My new organisation is implementing competencies for the first time and wants to link them to the overall performance marking. Hows does your current organisation or any that you have worked for link these together along with the objectives to reach an overall "box" marking? the system they have thought of here is rather clumsy as you only need fair in one of your competencies and you are marked fair overall even if your objectives were achieved to an exceptional level.
Some guidance on how to link competencies into overall performance marking would be appreciatd.
craig mitchell
2 Responses
Perhaps the clumsy process needs redesigning?
Hi Craig – from what you say you are indeed working woith a “clumsy” process!
I am somewhat wary of using competencies to “mark” or “score” people. Rather I would prefer to use them as a means of enabling the individual to reflect and think about themself and possible areas for their further development.
This can be done in many ways, ranging from simple self-rating through rating-by-others into 360 feedback. You can give the feedback (from self or others) both in terms of how good the individual is on this competency and also how important people think it is in carrying out the job in question. You can then devise various ways of looking for competencies that sre seen as especially important and where the individual is rather weak – giving these as development poriorities.
Conversely a competence seen as not bery important and on which the individual scored very proficient would be extremely low in development priority!
You say that someone can do exceptionally well on their objectives and yet be mnarked “fair” – presumably this is quite low – on a competence. This would imply rather a weak correlation between the competence framework and the needs of the job. This may not matter – it is in a way another way of saying this competence is not very important. However if it is true of all the competencies then there would seem to be a serious questionmark over the validity of that particular competence framework in the context of the job in question.
If someone gets an overall performance marking based on an unimportant or irrelevant competence then the process is, as you say, clumsy indeed and perhaps should be redesigned.
Role Profile
I take on board some of what Tom Boydell says but the only way a person can get an overall performance marking based on an unimportant or irrelevant competence is if the role profile (job description) and associated competencies are out of date or bear no relationship to the role.
The solution to using competencies in the overall marking must be to have a role profile document and a performance management document that allows for the correct competencies to be measured.
I did some work on this about two years ago and asked the managers to draft a role profile and competencies for their staff not one manager drafted anything that was measurable.
The key to any competency or object when used for performance management must be how do you measure it?
If it will help if you email me I can forward to you a couple of sample role profiles and the performance management paper we used.
Iain Young
iain.c.young@btinternet.com