There has been a growing interest in competency models and their applications over the past few years. Companies understand that they need to manage and support their most important assets, their people, in a more active and engaged fashion. Competency models are one way to do this.

Competency models come in all shapes and sizes and go by many different names. One company we work with calls them 'capability matrices' as the term competency model has negative connotations within their organization. Others refer to them as skill models or role models and the path from one role to another can define a career path.

To bring emerging trends in competency models into sharper focus, TeamFit is working with the value-consulting firm Ibbaka on an extensive survey and interview process.

Please take the survey and share with your networks.

Some of the uses we're seeing competency models put to include the following:

• For career development

• For succession planning

• For skill gap analysis

• To assign learning resources

• To help build teams

If your organization is using skill or competency models please let us know what you are doing and the value you are creating for both the organization and individuals.There are also some interesting trends in what people are including in competency models. Our initial review, in which we looked at models from about thirty organizations, found the following:

• Organization Goals

• Organization Values

• Job Role

• Career Path

• Team Role (which can be different from a job role)

• Competency

• KPI Key Performance Indicators, generally for a role)

• OKR (Objectives and Key Results, generally for a role)

• Certification

• Qualification

• Knowledge

• Attitude

• Skill

• Learning Resources

• Communities

• Evidence

• Questions (this is from IBM and can come in several forms, what questions would one ask in assessing a person for a role, what questions would a person in a role be expected to ask or to answer)

• Activities

• Tasks

• Decisions

These different components get connected in many different ways to build the competency model.You can read more about competency models here.