Contents

Executive Summary: A competency model is the roadmap to greatness ................................................ 3

Why competency models are important................................................................................................................ 5
How can I describe a competency models to others? ...................................................................................... 7
Specific ways competency models can affect your business ......................................................................... 9

Recruiting ...................................................................................................................................................................... 9
Onboarding ............................................................................................................................................................... 11
Individual skill development................................................................................................................................ 13
Career Planning ........................................................................................................................................................ 14
Coaching ..................................................................................................................................................................... 16
Mentoring................................................................................................................................................................... 17
Communicating Culture ........................................................................................................................................ 19
Developing a Learning & Development Action Plan ................................................................................. 21

Having no competency model is a strategy gap ............................................................................................. 24

You create learning that doesn’t transfer....................................................................................................... 24

You disconnect learning from strategy ........................................................................................................... 26
You alienate frustrated employees who can’t do their jobs ................................................................... 26
You risk a knowledge drain from those who leave .................................................................................... 27

Competency models are easy ................................................................................................................................. 28

Summary ......................................................................................................................................................................... 28
About SkillDirector ...................................................................................................................................................... 29

© 2016 SkillDirector. All rights reserved.

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Executive Summary: A competency model is the
roadmap to greatness

The impact of a skill gap can be huge. According to an Accenture study1, among companies
currently facing or anticipating a skills shortage:
• 66% anticipate a loss of business to competitors
• 64% face a loss of revenue
• 59% face eroding customer satisfaction
• 53% say they will face a delay in developing new products or services

Competency models have the ability to close skill gaps, increase engagement, drive retention.

Why do competency models help? The desire for competence energizes and directs the
behavior2 of individuals. People crave mastery3.

Check out Dan Pink’s You Tube video4 on the topic

Dan Pink: “We like to get better at stuff! It’s satisfying!”

To be successful, competency models must be role-specific, because they need to be relevant.

When they are, they provide each person with a baseline that tells them what is expected of
them, what skill gaps exist and what development activities are needed. In that way, they drive
intrinsic motivation.

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Competency models provide each person with a road map for how to be great. The road map
must identify the various levels of proficiency that separate someone who is adequate in that
role from someone who is at the top end of the scale, so they can create a picture of what great
looks like.

In the Accenture study1, 87% believe that a skills gap increases stress on existing employees who
need to cope with new challenges without the required skills. If you cannot easily specifically
pinpoint your gaps and be presented with how to close them, this stress leads to
disengagement. At that point, you may consider looking for opportunities elsewhere.
Competency models, when people can self-assess against them, enable people to pinpoint their
gaps. Personalized learning is what identifies how to close them.

If you don’t use them, you risk:

• A disconnect between learning investments and corporate strategy
• Learning programs that don’t close the right skill gaps
• Frustrated and disengaged employees

In this white paper, we’re going to talk about why competency models are important, how to
communicate them to others, and some specific ways competency models can affect your
business. We’ll talk about the impact on your organization of having no competency models.

The term “competency model” is interchangeable with “capability model”.

In some organizations and regions, “capability model” is the more accepted term.

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Why competency models are important

Consider a CEO starting a new company. The CEO has a long-term vision (three to five years) of
what goals to accomplish. There also is a COO who identifies how to accomplish these goals,
one year at a time. The COO must translate this plan to determine which employees must
perform what tasks in order to achieve each goal.

By way of an example, if this were a company that was

going to make a flying car, the CEO’s long-term goals
might be:
1) to establish a flying car as a viable transportation
vehicle
2) achieve sales of 100,000 units in three years
3) drive the price down from an introductory early adopter
price, to an end purchase price of $50,000.
The COO would need to hire:
• An R&D department to develop it
• A manufacturing department to build it
• A distribution department to get the cars to market
• A sales and marketing department to sell it
• A service department to service the cars once on the market.

Everyone would have an intermediary goal that, if accomplished, would lead to the achievement
of the company goals—and the long-term strategy.

As the organizational leaders drill deeper, the skills become more specialized, until they get to a
specific person performing a specific role such as an R&D engineer. To ensure that each R&D
engineer can help the company, the organization has to define what skills this role must be able
to do really well. This is the competency model for this job.

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Value of a competency model

A competency model defines what separates “good” from “great.” Not everything a person does
in a role should be part of the competency model. For example, any engineer must be able to
perform engineering design functions, but a great engineer can work with other R&D engineers
to troubleshoot design issues before they reach manufacturing. In essence, the value of a
competency model is that it identifies what skills each person in the company must be able to
do to be “great.” If everyone performs at the “great” level, then company strategy is achieved,
and a company is likely to have a competitive advantage. (Assuming, of course, that the CEO’s
strategy was appropriate!)

Companies have always needed to create competitive advantage. So, a competency model has
always had value. Here’s what is different today:
• The pace of change has accelerated—and with it, the skills required to be successful
continue to change.
• To survive today, companies must continuously innovate, which only increases the changing
skills required.
• People stay in the same job for less time and, therefore, people need to be able to become
“great” sooner without as much experience as they had in the past.
• New workers entering the workforce want to be able to make an impact more quickly; they
want to know how to be “great” right away and are motivated to get there.

If you don’t know what skills are required to be “great” (that is, you don’t have a competency
model for each job), how can you innovate, keep up with a changing global environment,
maximize your human capital, and motivate employees to stay?

What’s more, competency models drive intrinsic motivation to succeed. Research shows that the
desire for competence makes people want to own their development. You need only show them
what it looks like to be competent in their role… and that’s a granular, actionable competency
model.

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Why creating competency models rapidly is so important

Let’s say you now believe that you need competency models for your jobs. Why is "rapid
development" so important? Why not create competency models the way they have always
been done, with interviews and questionnaires and lots of analysis?

If it takes six months to create a competency model, by the time you’re done, it’s out of date.
The pace of change means we need to take a different approach—an agile approach. It’s time to
take a page from a philosophy such as The Lean Startup by Eric Ries.

Later in this paper we’ll describe how to get a competency model quickly.

How can I describe a competency models to others?

An easy definition is that a competency defines what you need to be able to do well in a job.

The term "competence" first appeared in an article authored by R.W. White in 1959 as a concept
for performance motivation.9 Because people are intrinsically motivated to achieve competence,
having competency models enables organizations to tap into our own desire to achieve
proficiency.

In order to demonstrate competence, you must be able to perform certain tasks or skills with
some required proficiency. So a competency gets broken down into skills or tasks.

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Each skill or task can then be described in terms of what it looks like using behaviors at various
levels of proficiency. So to achieve competence in a particular job, a person should be able to
perform various tasks or skills at a target level of proficiency, as demonstrated by the behaviors
that someone should exhibit.

A competency model encompasses all the competencies, tasks/skills, behavioral examples, and
proficiency requirements for a particular job, and focuses on what is critical to successful
achievement of their part of corporate strategy.

But what seems obvious and easily explained to those of us in Talent, Learning & Development,
may still be difficult to explain to those outside of our field in the organizations we support. In
other words, if you ask a group of salespeople or supply chain managers about the required
competencies for their roles, you will get a bunch of blank stares.

A different approach: “Category”

A different approach is to tell people it is a “category” of things they need to be able to do.
Suddenly, the intangible seems tangible, and everyone can articulate what they need to do.
• If you ask a sales person about the categories of things they do, they will probably say
“Account Management”, “Opportunity Management”, and “Administrative things”.
• If you ask a Supply Chain Manager about the categories of things they do, they will
probably say “Supply Chain Management”, “People Management, and “Coordination
with other functions”.

Then you can have the conversation with high performers such as, “So tell me what you do
related to people management.” Which is where you can get down to the requisite skills.

And if one of those skills is surrounding career development, then you can ask, “So if you should
be able to facilitate career development discussions, what would that look like? How often do
you do it? How do you integrate it into your processes?” And this is where you begin extracting
best practices, which are simply examples of how to demonstrate proficiency in a particular skill.

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If you want to hold a conversation about competencies or generate more support for building
competency models in your organization, use language that everyone understands. Ask people
about the “categories” or big buckets of things they need to do in their job.

Specific ways competency models can affect your

business

Recruiting
Why recruiting without competency models is
INSANE (but true)

Many recruiters and hiring managers bemoan the state of job descriptions. The writing of job
descriptions often falls to HR Managers and Business Partners who are not provided with the
required level of depth for hiring good people.

According to an article in TD Magazine5:

• 31% of people have quit a job within the first six months
• 22% of turnover occurs in the first 45 days of employment
• The cost of losing an employee in the first year is estimated to be at least three times
their salary

Competency models enable better recruiting to take place. They inform job descriptions, which
will still contain prerequisites and experience guidelines, and can be used for initial resume
culling. But once you get into the interviewing stage of recruiting, competency models create
better conversations.

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As an example, without a competency model, a hiring manager may ask, “Give me an example
of why you think you have the skills for this job?”

With a competency model, a hiring manager can ask, “Give me an example of how you facilitate
career development in your team.” And they can have a description of what that skill looks like
at various levels of proficiency, along with what the required level of proficiency is for that skill.

The hiring manager, therefore, can identify what skill gaps exist among the candidates being
interviewed, compare them, and determine the risk, training and duration required to close
them. They can be on the lookout for specific phrasing and advanced behaviors that
demonstrates they are, or can become high performers. Without having a competency model,
much of this takes place based on instinct and without structure, and tough questions about
real skills and experience may go unanswered. This is why the statistics above are occurring.

If you want to hire the right people who have the potential to be successful contributors to your
organization, and who seek to remain with you, don’t be insane! Incorporate competency
models into your recruiting process.

22% of turnover
occurs in the
first 45 days of employment

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 Onboarding
WARNING: You’re losing money by not using
competency models for onboarding

Imagine you are walking into a new job on your first day. You’ve interviewed, you’ve talked to
people, and you think that you’re ready. But typically, unless the person you are replacing is still
at the company and they are a high performer who is able to easily articulate all their best
practices, the actual expectation of the required skills and behaviors for the new job are merely
guesswork.

So you do what all new hires do. You ask people, you fumble a little, you learn as you go, and
over time, you hopefully hit your stride.

But what if you don’t?

Remember the research:

• 31% of people have quit a job within the first six months
• 22% of turnover occurs in the first 45 days of employment
• The cost of losing an employee in the first year is estimated to be at least three
times their salary

What if you, as the new hire, had a way of reviewing all those expectations and best practices
early on, so you could eliminate the fear, uncertainty and doubt that leads to the statistics
above? That’s what competency models bring to onboarding.
• They provide the ability for a new hire to become familiar with the nuances of the job
that will make them successful.
• They provide the ability for a new hire to identify what’s important in corporate culture,
as those things are reflected in the desired behaviors.
• When you enable people to self-assess against the competency model, they provide the
ability for the new hire to know their baseline skill set, and what gaps they have to close
to be successful.

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 • When your competency assessment tool maps skill gaps to learning opportunities,
competency models provide the ability for the new hire to own closing those gaps, so
they can immediately begin their journey toward competency.
• And they provide the ability for a new hire to see what specific behaviors they should
exhibit in various situations, to increase their proficiency and become a high performer.

People are intrinsically motivated toward competence. When they can’t achieve it, they become
stressed, frustrated, and begin looking elsewhere for opportunities to be successful. And that
leads to attrition.

If you want to retain new hires, help them achieve their potential, and avoid losing the
substantial investment you make in them, embrace competency models and put them to use
during the onboarding process.

$
The cost of losing
an employee
in the first year
is estimated to be
at least 3x their
salary

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 Individual skill development
Why competency models are the secret sauce for
closing skill gaps

It’s no secret that increasing skill gaps is one of the most daunting trends facing organizations
today. The latest PricewaterhouseCoopers survey of CEOs reported that 78% of them ranked
skill shortages as the greatest threat to their companies.6

In a perfect world, CEOs wouldn’t have to worry about the skill gaps of their workforce – they
would let the workforce own the closing of their gaps, even as those requirements change and
become increasingly diverse.

If you’re looking for a strategy that will inspire employees toward increased mastery in their
current role, you’re in luck! People are already intrinsically motivated toward mastery,
autonomy/self-direction, and purpose.3 What you need is a road map for helping them get
there.

Enter competency models.

Competency models provide each person with a road map for how to be great. To serve in this
capacity, competency models must have these characteristics:
• Be role-based, so they are relevant
• Identify behavioral examples that show the various levels of proficiency separating
someone who is adequate in that role from someone who is at the top end of the scale,
so they can create a picture of what great looks like and demonstrate how to get there
• Contain those tasks or skills that someone in that particular job role needs to do to
achieve corporate strategy
• Be reviewed at least annually for currency and relevance, and make it easy for those
people in the role to continuously improve the model

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Once you have models that do that, you need to make them:
• Easily accessible so people can refer to them as often as needed as they grow in their
role
• Easy for people to measure themselves against, to help guide their development efforts

When embedded into a competency assessment tool, after self-assessment, a competency

model provides each person with a baseline that tells them what skill gaps exist and what
development activities are needed. In that way, the model can intrinsically drive achievement
motivation.

Research shows that the more competent people become, the more engaged and satisfied they
become and that leads to retention. And when individuals own closing their skill gaps, the
organization’s skill gaps will close.

Can you think of any more effective, low cost way to close skill gaps than inspiring and
empowering each person to do it themselves?

Career Planning
Why career planning without competency models
is just scary!

The story is often the same. An employee is told that if they are interested in other job
opportunities, they should look at the company’s career maps, a pre-defined path for typical
progression that usually shows what it looks like if you want to move up within a particular
function. But is that realistic today? With many choosing to retire later, and the scarcity of
available positions, moving up may not be an option. And with an increased awareness and
desire for work/life balance, people are often more interested in expanding their breadth than in
moving up to management.

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Other alternatives including “talking to HR”, which could be difficult due to the scale of the
organization or comfort level of the individual, or “talking with your manager”, which could be
difficult if the manager isn’t good at conducting career discussions, doesn’t understand the skill
requirements of roles outside their function, or doesn’t want to lose a good employee.

According to Career Systems International, career growth and learning and development are
among the top engagement and retention factors for employees today.7 Organizations want to
be able to help people achieve their potential, and use that as a value proposition for recruiting,
but supporting the promise may fall short.

An easy solution is competency models. Because competency models identify the role-specific
skill requirements and behavioral examples of those skills, they have the ability to empower each
employee to own their own career planning. This eliminates the HR or manager tollgates.

Once you have the competency models developed, enable people to self-assess against the skill
requirements for the role or roles they might want next, so they can evaluate whether or not
they want that role, and if so, what skill development they should pursue to prepare themselves.
In this way, they can explore in a safe environment, and then be able to take skill development
requests to their manager, once they know what they want to pursue.

Career growth and learning and development are

among the top engagement and retention factors
for employees today

Ask yourself, “Do we want to be able to attract and retain our people?” And if the answer is yes,
put the scary loss of retention behind you. Explore how competency models and a competency
assessment tool used for career planning can provide employees with a reason to stay, your
managers with the ability and confidence to support data-driven career conversations, and HR
with the ability to manage career planning at scale.

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 Coaching
Why competency models can keep the FUD factor
in coaching from eating you alive

Imagine you are a successful individual contributor who has just been promoted into your first
management role. You have 8 direct reports that you’ve worked with in the past, but do you
really “know” them? All eyes are on you as you have to begin showing your coaching
capabilities… something you’ve never had to do before. Where do you begin?

If you have competency models for the roles of your team, and a competency assessment tool,
your fear, uncertainty and doubt (“the FUD factor”) are over. You can use the skills in the model,
and the skills assessment data (yours and your direct reports) to have a data driven conversation
about specific areas where they are strong, and where they need help.

Your conversation can go something like this:

You see a perceptual difference – some skill where they think they are strong and you think
they are lower.
You: “I see that you appear to have a real strength in this area, and I’m not familiar with it.
Can you give me some examples where you have performed these behaviors?” (While
looking at behavioral examples)

You both agree on a particular area of strength they have.

You: “You’re really strong at this skill. There are several people on our team/in the region
that could really use assistance improving here. How do you feel about being assigned as a
task-based mentor to one of those people from time to time?”

You both agree on some skill gaps they have.

You: It looks like there are 4 skill gaps. Which 1 or 2 do you think most affect your success
in your role? Let’s take a look at what learning opportunities are available to close them.

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 What do you prefer? Would you like to work with a mentor on this activity? Let’s look at the
behavioral examples, to see what types of projects might be useful for skill building.

Now, in every subsequent 1:1 conversation, you’ve got great talking points.
• What activities did you complete?
• What did you learn from them?
• How can I help you to apply these new skills?
• What experiences can I provide for practice or to complement the activity?
• How can we celebrate your achievement?
• What will best help you prepare for your next role?

The quality of one’s manager, and their ability to have great conversations and develop them is
one of the reasons people stay in a job and remain engaged. And conversely, when a manager
can’t do this well, it’s why they leave. When you give a manager a roadmap to coach well, you
drive skill gap closure, engagement and retention.

If you want to improve the capabilities of your managers, and help them maximize the daily
impact on their direct reports, don’t let fear, uncertainty and doubt get in the way. Embrace
competency models and make them actionable so they can be used daily.

Mentoring
Why competency models will make you question
your perception of mentoring

Supporting mentoring programs is hard. One of the biggest problems faced by those trying to
run them is that by the time you find people who are good in a lot of things who are willing to
be mentors, and you train them, they often move into new roles. Or, there are so few of them,
there simply aren’t enough mentoring hours to go around.

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Enter competency models. If you enable people to assess themselves against competency
models, you can uncover pockets of skill-based strengths across the organization. How does
that help? Well, imagine if instead of having 10 people who can serve as mentors, you identify
that almost every person has at least one skill in which they excel. If you have the ability to
identify these people, and pair them temporarily with others who have skill gaps in those same
areas, then you can literally apply mentors at scale across the organization.

Consider the impact of applying mentors in this manner across the organization.
• If I’m a high performer with few skill gaps, I have the opportunity to improve my level of
proficiency by mentoring others, so I can continue to grow. And I can try to create new
tools, templates and processes to help others consistently apply my techniques.
• If I’m an average performer with only a few expert skills, someone who would not be
tapped for a traditional mentoring program, I have the opportunity to experience the
impact of mentoring others. And this may increase my drive for higher levels of
proficiency in other areas, while at the same time, building my internal network.
• If I have a skill gap in some area which cannot be well served by a formal learning
opportunity, or at least not quickly, I can work with a task-based mentor on a project
intimately related to my role, so I can quickly learn, apply, and practice in a safe and
relevant environment.
• The entire organization builds its bench strength as a team, working together to pull
each other up with little to no cost. All the while, the process is creating stronger
internal personal connections within and across departments and regions.
• As each person gets tapped for “something” they are really good at, they become
increasingly engaged as they see their value and purpose grow within the organization.
In fact, being assigned as a task-based mentor becomes both recognition and a reward.

Successfully implementing task-based mentoring

• To implement task-based mentors, you need to have a competency model for those roles,
and each person must self-assess against it.
• The competency assessment tool should make it easy for managers to identify their direct
report’s individual skill gaps and locate potential task-based mentors (across the
organization) so they can be temporarily paired.

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• Both the mentor and the mentee should understand the scope of the relationship – to help
increase one particular skill.
• Time should be set aside for the two to work together on shadowing and practicing the
specific behaviors that demonstrate the required proficiency for that skill, which comes
directly from the competency model.
• The mentee should reassess on that skill following the opportunity to practice, in order to
demonstrate a change in skill… which becomes a positive reflection on both the mentor and
mentee.
• The mentee’s manager should assess them, to confirm the target proficiency was indeed
achieved.

If you want to leverage the expertise you know exists within your organization, and engage each
person to apply their strengths, take a look at how competency models can help.

Communicating Culture
How to ease the pain of communicating culture
(so it’s not like pulling teeth)

Changing corporate culture isn’t easy. Whether the result of a merger or acquisition, or simply
the result of an internal transformation, the most difficult part is showing each person how the
change in culture directly impacts them. Even when culture isn’t changing, communicating
culture to new hires is tough. That’s where competency models can help.

When a competency model is developed properly, it contains the categories or competencies of

things that people need to be able to do within a role to be successful. By successful, we mean
to accomplish their part of corporate strategy. The model contains the tasks and skills required
to demonstrate competence in each category. It contains the behavioral examples of what a
skill looks like at various levels of proficiency, and the proficiency level needed for that job.

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There are 2 places where we can weave culture into competency models: the description of the
task or skill, and the behavioral examples.

Let’s look at an example. What message does it send if you were to see a skill, “Create a
partnership with the customer so they feel I work for them”? Are you internally focused or
externally focused? When someone in the role sees that skill in their model, they learn that
customer-focus is extremely important. Likewise, “Identify opportunities for process
improvement and optimization” communicates that you should always be looking at continuous
improvement.

And this approach continues into the behavioral examples. Let’s say you are creating examples
of behaviors at various levels of proficiency, and you are trying to instill a culture of learning. In
the example below, level 1 describes the lowest level and level 5 is the best. For the skill “Use
appropriate sources to develop industry expertise and insight”, you might have:

1) Occasionally read industry related publications, web sites, blogs, and new
to maintain industry awareness
2) Read industry related publications, web sites, blogs, and news quarterly to
maintain industry awareness
3) Dedicate at least an hour each week to reading and exploring industry
information to stay up to speed
4) Receive daily news alerts from key sources including industry and
customer sources and social media, but allocate 2-3 hours a week for
learning
5) Recognize that the more I know about my customer’s business, the more I
can help them – so I review customer news daily or as it happens and allot
at least 30 minutes a day for learning

Just creating a competency model alone will not communicate or change your culture. You next
need to make those models accessible. People must be able to assess their skills against them,
so they become self-aware of any gaps in both skill and behavior. And they must re-assess their
skills at least quarterly, as part of a routine, so they can continue to refine their behaviors against
the skills and behaviors that are important to the organization, and changes can be easily
operationalized.

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If you want to ensure that the organization embraces your corporate culture, or you’re trying to
change the existing culture, consider embracing competency models.

Developing a Learning & Development

Action Plan
Why you may be responsible for the disconnect
between learning & strategy… and how to fix it

They say that perception is reality. What if perception is that your learning department is
perceived to have minimal impact on corporate strategy? According to a recent Deloitte Study8,
only 14% of the L&D leaders believe business leaders view them as strategic partners. If that’s
the case, who do you think they blame for that perceived reality? You might think it’s not your
fault, but is it?

Do you use interview or surveys as your primary form of needs assessment?

Do you use history to determine your class schedule?

If the answer to these questions is yes, you may be contributing to the disconnect between
learning and strategy.

When you ask people for their opinion or perception about what training may be needed next
year, you’re probably only getting part of the picture, the things each person can think of…the
symptoms.

When you use history for needs analysis to create your class schedule, you’re making the
assumption that the people who were in those classes were the right people, and that an equal
number of people will have the same need, in the same location, next year.

How does any of that connect to corporate strategy?

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Corporate Strategy
The CEO’s job is to come up with the big picture strategy of what the organization should
accomplish in the long-term. The Chief Operating Officer’s job is to identify how the
organization will accomplish these goals, one year at a time. The COO works with the rest of the
organization to determine what each part needs to accomplish to ensure the annual goals are
met. So corporate strategy gets translated from the top so that each person, in each
department, has a role they will play to execute it.

Learning
The role of Talent, Learning & Development is to ensure that people in the organization have
the skills to be able to execute their role. The competency model is the translation of the skills
requirements.

Just as the COO wouldn’t “wing it” without a plan, L&D shouldn’t “wing it” either. The
competency model for each role is the plan, and then you create competency-based learning to
increase the likelihood that each person CAN accomplish their goals. If you don’t know what
skills they need, how can you possibly train on the right skills?!

That’s why performing needs analysis without a competency model is so flawed. How can you
possibly know what your audience needs if you don’t know what skills they should have?

Next, you must map each skill for each role to the learning opportunities you have or need to
have, to ensure you have competency-based learning. This ensures that every learning
opportunity you create or maintain has some value as it relates to corporate strategy. Any
learning opportunity that isn’t mapped is waste. It’s just that simple.

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Now, imagine if each person assesses their skills against the competency model for their role.
And each of those skills is mapped to competency-based learning. The aggregated demand for
each learning opportunity would be calculated for you instantly.
• No more guessing what to build or buy, or what to offer when and where; you would know
exactly who needs what.
• Budgets, schedules and your development plans can be based upon fact.
• You have justification to say “no” when someone asks for content to be developed that you
know is not required.
And as the skill requirements change, they drive new competency-based learning.

Just as you may be responsible for the disconnect between learning and strategy, you can also
be responsible for bringing them together. Embrace competency models and competency-
based learning and you can change both the perception and the reality that your learning
department delivers maximum value to the organization.

97% of the 2015 Training Top 125

use competency maps
and personalized, professional
development plans.

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Having no competency model is a strategy gap

If you have no competency models for the roles in your organization, or you have only high
level organizational competencies that don’t specify the skills required at each job role, here is
what you may expect to see.

You create learning that doesn’t transfer

In a Deloitte study8, less than 25% of Line Managers believed their Learning & Development
(L&D) departments were critical to achieving their business goals. That is not surprising given
related findings on learner disengagement. It is cause and effect.
• If the employee doesn’t believe that the content is relevant to their job and their needs,
they will be disengaged in any learning.
• If the employee is disengaged in the learning process, then L&D efforts are mitigated –
any learning opportunities will have minimal effect.
• If minimal effect occurs, then skill levels do not improve.
• If skill levels do not improve, then business results do not improve.
• If employees participate in training programs, and positive business results do not follow,
then Line Managers are likely to lose faith in the ability of L&D to contribute.

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 Less than 25% of Line
Managers believed their
Learning & Development
departments were critical to
achieving their business
goals

Anyone who has ever taught a class in person knows that in a traditional one-size-fits-all
methodology, about 2/3 of the people in attendance shouldn’t be there. We all come to our
roles with different skills and experiences. One-size-fits-all as a strategy is extremely detrimental
because it:
• Disengages learners who want to learn
• Discourages them from participating in future learning opportunities

The solution is to use personalized learning, which requires role-based competency models.

If your goal is to close skill gaps to accelerate learning transfer and learner engagement, one-
size-fits-all is a sure way to derail those plans. Ultimately, competency models connect the dots
and ensure that learning opportunities provided by L&D create relevance that drives learner
engagement and accelerates learning transfer.

Learn more in our white paper on overcoming learner disengagement.

25 [Link]
 You disconnect learning from strategy

Corporate strategy gets translated from the top so that each person, in each department, has a
role they will play to execute it. The role of Talent, Learning & Development is to ensure that
people in the organization have the skills to be able to execute their role. The competency
model is the translation of the skills required to execute. Without competency models, you can
expect a disconnect between learning investments and corporate strategy.

You alienate frustrated employees who

can’t do their jobs

In the Deloitte study on Human Capital Trends in 201510, skill gaps and employee engagement
problems are at the top of mind of 87% of the leaders in HR and executive management. In
another Deloitte study8, only 14% of the L&D leaders believe business leaders view them as
strategic partners, with 52% seen as mediocre partners or worse. If learners are not engaged,
managers don’t believe in L&D’s ability, and skill gaps continue to increase, then L&D’s
perceived value to the executive leadership will continue to erode at a time when it should
become more strategic.

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 The percentage of
leaders
in HR and executive
management
for whom skill gaps 87%
and employee
engagement problems
are most pressing

You risk a knowledge drain from those

who leave

Baby Boomers are retiring. Some of them may have been with your organization for 20+ years
and know how to get things done in ways that have never been documented.

Unless you find a way to drive engagement and provide Millennials with the ability to easily
grow and move into new roles, they may learn to be great, and then stay with you for only a few
years.

As your most experienced or valuable employees leave, they take years of invaluable experience
and best practices with them. Enabling them to participate in competency model workshops to
build or improve your models mitigates the knowledge drain from those who leave.

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Competency models are easy

If after reading this paper, you believe that role-based competency models are right for your
organization, there are 3 ways to get them.

1) We can build it for you See how easy

2) You can build your own Watch webinar

3) You can use one of our standard models Learn more

Summary

There is tremendous value in having role-based competency models in your organization.

• A competency model is the roadmap to greatness.

• It ensures you can execute strategy effectively.
• Competency models can close skill gaps, increase engagement, and drive retention.
• Competency models enable you to implement personalized, competency-based learning.

You can get competency models for the roles in your organization easily and quickly.

Your competition may be doing this already.

You can’t afford to wait.

28 [Link]
About SkillDirector

Experience iCompetency. Wave learner disengagement goodbye.

Close skill gaps faster. Accelerate learning transfer.

Our iCompetency framework makes personalized learning as easy as 3 simple steps.

Create a competency model. Enable Make your competency model actionable. Accelerate learning transfer.
competency-based learning in weeks. You can do that in just hours. You achieve it in just minutes.

[Link]
SDLESales@[Link]
824 Main Street
Windermere, Florida 34786
407.876.9850

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References

1. Accenture. (2013). Accenture 2013 Skills and employment trends survey: Perspectives on
Training.
2. Elliott, Andrew and Carol Dweck. (2005). Competence as the Core of Achievement Motivation.
3. Pink, Daniel. (2009). Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.
4. Pink, Daniel. (2011). YouTube Video. Entire video. Mastery section.
5. Galagan, Pat. (Oct 2015). TD Magazine: “Trends and Tides In Talent Development”.
6. PWC. (Jun 2015). Skills gap is forcing CEOs to change how they hire people.
7. Tan, Wendy and Crowell, Beverly. (Sep 2015) TD Magazine: “Organizations and Managers
Must Reassess How They View Career Development”.
8. Johnson, D. (2015). Reimagining L&D Capabilities to Drive Continuous Learning. Bersin by
Deloitte.
9. White, R. W. (1959). Motivation reconsidered: The concept of competence. Psychological
Review, 66, 5, p. 297-333.
10. Deloitte. (2015). Global Human Trends 2015: Leading in the new world of work. Deloitte
University Press.

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