Recruitment and Selection: HR Competency Models Essay

Abstract

Organizations that are committed to high performance recognize that high-performing employees are important for organizations to achieve their targets. In the past, an employee’s performance was based on academic qualifications. Currently, human resource (HR) managers look for talented and technically trained persons to work for their organizations (Rodriguez, Patel, Bright, Gregory & Gowing, 2002; Brewster & Suutari, 2005; Gangani, McLean & Braden, 2006; Dias, 2010). It has been shown that performance in the workplace does not always correlate with passing academic aptitude tests in interviews.

Research shows that hiring people with the required competencies and creating for them an enabling organization’s culture go a long way in improving the overall performance of the organization (Le Deist & Winterton, 2005). This paper concentrates on the use of competency models in facilitating HR practices within organizations. The paper analyzes the use of competency models by HR professionals within SHUUA Capital, in the UAE. It discusses the best strategies for competency models that have been developed and tested by various organizations. In addition, the paper analyzes the challenges faced by various organizations across the world as they endeavor to adopt competency models in their HR practices.

Case study: SHUUA Capital in the UAE

SHUUA Capital is a leading financial services provider in the UAE. The organization has been so essential in helping clients to obtain capital and identifying chances of investment for various investors in the Middle East. The organization, which was started in 1979, has been dedicated to the development of its workers by adopting approaches that aim to adequately prepare workers before they could take on more responsibilities within the organization.

The HR professionals within the firm recognize that job promotions involve undertaking more complex duties. Thus, workers need to be prepared well so that they would effectively discharge their duties. In the event that workers are promoted in the workplace without adequate preparations, then they would hardly perform their duties at higher levels within an organization (Gangani et al., 2006).

The organization arranges competencies into frameworks that combine various roles and the targeted capabilities that personnel must have or obtain in order to be productive in the workplace. The competencies used by the organization in facilitating HR practices are based on principles that offer a clear guide for what is required from job holders in terms of performance. The firm does not concentrate on formal academic qualifications, but focuses on the capabilities of an individual as proven through past job experiences. In addition, an organization could assess the capabilities of an individual by testing him or her on specific tasks that are related to the job. Competencies consist of the following:

1. Skills
2. Abilities
3. Personal attributes

Also, a competency could be a combination of all the above employee features.

The organization’s personnel are drawn from about 20 countries across the world, and this helps to enrich the organization’s cultural diversity and improve the performance of the firm. It is a critical belief of the organization that employees should be empowered to grow professionally. This is achieved by a competent team of HR professionals who give workers opportunities to grow professionally and develop skills crucial for long-term productivity of the firm. The firm recruits new workers on the basis of their experiences, abilities, technical skills, and professional integrity. To ensure that its workers grow professionally, the firm competitively interviews and selects existing personnel so that they would be promoted on the basis of proven workplace competencies. Internal workplace promotions are aimed to foster career growth for excellent performers within the organization.

It is clear that the firm uses behavioral and technical aspects to categorize competencies. Behavioral competencies could be the ability to complete tasks on time, work under minimum supervision, and inspire other team members. On the other hand, technical competencies could be the ability to troubleshoot, interaction and general communication skills (Gangani et al., 2006; Dias, 2010). For an organization to recruit or promote personnel, it must use proven approaches to measure each competency of each worker. This is aimed to evaluate the level of achievement that a worker must possess so that he or she could satisfy the requirements of the competency. The HR professionals within the organization could use a competency framework to structure and measure the firm’s processes through competency models. A framework could contain job design, recruitment, job tasks, and personnel training.

SHUUA Capital is a world example of how organizations could use competency models to facilitate HR activities and improve their performances. The adoption of the competency models in HR activities in the ever competitive financial services industry will go a long way in enabling the firm to continue gaining competitive advantage in the future.

Best strategies for developing competency models for HR practices

HR professionals define competency as a collection of targeted skills or attributes for a given job that are used to gauge an individual’s performance. HR managers conduct interviews based on competencies to hire high-performing individuals who contribute to improved performance of organizations (Le Deist & Winterton, 2005; Dias, 2010).Organizations develop and implement competency frameworks so that they would recruit and retain high-performing personnel, facilitate employee performance, and attain better outcomes. The development of competency models within organizations is a high-priority goal that many organizations aim to achieve (Campion et al., 2011). There are three major steps contained in the best strategies for developing competency models. They are summarized as follows:

Identify competencies

1. Analyze organizational context
2. Correlate structures of competency models with the goals and objectives of an organization
3. Go back to step one
4. Develop specific competencies based on results obtained from the job analysis
5. Put into consideration future-based job requirements

Organize and clearly present competency data

1. Organize the language of competencies
2. Define proficiency levels
3. Use the right organizational language that would be understood by all stakeholders
4. Combine and analyze basic and technical competencies
5. Use competency libraries to document the analyzed information
6. Match each competency with specific details
7. Use graphical presentations to communicate the developed competencies to employees

Use competency information

1. Use techniques within an organization to ensure that the developed competencies are accepted and used
2. Hire, appraise, promote and compensate employees based on the developed competencies
3. Align HR systems
4. Maintain competencies within an organization over time
5. Use competencies for legal defensibility

The above procedures are critical in developing and implementing a competency model within an organization (Campion et al., 2011). The time for developing and implementing competency models differs from one organization to another. Several factors could be responsible for variations in time. For example, it would take a lot more time if the top management of an organization is reluctant to finance the activities of HR competency modelling. Also, it would take more time to implement competency models within organizations whose employees are not told the importance of developing such a strategic HR system. Research demonstrates that HR professionals who keep pace with developments in HR practices usually develop better HR systems for organizations than those who do not keep pace with new developments (Brewster & Suutari, 2005).

The use of the information technology has greatly impacted the way HR professionals conduct their activities. For example, HR professionals within an organization could adopt electronic signing for employees to monitor their punctuality and rates of absenteeism. They could analyze and utilize the data accumulated over time to conduct employee appraisals and promotions. Also, the use of the internet and computers facilitates the process of adopting best strategies for developing competency models within organizations (Rodriguez et al., 2002; Dias, 2010).

Challenges of competency models within organizations

Several challenges are associated with competency-based HR systems. The application of a competency model within an organization makes its employees so marketable that the organization could start to experience high rates of employee turnover (Shippmann et al., 2000; Rodriguez et al., 2002). This could have a negative impact on the organization. It could also be a challenge to implement competency-based HR systems within an organization that has limited financial. The limited finances could make the implementation efforts abort prematurely.

Strategic HR managers ensure that they have assurances of long-term financial support from the management before they would start competency-based modelling (Rodriguez et al., 2002). It has been shown that several managers within many organizations are faced with the problem of giving employees constant feedback regarding their performances and how they would improve their job outcomes. This could be contributed by the fact that managers could be unwilling to accept responsibility and adopt better approaches to solve problems (Le Deist & Winterton, 2005).

Employees have been found to be reluctant to accept strategies aimed to affect their performances in the workplace. Acceptance rates for competency-based HR systems are improved by creating awareness among employees within organizations. Organizations should commit resources aimed to improve communication of the developed competency-based HR systems to all employees (Shippmann et al., 2000). Competency-based training should be conducted in accordance with an organization’s culture.

This implies that competency-based models obtained from vendors could face challenges during implementation because the design does not take into consideration an organization’s culture. Competency-based HR systems face the challenge of changing organizations’ culture that support the view that people should be matched to work. However, competency-based HR approaches attempt to match work to people. Thus, workers are identified based on their efforts to gain competitive advantage for organizations (Shippmann et al., 2000; Rodriguez et al., 2002).

Although there are several challenges associated with the adoption of competency-based HR systems, they hold the future of many organizations across the world. With the advancement in the applications of IT in HR applications, it is expected that better competency-based HR systems will be developed in the future that will aim to recruit and retain top performers within organizations. In addition, they will help organizations gain competitive advantage in the competitive business environments.

References

Brewster, C., & Suutari, V. (2005). Global HRM: aspects of a research agenda. Personnel Review, 34(1), 5-21.

Campion, M. A., Fink, A. A., Ruggeberg, B. J., Carr, L., Phillips, G. M., & Odman, R. B. (2011). Doing competencies well: Best practices in competency modeling. Personnel Psychology, 64(1), 225-262.

Dias, L. P. (2010). Human Resource Management. Washington, D.C., WA: Flat World Knowledge.

Gangani, N., McLean, G. N., & Braden, R. A. (2006). A Competency‐Based Human Resource Development Strategy. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 19(1), 127-139.

Le Deist, F. D., & Winterton, J. (2005). What is competence?. Human resource development international, 8(1), 27-46.

Rodriguez, D., Patel, R., Bright, A., Gregory, D., & Gowing, M. K. (2002). Developing competency models to promote integrated human resource practices. Human Resource Management, 41(3), 309-324.

Shippmann, J. S., Ash, R. A., Batjtsta, M., Carr, L., Eyde, L. D., Hesketh, B.,… & Sanchez, J. I. (2000). The practice of competency odeling. personnel psychology, 53(3), 703-740.