Brandon Hall Group is a leading research and analyst firm focused on human capital management led a survey on skills and competency management.

It was a chance to reflect, and as Brandon Hall is good about sharing results, it was an opportunity to benchmark your own practices.

As an immediate reward for taking the survey, Brandon Hall Group is offered a very useful tool "Assessing the Maturity of Your Competency Management Program." This tool gives you a way to assess your organization's progress on the Competency Model Maturity Model.  

The introduction to this tool gives a good summary of why competency models are important.

Competency management is the pulse of performance improvement - at the individual and organizational levels. It is also a central tenet of workforce planning, learning and development, and talent management. Despite the strategic importance of competencies, many organizations in all industries - more than 60% according to Brandon Hall Group’s 2017 research - are either not using competencies at all, or are struggling to define competencies for mission critical roles. The biggest barrier organizations face, according to our research, is aligning competencies with business goals. In addition, competency development and management remains one of the most under-funded talent management processes. This assessment serves two functions: (1) To provide a tool for you to assess where your organization is in terms of competency management; (2) While taking the assessment you will have a chance to reflect on key strategies and processes that the research shows are critical for success.

Ibbaka Talent - Competencies is a new module on our platform that is now available in closed beta. It is already in use by one global manufacturing company where it is being used to define jobs across the organization and to connect the jobs to the skills needed for success. Adopting this module will help you to quickly move up the maturity model as it provides an easy way for you to

• develop a model for your jobs and roles and the skills these require

• evolve this model through use and feedback

• apply the model to real people and real work

• connect the model to other systems that need to use skills (learning management system, learning experience platform, performance management system, applicant tracking system, project management system)

One of our customers has designated Ibbaka Talent - Competencies as the system of record for skills in their global organization. The learning experience platform, learning management system, applicant tracking system and performance management system all pull skills from our platform.

The business outcomes of an investment in skill and competency management are compelling.

• sell more as you can demonstrate capability and differentiation

• deliver at a higher level - a project, an innovation, for a customer, a new market

• drive up utilization by making full use of staff skills

• win more repeat business by delivering at a higher level and building more skills

• uncover new potential in existing staff

• future proof your business by understanding the skills needed to win in the future

We are also running our own, somewhat simpler survey on competencies and competency management. You can take this survey as well. Comparing the experience of the two surveys, looking through stereo vision so to speak, will bring some depth to your thoughts about skill and competency management, and how you can bring it to bear to drive your own organization up to new levels.

How are skill, competency and capability models being developed and applied?