Author: Site Staff

Dear Looking Out Below:
First, you deserve a shout-out for making the commitment to help your employees improve and develop. Paying this type of individualized attention to people’s careers is one of the best ways to ensure employee engagement and retention.

Now to your question: Competencies are those key attributes that employees throughout your workforce need to demonstrate for the company to be successful. If employees are competent in these areas, it is likely they will ably deliver on your organization’s strategies. There will be a core set of competencies that apply to everyone (and there may be an additional few that are needed at the senior management ranks).

At a technology company, for instance, innovation may be a competency that everyone is expected to have. The receptionist may demonstrate this competency very differently than the chief technical officer, but it would be important that everyone look for new and better ways to do things. At a pharmaceutical manufacturer, precision may be a competency that is required. Results orientation might be a competency expected in both environments.

An effective way to determine your company’s specific competencies is to design a facilitated session with the key leaders. Ask the assembled group:
“If we were delivering perfectly on all our strategies, which behaviors would we see people demonstrating and how would they be acting?”
Compile a list of all the answers. Cull the list to a small number of characteristics that you think have the greatest impact. The final list should have no more than 10 items. This becomes your competency list.

Before you can embed these competencies into your performance and development program, you must be able to measure the difference between someone who is a novice and someone who is a role model for a particular competency.

There is a lot of confusion about how to describe and measure competencies. I think the easiest way to understand it is like this: Someone who is competent in a particular area will have a combination of skill, experience and interest in it. To measure the competency, your organization must be able to outline:

• The skills, behaviors and knowledge needed to be competent.
• The type of experience an employee should get to build the skills, behavior or knowledge.

The third aspect of being competent is having an interest in the area. Interest is not something an employer can design. This will be up to the employee.

Detailed explanations and measures of each competency can be compiled informally by the individual manager, or your company’s human resources professionals could build robust competency matrices by job family.

Once the organization has a complete understanding of its competencies and how to measure them, the competencies can be included as part of your regular performance and development program.

SOURCE: Ellen Raim, vice president of human resources, Cascade Microtech, Beaverton, Oregon
LEARN MORE: Tapping the right leaders is a blend of art and science. Even the best leadership training is useful only when the lessons are continually reinforced.
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The information contained in this article is intended to provide useful information on the topic covered, but should not be construed as legal advice or a legal opinion. Also remember that state laws may differ from the federal law.

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Dear Moving Without Maps:

Competency mapping can be simple and effective or complex and confusing. Having been an advisor to both small and large organizations, I can attest that few complex implementations last more than three years. Most firms that attempt to use them pervasively throughout recruitment, professional development, succession planning, performance management and workforce planning almost universally end up frustrated. Competency mapping can consume a significant pile of money and management time if not carefully approached. I would start with a narrow scope for the use of competencies. Competency maps or profiles are best used not as absolutes, but as guides to provide direction to managers. (They are often called “maps” because, if you have the top competencies, it’s a direct path or map to success.)

1. The first step is to identify the competencies that differentiate top performers from average ones. Begin by doing some benchmarking with firms in your industry to identify common competencies or use the major subset of developed systems such as Lominger as a starting point.

2. Next, begin identifying the current overall competencies from that list that apply to your firm by looking for common factors (usually skills, knowledge and experience) exhibited by most top performers. Compare that set of competencies with a group of average performers to identify the “differentiator competencies.” Some also look at “failed” employees to see which competencies they lacked.

This is where most truly mundane and ineffective approaches stop.

3. Unfortunately you can’t stop there, because in a fast-changing world the competencies that directly led to individual and company success historically will most likely not remain valid. You will need to adjust the competency set identified to account for new technological developments, new methodologies and, most important, changing market trends. Some competencies that were important will become less important, while others will emerge as critical. The easiest way to identify the “no longer needed” competencies that need to be deleted and to identify the “future people competencies” is to work directly with senior managers in each of the fast-growing business units. These senior managers can usually tell you in a short period of time which future skill sets will be needed. If you have access to the strategic business plan, that can help you identify the company’s growth needs as well.

4. Next, work with your executive team to assign a priority or weight to each of the identified “future people competencies.” Expect them to emphasize competencies like innovation, speed, agility, quality, business acumen and customer service. The list produced will represent your core competencies. All mission-critical roles should be filled by people who possess them in various degrees of mastery.

5. The next step is to adapt the overall list to individual job families or functions. The goal here is to determine what level of mastery is needed with regard to each competency, and what functionally specific competencies need to augment the mix. When all is said and done, each job family or function should be covered by no more than eight competencies. It’s also wise to compare your job-family competencies with those of your direct competitors for final modifications. If they have completed a competency project, you would most likely find them on their corporate jobs Web site, buried within the job descriptions for mission-critical jobs.

6. With a refined set of competencies unique to each job family or function, the next step is to refine the definitions of each competency so that they are clear and easy to measure mastery of. This is the hard part of making competencies work, and a step most organizations ignore. Competencies need to be defined in terms of behaviors that demonstrate mastery and execution. Consider defining four to five key behaviors that are measurable that characterize each competency. These definitions may be functionally or job-family specific. Definitions should be tested to make sure they are interpreted the same way by everyone who will be subject to them.

7. The last step is persuading managers to use these competencies. Persuading each individual manager to restrict their hiring, development activities, performance assessments and promotions to individuals who demonstrate mastery of these future competencies is hard work. You also need to work with development and compensation to make sure that there is a process for developing and rewarding individuals who have these competencies. If you are successful, the competency set of your employees will gradually shift from the current set toward those “future competencies” that are needed to make your company successful for the next few years. Finally, ask for a raise. You will have earned it.

SOURCE: Dr. John Sullivan, head and professor of the Human Resource Management College of Business at San Francisco State University, March 16, 2007. This response originally appeared in Dear Workforce on April 19, 2007.

LEARN MORE: Please read how to use a blend of performance-based training and content-based training to help build your workforce’s competencies.

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The information contained in this article is intended to provide useful information on the topic covered, but should not be construed as legal advice or a legal opinion. Also remember that state laws may differ from the federal law.

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Dear Workforce Newsletter

Both the Obama administration and a Republican senator who blocked its previous choice to head the Transportation Security Administration regarding concerns about unionization policy are praising the military and intelligence credentials of the new nominee, retired Army Gen. Robert Harding.

The White House announced Monday, March 8, that President Barack Obama has nominated Harding to be assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security overseeing the TSA.

Sen. Jim DeMint, R-South Carolina, placed a hold on Obama’s previous selection, Erroll Southers, a former FBI agent, because DeMint worried that Southers would allow collective bargaining for TSA workers.

DeMint didn’t mention the topic in a statement about Harding that he released after the nomination was announced.

“He’s had a distinguished career in the Army and I’m interested to hear how his military experience would inform his leadership of our nation’s transportation security,” DeMint said.

Republicans also raised objections to Southers because he allegedly misused a federal database to pursue a personal matter involving his marriage.

Obama called for the Senate to confirm Harding quickly.

“I am confident that Bob’s talent and expertise will make him a tremendous asset in our ongoing efforts to bolster security and screening measures at our airports,” Obama said.

The agency, which protects the nation’s airports, railroads, ports and mass transit systems, employs about 40,000 people. The most visible TSA staff members are the security officers who work as screeners at 450 airports across the nation.

It’s not clear whether Harding will support TSA collective bargaining, an issue that has become an important item on the organized labor agenda.

The American Federation of Government Employees filed a petition in late February with the Federal Labor Relations Authority calling for a nationwide union election to determine exclusive representation for TSA workers.

Currently, the TSA workforce is represented by the AFGE and other unions but is prohibited by federal law from engaging in collective bargaining. The same restriction applies to other security positions such as FBI and CIA agents.

DeMint has argued that allowing collective bargaining for transportation security officers would limit the government’s flexibility to respond to security threats, such as the attempted bombing of a plane headed to Detroit from Amsterdam on Christmas Day.

The head of a large federal union, however, asserted that TSA was being undermined by a faulty pay system and weak worker protections.

“When TSA was created in late 2001, federalizing air travel screening work, the goal was to develop a stable, professional security workforce,” said Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union. “While TSA employees work diligently and skillfully, achieving that goal has been out of their reach due to serious workplace issues that erode their morale and contribute to the high turnover that continues to plague the agency.”

Both the NTEU and AFGE have vowed to secure collective bargaining rights for TSA workers. It’s likely that Harding will support the effort, according to one observer.

“I’m pretty sure any nominee would because it’s so crucial to [the union] constituency,” said Linda Brooks Rix, co-CEO of Avue Technologies Corp., an HR technology provider for the federal government.

Permitting collective bargaining at the TSA could be beneficial, Rix said, because it would help employees better communicate their concerns.

“It provides the unified voice,” Rix said. “It’s more efficient from a management standpoint.”

At a February AFGE rally, a leader of the nation’s air traffic controllers asserted that unionization hasn’t made takeoffs and landings dangerous.

“We are living proof that being a union member enhances the safety of this country,” said Paul Rinaldi, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.

—Mark Schoeff Jr.  

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President Barack Obama on Tuesday, March 2, signed into law legislation that provides a stopgap, 31-day extension of federal subsidies of COBRA health care premiums.

The measure was approved earlier that day by the Senate on a 78-19 vote, while the House cleared it last week.

Under H.R. 4691, the 65 percent, 15-month premium subsidy for laid-off workers is extended to those involuntarily terminated from March 1 through March 31.

Without the extension, employees laid off after February 28 would have been ineligible for the subsidy.

The measure also will allow employees to receive the subsidy if they first lost group coverage due to a reduction in hours and then were terminated after enactment of the legislation, if certain conditions are met.

Meanwhile, the Senate on Wednesday, March 3, will continue consideration of legislation, H.R. 4213, that would extend the premium subsidy to employees laid off through December 31, 2010.

 

Filed by Jerry Geisel of Business Insurance, a sister publication of Workforce Management. To comment, e-mail editors@workforce.com.

 

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Dear Size Matters:

The short answer, as you may have suspected, is that there is no typical ratio of administrative support to other employees in health care. We conducted an unscientific poll of 19 health care organizations, including hospitals, long-term-care companies and a couple of organizations that offer primary, inpatient and long-term care. We threw out two outliers, whose numbers were way off the beaten path, and with the remaining 17, here’s what we found:

The smaller the organization is, the higher its proportion of administrators to total employees. There’s a minimum level of support needed, even for the smallest of providers, but the need does not increase in direct proportion to the number of employees overall, or the number of patients served.

Secular not-for-profit and faith-based health care organizations seem to be able to get by with a smaller proportion of administrative support personnel than do for-profit organizations.

The numbers here represent ratios of administrative employees to total number of employees.

The for-profit hospitals we polled ranged from a ratio of 1-to-10 (one admin support person for every 10 employees) to about 1-to-12.

One secular nonprofit hospital reported 2,486 employees, 177 of whom were in administrative support jobs, or a ratio of about 1-to-14. At the other end of this category was a hospital with a ratio of 1-to-17.5.

The faith-based health care organizations we surveyed ran leaner, for the most part, than the other organizations we looked at, ranging from a low ratio of 1-to-15 to a high of 1-to-22.

The consensus among the health care human resources professionals we spoke with is that the administrative support staff, as a proportion of the total number of employees, has diminished somewhat over the last 20 years. Even as the administrative burden on health care has increased in recent years, technological advances in general, and specifically in health care, have allowed many providers to shift human resources away from administrative tasks and toward patient care. Most see this trend continuing.

SOURCE: Richard Hadden and Bill Catlette, co-authors, Contented Cows Give Better Milk, March 15, 2007

LEARN MORE: Please review a series of tools, including worksheets, for workforce planning. Also of interest: how health care organizations can determine the best staff-to-manager ratio.

Workforce Management Online, March 2010 — Register Now!

The information contained in this article is intended to provide useful information on the topic covered, but should not be construed as legal advice or a legal opinion. Also remember that state laws may differ from the federal law.

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Dear Workforce N ewsletter