Chapter 17 HR Policies and Practices   HR policies and practices help shape behavior and attitudes.   Selection practices must be designed choose competent candidates.   Training and Development: Benefits are two-fold: 1) 1) Increases employee’s abilities and motivation, yielding higher performance potential. 2) 2) Increases employee’s self-efficacy (a person’s expectation that he or she can successfully execute the behaviors required to produce an outcome).   Career planning: boosts employee commitment, loyalty, satisfaction.   Managers have responsibility and vested interest to use well- designed selection practices, training and development programs, and employee career planning.

Competency-based Employee Development: A Gold Standard for Talent Management By David Dubois and Linda Kemp Career Planning and Adult Development Journal, Vol. 18, No. 4, Winter Article

 Detailed analysis of competency-based employee development.  Sound reasoning for such initiatives as institutionalized organization process, not a passing program. Four key areas are explored: 1.What is employee development? 2.How is employee development traditionally carried out? 3.Why should employee development become competency-based? 4.What steps can guide the creation of competency-based employee development? Article Overview

What is Competency? Competency: any human characteristic or trait that an individual uses in appropriate ways to successfully achieve one or more outputs or results expected from them. *Competency only if it is essential for successful performance. *Competencies more important predictor of performance success than an individual’s work task experience. Example: Technical Director who was promoted to management based on great technical skills and/or seniority. BUT he has lousy project planning and people skills.

What is employee development? Employee Development: Pursuit of any activity that leads to continuous learning, personal growth, and that contributes to the achievement of both the individual’s and the employer’s objective Variety of HR applications that have been labeled “employee development.” Lack of formal definition and specific objectives. Difficulty in determining benefits of employee development for the organization. Integrated approach: Consider organizational goals for skills acquisition and talent development AND employee’s values, interests, skills and career aspirations.

Organizations that fail to recognize the continuous need for a development process will likely “pay later” Potential benefits: Enhanced job and work performance. Improved ability of organization to utilize talent. Reduced employee turnover. Employee encouragement to assume greater responsibility for their careers. Support for organization’s effort to achieve compliance with diversity and EEO requirements. Improved ability of employees to utilize HR systems. Cost vs. Investment

Usually attempted as program, not continuous process. Typical employee development “programs” and practices: “How-to” sessions on topics related to employees’ tenure with organization (applications, interviewing for promotions...) “Career telling” by well-intended supervisors/managers. -Goals/performance questions posed in context of employee’s work (i.e. in performance review). “Tell me your 5-year goal” Little or no attention given to employee’s life-career issues (values, interests, needs). “I think you would be a good...” Results in unrealistic expectations from both employee and management. “If I do X, the company will promote me...” How is employee development traditionally carried out?

1.Exploration 2.Understanding 3.Taking Action Process is cyclical, not linear. Employee’s lack of understanding of own values, or mismatch between employee’s and organization’s values, will result in employee leaving or failing in performance. Three-step process of career decision-making

3 key questions before hiring or promoting: 1.Are the new work roles consistent with employee’s values? 2.Does employee possess and can they appropriately use the abstract, non-trainable competencies required for success upon entry to the new job? 3.Is the employee motivated to acquire and apply the remaining competencies needed for job performance success? Taking Action

Ensures strategic link that binds organization’s long- term success with its employees’ competencies and their life-career needs and preferences. Provides talent bench strength the organization needs, when it needs it. Motivation effect that occurs when employees know where they fit in company’s big picture. Promotion opportunities and challenging work, key reasons employees join/stay. Your job may change, but your competencies give you what you need to succeed in a range of roles. Why should employee development become competency-based?

*Tough to get support, esp. if coming in after other failed initiatives. *Start with honest organizational needs assessment. *Initiate with carefully planned and tailored process. Consider organizational diversity, culture, values. *Okay to pilot with most strategic units and then expand throughout organization as benefits defined, observed and quantified. Steps to competency-based employee development: points to remember

1.Identify sponsor, target employees, philosophy, and structural framework. 2.Obtain resource commitment to assess need. 3.Identify estimates of organization competency needs over an appropriate time frame. 4.Complete employee competency assessments and estimate target employees’ competency gaps. 12 Guiding steps

5.Determine estimates of target employees’ life-career needs and preferences. 6.Draft objectives and identify candidate approaches for delivery of services. 7.Develop a draft plan for a start-up. 8.Brief senior (or other) managers and obtain resource support to implement start-up process plan.

9.Organize and brief the members of an Employee Development Advisory Panel. 10.Implement and evaluate the start-up process. 11.Brief senior (or other) managers on the outcomes and lessons learned from the start-up experiences. 12.Institutionalize and evaluate the competency-based employee development process. Refer to article for complete details and discussion of each step...

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