The Client:

Our client is a hi-performing government agency, known for its progressive leadership and people practices.

The Challenge:

Our client required a Core Competency Framework to:

• Shape behaviours of emerging leaders.
• Enhance the robustness and transparency in the appraisal process.
• Bring clearer differentiation between hierarchy levels, and job grades.
• Align L&D initiatives to the competencies.
• Strengthen the recruitment process.
• Encourage individuals to take more responsibility for self-development.

The Solution:

Our premise:

Competencies need to enable an organisation deliver on its objectives. They must be differentiating to truly drive behaviours that matter. All HR initiatives must be aligned with competencies so that they reinforce desired behaviours. Managers and employees must be trained to use the competencies in order for the organisation maximise the benefits.

What we did:

Tier 1: Gathering information on High Performance Behaviours

• Conducted face-to-face meetings with key organisation leaders and stakeholders.
• Understood the organisation’s priorities, strategic objectives, the external environment and future direction.
• Facilitated an organisation capability workshop with top management to identify collective abilities that the organisation must be good at to achieve its Vision & Mission.
• Derived preliminary competencies (knowledge, skills and behaviours).
• Supplemented information with representative job holder interviews across the hierarchy.
  
  

Tier 2: Development and validation of competencies

• Identified competency clusters and validated them with client.
• Developed behavioural descriptors for each of the competencies.
• Validated the competency descriptors using employee focus groups and scrambled questionnaire sessions.
  
  

Tier 3: Development of applications

• Developed competency based interview guides.
• Developed competency based careers paths.
• Developed competency based L&D framework.
• Aligned the performance management system to the competency framework.
  
  

Tier 4: Roll out

• Conducted workshops for both managers and employees to help them get familiar with the competencies and understand how to use them to enhance performance dialogues
• Trained potential interviewers to use competency based interview techniques to make better hiring decisions.
  
  

The Result:

• Our competency design established a clear link between strategy and desired behaviours.
• The competencies were differentiating and future-oriented.
• Employees could relate to the competencies and there was high buy-in.
• Managers found the applications user-friendly and helpful in better managing staff.