchmark countries outperformed Malaysian workers almost six times over.

American workers topped the list with a productivity level of RM285,558 a year, followed by employees in Japan (RM229,568) and Hong Kong ( RM201,485) (see graphic).

In 2011, Malaysia had a productivity growth rate of 4.55%, which MPC said was on track for the country in becoming a high-income nation by 2020 with a productivity level of RM87,500.

However, Malaysians lost out to several benchmark Asian countries like China, which had a growth rate of 8.7%, Indonesia (5%) and India (4.8%).

“Even though we can see there is growth based on the data we have, Malaysian workers have not been creating enough with the resources that we have,” said Razali.

He clarified that an employee's productivity was not measured by the number of hours clocked in but rather by his or her overall output during working hours.

“Actually, most hours are not spent being productive. We have had foreign agencies complain that their Malaysian staff were taking very long tea breaks,” he said.

Razali said that working long hours could even be counter-productive.

“There is a lot of waste in productivity when you drag the hours ... The company would have to pay more for electricity and overtime,” he added.

Razali said management practices should be reviewed to boost productivity.

He stressed the need to reward employees for better productivity with gain sharing, and suggested project-based incentives, improving workplace conditions and providing more flexible time for employees to rest while on the job.

According to the report, productivity levels grew by 2.82% with improvements in labour efficiency recorded in five key economic sectors.

Productivity levels in the services sector expanded by 4.9% to RM53,938 in 2011.

The agriculture sector grew by 6.23% to RM29,466, while manufacturing increased by 1.97% to RM54,509.

Construction productivity levels went up by 3.09% to RM24,635 in 2011, while the mining sector recorded a negative productivity growth of -6.14% to RM866,246 from RM922,914.

Asked why the mining sector had a negative productivity rate when its turnover was higher than other sectors, Razali said this was because the turnover did not correlate with the large workforce.

By NICHOLAS CHENG The Star/Asia News Network

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