In more and more organizations, the old-style appraisal interview is under fire. The emphasis would be too much on the past and what went wrong. Including competencies in conversations with employees allows them to shift their focus to their strengths and develop them further.
What is a competency profile?
A competency profile is the combination of knowledge, skills, experience and personality traits that determine success in the job. It is the answer to the question, “what must an employee know, be able to do and be in order to successfully perform the job? When determining competencies for a profile, the job (not the employee) is the starting point.
Tip: Using behavioral-level competencies, make employees razor-sharp about what they need to do more, better know, can and be to properly perform their functions. Make subsequent improvement and development agreements in the GOOD conversations.
What is a person profile?
Each employee also has a so-called person profile. They have received education and training that gives them knowledge (“know”). They then applied this knowledge in their work making them experienced in “being something” (“can do”). In their working lives and beyond, by trial and error, they have also come to know (“be”) themselves more and more.
Reinforce what works!
More and more organizations are taking the person profile as a starting point in Good Conversations. Looking to further develop competencies that employees already have a good grasp of. Why not turn “a seven into an eight? Employees then not only get recognition for their strengths, they get to focus on things they are good at. This increases job satisfaction and improves performance.
Win-win-win: This approach is not only challenging for employees, it also benefits the organization. After all, it takes blood, sweat and tears to turn a five into a six. This is often at the expense of job satisfaction because the focus is then always on the weak points.
Jobcraft
How to identify the qualities of employees and empower them accordingly? This can be done by talking about employees’ strengths rather than their shortcomings in conversations. Answers to the following questions will bring focus to this:
- What gives me the greatest job satisfaction? What do I enjoy most in my work?
- When are you in the flow and time seems to stand still?
- What kind of work do I like to do? What talents are then called upon?
- What do I often get compliments on? What does that say about what I’m good at?
- When do I go home (or to work) whistling? So what have I accomplished? So what qualities of myself do I put to use?
- What do I consider an important success from recent times? What did I do that contributed to the success? What was the effect of that? What does this say about what I am good at?
Let employees model a job that makes their hearts beat faster
Empower employees even more with jobcrafting. Using competencies, map out what employees are already good at and agree on how they will make more use of it, how they will become even better at it.
