Concentrating on Core Competencies

Core competencies are those specific areas of knowledge and expertise that every organization considers vital to its success. Concentrating on one's core competencies provides business focus while avoiding expending energy on less vital areas.

Developing Core Competencies

The strength of core competencies in an organization tends to be rooted in the ability to integrate and coordinate various groups in the organization rather than rely on individual motivation and achievements. For example, having a team of individually talented people in a particular technology, each of whom brings more-than-adequate job competencies with them, does not automatically ensure that a company will realize core competency in that technology. To achieve core competencies, effective coordination among all the groups involved in bringing a product to market is required. This type of concerted effort requires a clear company vision, proper management, and employees with the necessary skills to help the company realize its goals.

The attaining of core competencies does not necessarily require an expensive undertaking. In fact, the needed ingredients for core competency can often be acquired through various means of alliances. In many cases, an organizational design that facilitates sharing of core competencies can result in much more effective utilization of those competencies for little or no additional cost. The sharing of core competencies lends itself to better overall competency mapping, competency testing, and more accurate competency models for future product development.

Workforce³ One provides the means for employers, human resource professionals, workforce development professionals, trainers, educators, career counselors and others to research requirements for core competencies, develop competency models and perform competency testing for high growth industry careers. Click here now to register for Workforce³ One’s website and to access webinars, to download tools and products from the site, search the document library and archive, submit documents and links to site for posting consideration, and more!

The Loss of Core Competencies

Unfortunately, cost-cutting moves sometimes eliminate the chance to build upon core competencies. One reason for this might be the outsourcing of product and technology. In this case, the firm is precluded from developing core competencies since it no longer consolidates the know-how that is spread throughout the company. Instead, autonomous groups rely on the outsourcing of critical tasks.

In other cases, core competencies are lost because of a company’s failure to recognize them. Good example of this is when, in the 1970’s, many U.S. manufacturers divested themselves of their television manufacturing divisions, reasoning that the industry was mature and that high quality, low cost models were available from Asian manufacturers. The result was they lost their core competencies in video, and were at a disadvantage with the advent of the digital television industry.

The Benefits of Competency Models

A competency model can offer an organization a structured look at what it takes to perform certain tasks with peak efficiency. The benefits are many, including:

• The ability for executives and managers to distinguish superior from merely satisfactory performance. This differentiation, along with the detailing of core competencies, allows executives and managers to make a distinction between a person's ability to do specific tasks at the minimum acceptable level and the ability to do the whole job in an outstanding fashion.
  

• The ability to define what outstanding individuals actually do in any particular field of study. The core competencies and resulting competency models are based upon outstanding current performance in the organization. These competency models do not reflect someone's management theory or an academic idea of what it takes to do the job well. Instead, they are based on what works within the organization and most directly contributes to top performance.

• The ability to rate core competencies with a high degree of consistency due to the fact that competencies are behaviorally specific. For example, there is notable—and important—difference between an employee who merely "takes initiative,” which is a very general concept, and an employee that carries out specific results-oriented tasks without needing to be requested to do so.
  

• The knowledge that the process is based on hard performance data. The search for specific core competencies enables an executive or manager to make a distinction between surrogate indicators of competencies, such as experience or education, and true-performance criteria. In competency models, demonstration of such abilities on the job is required as proof of their possession.
  

• The core competencies, and resulting competency models, provide criteria which can be used to guide job performance in various ways. For example, the models can be used as a means of training existing employees, new employees and those preparing for a specific career move, or as a means of enabling individuals to evaluate themselves in performing critical aspects of a job.

Click here now to register on Workforce³ One’s website for access to webinars, to download tools and products, search the document library and archive, submit documents and links for posting consideration, and more! Let Workforce³ One provide you with information on knowledge, skills, and abilities for high growth industry careers, as well as assessments for determining suitability of potential employees for different high growth industry careers.