Perry Alter has customized competency models for clients in multiple industries, leading to actionable outputs such as hiring interviews, development guides, and 360 assessments. His focus has been on making the science of excellent management practices more relatable and actionable to users.
Benefits of Competency Models
- Competencies bring soft, fuzzy concepts to life. How do you actually bring about continuous improvement? How and when should you be flexible? What does open communication look like here?
- Competencies provide guidance to people. For example, ask others for relevant input, empower rather than micromanage, or proactively learn from successes and failures.
- Competencies help companies pursue their goals more directly. They improve the signal-to-noise ratio.
- Competencies make it easier to hire and develop people in areas you want them to excel. The behavioral focus translates easily to job-related interview questions and development guides.
- Competencies can provide a common focus and language between hiring, performance review, development, and other functions. These can reinforce one another so that all ships sail in the same direction.
- Other potent benefits depend on the competencies used. For example, a problem-solving competency can help people improve at resolving thorny issues. A customer-focus competency can help companies reduce costly customer defections. A communication competency can help people in different functions share important information.
- Competencies can be designed and implemented with different degrees of rigor, depending on the time and resources you could spend. Simple initiatives can still be highly productive.
- Think through some of the costly issues you’ve had. Would a competency model have negated some of that? What would the dollar benefits have been, in terms of revenue gained or costs saved? Reminder: The model itself is only valuable when you apply it, such as to guiding behavior, hiring, coaching, development, etc.
Some Relevant Articles Authored or Co-Authored by Dr. Alter
- A Practical Approach for Measuring the Business Impact of Training (CEO Refresher)
- Develop Teamwork Skills in Bite-Sized Action Steps (HR Future)
- Does Your Selection Process Promote Diversity? (Diversity Executive)
- Does It Make Sense to Hire and Develop Based on the Same Competencies? (Recruiting Trends)
- Four Tips for Getting the Most Out of Your Assessment Investment (CEO Refresher)
- Inclusive From the Beginning, Engaged to the End (Recruiting Trends)
- 360 Support Critical to Effectiveness (Performance Management)