Competencies in training and competencies in human talent management.
Convergences and challenges

 

INTRODUCTION

Starting from a simple conception which describes it as the capacity to carry out a series of tasks in a defined job, work competency has perhaps become one of the concepts which has given rise to the most conceptual analysis. Its application in the management of human talent, in aspects such as training and development or training and labor qualification, opens the concept to a variety of denominations. Thus there is training by competencies, selection by competencies, evaluation by competencies and remuneration by competencies.

In Latin America, institutional capacity in the offer of training for work has been widely developed. Practically all the countries in the region have an institution dedicated by law to the training and development of human resources. In this scenario, in the last five years the group of promises of renewal implicit in the concept of competent work have been brought together. This also had a decisive influence on the modernization and adaptation of the training programs, which were often old fashioned. The competency focus came from the field of education to play a fundamental role in the modernization and updating of the offer of training and qualification for work. (1)

Simultaneously, since the 1980s and even before, companies, and especially the function of the management of human resources (which henceforth we will call "talent"), have applied the definition of labor competency to develop the management cycle of their talents. This focus has the same roots as that applied by the training institutions, but, as we will try to show in this paper, in spite of shared common origins they still maintain different perspectives and applications which challenge the capacity of countries and national authorities to achieve a more coherent and unified national effort in the development and management of a country's talents.

In order to develop this paper, we will review the main conceptual bases and the underlying logic in the applications of competency in the training and management of human resources so as to conclude developing the aspects they have in common, which we call convergences, and the challenges which have not yet been resolved, in a piece of work that would seem to have common elements and not be polarized.

1. SOME REMARKS IN THE CONCEPT OF COMPETENCY

Below we touch on a number of concepts to do with work competency that have been published recently, with the aim of extracting from them those characteristics of the concept that are useful for the subsequent development of this paper. They are as follows:

A capacity to mobilize diverse cognitive resources to meet a certain type of situation (Perrenoud, 2000).

LeBoterf (1997) says that competencies are not themselves resources in the sense of knowing how to act, knowing how to do, or attitudes, but they mobilize, integrate and orchestrate such resources. This mobilization is only pertinent in one situation, and each situation is unique, although it could be approached as an analogy to other situations that are already known.

The exercise of competency involves complex mental situations, schemes of thought which allow determination (more or less consciously and rapidly) and performance (in a more or less efficient way) of action which is relatively adapted to a situation.

Vocational competencies are constructed in training, but also in the course of the everyday experiences of a teacher as he moves through different work situations.

Richard Boyatzis:

The time which people spend doing courses is not totally relevant for the development of their competencies; sometimes what people do outside school or in the company is more important for the development of their competencies.

All attempts to establish standards of performance and to detail the characteristics of successful work are not precise. Research into the content of work is a good idea, but the attempt to create a common denominator, and then to set this up as a national standard, is an exaggeration.

The healthiest way is to motivate people to make their own precise self-evaluations.

Richard Boyatzis (1982) defines work competency as an underlying characteristic of a person which can be a motive, a trait, a skill, an aspect of his personal image or of his social role, or a body of knowledge which he or she uses.

This definition shows competency to be a mix of a number of things (motivation, personal traits, skills, knowledge, etc.), but we only see the evidence of these things in the way in which the person behaves. In other words, we have to see the person in action, performing, doing and relating to others, and thus we can perceive his competency.

In another concept competency is a construct, it is the result of a pertinent combination of a number of resources (knowledge, information networks, relation networks, knowing how to do) (Le Boterf, 2000).

The insistence on a "mobilizing" component in competency can be perceived in the article by Fernández (1998) when he asserts, "competencies can only be defined in action", they cannot be reduced to knowing or to knowing-doing, so they cannot be restricted to what is acquired by training alone. We can see that in these processes there is a mobilization from knowing to action, during which value is added in the form of reactions, decisions and conduct exhibited during performance. Therefore, the capacity to carry out instructions does not by itself define competency, what is also required can be called "actuation", that is to say the added value which the competent individual contributes and which allows him to "know how to connect up some instructions and not just apply them in an isolated way". In a dynamic conception, competencies are continually acquired (education, experience, daily life), mobilized and developed, and they cannot be explained or demonstrated independently of a context. This conception locates competency in the individual's head, it is part of his patrimony and his intellectual and human capital.

In a recent INTECAP(2) publication, we also find a reference to the concept of work competency after the etymological meanings of the word have been noted. By this definition, competency is conceived as the "group of attitudes, dexterities, skills and knowledge required to carry out to a good standard determinate productive functions in a work ambient". INTECAP adds the description of knowledge, knowledge to be, and knowledge to do as component parts of the concept. After that, we are shown a table of 10 fields of competency used in Guatemala:

- Planning of activities

- Quality at work

- Administration of activities

- Administration of information

- Work in a team

- Service to the client

- Productivity at work

- Innovation at work

- Use of technology

- Conservation of the environment and job security

Locating the concept in the sphere of human resources management, the definition given by the Public Function Commission of Canada says, "Competencies represent the knowledge, capacities, skills and behavior which an employee exhibits in doing his job, and which are key factors in achieving the results pertinent to the organization's strategies."

The definition of competency has evolved from a standardized concept towards a comprehensive concept

Definitions of competencies as collections made up of knowledge and/or qualities are giving way to an understanding of the concept based more on mobilized capacities. This suggests that competent work brings in its wake a complex mixture of those attributes, tasks and capacities developed by the person to put all these assets into action in his work life.

This concept leads us to think that competency is not to be found in work activity, we do not extract the competencies of the activities carried out in a certain job. It is the worker who possesses and mobilizes his resources of competency to successfully carry out this activity, task or operation.

In our view, there are two poles in the conceptualization of work competency. One is in the breaking down or codification of the tasks and activities carried out, which concentrates on preparing descriptive index cards of these tasks. The other is the generalist extreme, which tends to define competency in one single word, usually associated with conduct or behavior. Some examples of this extreme are competency defined as "interpersonal relations", "attention to the client", or "effective communication", etc.

Lastly, the most recent research on this subject recognizes the configuration of collective competency, that which explains the results which work teams achieve, and ambients that foster motivation and productivity. The focus of human resources management dwells precisely on the need to develop this collective competency in the course of making as explicit as possible the extraordinary potential of tacit knowledge which is created and which circulates and applies in work groups. One of the aspects which distinguishes this focus on competency from the traditional focus of management based on qualities and qualifications, is that it links competency with the strategic objectives of the organization.

Our conception leads to the idea that competency on the individual, collective or organizational plane allows the information that is handled by the organization to be transformed into knowledge which can be taken advantage of to improve competitiveness. Organizations generate, store and administer large amounts of information, and in their day to day work they develop routines, some of which are planned and others thought up by the workers in their daily interaction. The best efforts towards competitiveness try to convert this information into knowledge which is applicable to generating innovations. Individual, group and organizational competency become a powerful motor for learning, and so a fundamental aspect of human resources management.

 

 

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(1)  To give some examples, in the Central American and Panamanian isthmus there are the INA (Costa Rica), INSAFORP (El Salvador), INTECAP (Guatemala)
(2) Technical Institute of Training and Productivity. The National Institution of Vocational Training in Guatemala.

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