Building Competence

What is Competence?

There are many definitions of what ‘competence’ is and this probably reflects that it’s a complex concept; you know it when you see it (or more often when you don’t see it), but it’s difficult to describe. Most definitions include references to ‘ability’, ‘skills’ and ‘knowledge’.

Competence is more than simply knowing a set of information.  And it is generally agreed that it is more than possessing a set of skills.  There is also a tacit acceptance that competence develops over time, indicating that experience is an important factor. These attributes all relate to an individual’s ability; whether they are able to do the task. However, an important consideration should surely also be whether the individual chooses to apply these attributes; their commitment and willingness to perform.

The Crystal Model

Our VFS Competency Framework

A layered approach that can be used company-wide.

We have a 'starter kit' to help companies get the right frameworks, guidance & support resources in place that will help each individual and their manager through the process of continual professional development (CPD) and self improvement.

Career progression & competency frameworks should exist first and foremost to serve the needs of the business....BUT... not in the way that they are typically used.

They should serve the business by:

Competency Frameworks need to be positioned correctly

A competency framework is one of the foundational elements of talent & performance management, along side effective pastoral care, guidance and support.  A Career Progression Framework will typically incorporate a competency framework. 

Competency Frameworks need to:

1. Be viewed as helping people to develop themselves and their careers, not as a box ticking exercise that needs to be done to fulfil a management need.

2. Be used as a tool, helping an individual identify their strengths and their development needs, and helping the manager to have constructive discussions that might otherwise be difficult.

3. Reassure people that they help to provide fairness and consistency across the company whilst allowing for acceptable manager discretion.

In order to provide a consistent framework across a company, we use a common structure across the business to create Competency Profiles.  The framework defines the common competencies and levels with departmental specifics layered on top.  This is then added to with another layer of Job-family specific competencies.

This approach gives the flexibility required from a framework providing clarity for each specialisation as well as ensuring consistency across the organisation.

You can visualise the framework in the following diagram.  Competencies make up one dimension whilst Levels make up the other.  There is a set of company-wide competencies and their descriptions.  Then, there are Departmental and Job-family specialisations, depicted here as layers, that add to the lower levels.

For any given role you may consider selecting the appropriate middle and top layers and “looking through them” to form a two dimensional table.  This table encompasses the expectations for that role, helping someone understand what is expected for a given role and what is required to progress to the next level, and beyond.

To support the growth and development of rounded Professionals, the framework consists of three primary competency groups:

Behavioural and Management competencies cover organisational responsibilities and duties and are common and consistent across the organisation.  Specialist skills on the other hand focus on your role and as such defined per department. 

Each primary category contain five subcategories.  These subcategories are defined as a set of examples of responsibilities, expected knowledge and observable skills.  Whilst the interactive below doesn't explicitly show it, it is important in many organisations to support a dual-track career, supporting both technical specialisation and management careers.

The typical use case of mapping out one's career and personal development next steps typically includes a gap analysis of where one is now versus where you want to be.  The way that the competencies and career progression are laid out need to support easy self assessment and comparisons between current and future roles.

Interactive:  Click or Swipe Left to step through