Competency Library

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What competencies and skills do we need as an organization?

Competencies and skills are the basic building blocks of human resource management and performance measurement. Organizations hire, orient, train, plan, assess, promote, and pay for competencies and skills. If your organization hasn’t identified its critical competencies and skills, none of its HR programs will be effective, and it can’t effectively manage employee development, employee performance or results!

focus includes a library of more than 500 competencies found in high performing companies:

1. Core Competencies:  competencies such as Teamwork, Customer Focus, etc.) that elevate good performers to outstanding performers.
2. Cross-Functional Competencies: competencies that are important for many jobs, organized into categories such as basic, thinking, planning, project implementation, and computer user skills.
3. Functional Competencies: competencies that are important for specific jobs. All department (operations or support) may identify the skills that are critical for their function.

Features & Benefits

• Comprehensive Library: No need to "create the wheel." Allows a quick start
• Completely customizable: Create new Skill Groups, Skills, and sub-skills as needed
• Create Common or Unique Performance Levels: Define different levels of competence (for example, from beginner to expert) for each competency, or use one scale for all
• Input Performance Targets: Identify performance expectations for each competency/skill group for entry level up through senior management
• Define Behavioral Indicators: If desired, enter behavioral examples/targets for competencies and skills
• Continually Enhanced and Grows in Value: The library is easily enhanced as a by-product of job profiling, and performance planning, and employee development

Fully Integrated with Other focus Functions, your competency/skill library is used in every other function of focus, ties them all together, and allows consistency throughout all your performance management & development programs

focus provides flexibility to meet the simplest or most complex needs. Choose from many optional features; use only the ones you want. Allows you to increase sophistication over time.

Steps to Implement

1. Review provided library; eliminate competencies and skills that are irrelevant to your organization
2. Select Core Competencies based on Organization Strategy and Values
3. Departments review list of competencies and skills for their function, and, as needed add additional competencies and skills
4. Library grows naturally as new skill needs are identified while building job profiles, performance, development, or succession plans.

"By putting technology in place as the foundation of performance management you enable many effective processes to take place which would have been near impossible to initiate before."

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