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

 

4. WHAT ABOUT CONVERGENCES?

Advancing in the ideas which this paper intended to promote, we sum up below the convergences or common aspects which can be seen in both perspectives, that of training and that of human talent management.

In the concept of labor competency

There are almost no differences in that ways that labor competency is construed and conceptualized. In both cases there is acceptance of the mobilization of a series of resources that are physical, conductual, cognitive and affective in a labor context to produce results that are expected and intended beforehand.

The basis used is the capacity to achieve results by mobilizing a series of skills, knowledge and dexterities, as well as the underlying behavior and conduct, in the work conditions that allow such results to be obtained.

The utility of the focus for understanding the new characteristics of work

Training institutions and companies both understand the far reaching consequences of the current processes of economic and social configuration in the shaping of work structures, and in their flows and interaction. The high value of the human factor as a possessor of knowledge with the capability to apply it for the benefit of the organization's objectives is openly acknowledged.

Both in companies and in the efforts made by the public and private agents of training, there have been efforts to develop tools for the codification of competencies that allow us to have a common language. Whether they are the norms in the national systems or the competency frameworks at company level, a group of messages is created that is intended to transmit to the users the contents of competencies which they can expect to exhibit and develop.

The notion of competency as a promoter of productivity and competitiveness

In the plans for modernizing and restructuring national training activity, when many institutions have incorporated the competency focus into their educational life, the common element as a precursor of this change and of this solution is the need to improve the conditions of productivity and competitiveness of the national or sectorial economies, or, as in the case of HTM, the need to put the whole package of their workers' competencies at the service of the company.

This proposal can be clearly seen in authors who in their work have touched on both sides, the training side and the company side. For example, Mertens (2002) proposes the management of human resources as a variable which operates in favor of productivity, along with others like technology, process organization, and the organization of work and labor relations. This author sees the concepts of learning, knowledge, competencies, innovations and productivity as tied to promoting competitiveness.

Le Boterf (2001) develops the idea of attaining the competencies required by the organization by planning and executing continuous training activity.

The notion of competency as a cohesive element in educational and organizational reforms

In this way many national training institutions and many public authorities at the level of ministries of labor and/or education, have facilitated the structuring of projects oriented to the generation of national or sectorial systems of training and certification of workers' competencies.

Globalized companies also used the reference point of competencies in their world management. Many define a small group of competencies which exemplify their identity on the level of what their people have, or should have. The frameworks of competencies are designed to transmit values like quality, the importance of the client, transparency in transactions, trustworthiness, social responsibility, etc.

The need to develop competencies from education for work and for a whole lifetime

If the focuses on competency have something very much in common it is their clarity when it comes to permanence, the unending advance towards a permanent concept of improvement and updating. The challenge of lifelong training. In line with the labor characteristics of the knowledge society, competencies are generated and regenerated with astonishing speed. Therefore the certification of competencies has an expiry date, and keeping up to date and in a state of permanent development becomes a competency named in all the management frameworks at company level, and in all national efforts aimed at establishing labor training and qualification systems.

A cycle of identification, training, evaluation, development; which can support organizational innovation

In practically all the applications of the labor competency focus the need arises to identify a group of reference competencies. This process can be carried out in different ways, but it always comes from a framework of competencies which, in the following step, is used as the basis for training activity or for HTM as the case may be. What seems less convergent in this path is the position of the actors; on the one hand, training is trying to identify competencies and develop activity for the greatest possible number of workers, and with arrangements on the sectorial or national level for the identification of competencies, while on the other hand, companies, often in an isolated but global way, are seeking to define their framework and to obtain the competencies required in the market.

5. WHAT REMAINS TO BE RESOLVED? CHALLENGES AND DIVERGENCIES

Some aspects seen from the HTM viewpoint or from the viewpoint of training for work do not seem to be going in the same direction, or are at least still keeping their distance on conceptual questions and on what has to do with coordination and the participation of the actors. Some of these will be analyzed below.

Competency as tasks and attributes v competency as mobilization of resources

The concept is becoming increasingly solid insofar as certainty as to how to modify performance is concerned, and more ethereal when it comes to evaluating and apprehending it. The more extreme the ways of tackling it are, the more difficult it is to get good results. For example, a general definition of competencies as titles (work in a team, effective communication, etc.) is of little use when it comes to developing training programs which are normally carried out from the perspective of the institutions. The practices of curricular preparation there have favored more restricted descriptions that facilitate ideas about what to teach.

This brings the definition of standards close to the line of tasks and activities and to the definition of units and elements of competency which would include "achievements" that people are capable of attaining.

On the other hand, very often it does not suit companies to have a restricted definition of competency norms. Very often, in spite of careful preparation, the standards do not cover peculiarities or elements which form part of the identity of the work of large groups of companies. Besides, efforts to carefully detail and describe competencies are sometimes real "neo-Taylorist" examples of the contents of posts whose main drawback is that they cannot be applied because they are far too detailed.

Competency standards v competency dictionaries

Competency standards try to describe, in the most reasonable way possible, the collection of knowledge, skills, dexterities and understanding which people bring to bear in a labor context to achieve a result. In their models, many companies put all their efforts into behavioral and attitudinal competencies, considering that these are definitive for successful performance, so they do not concern themselves with labor achievements which are described in a more technical way.

Furthermore, as has been shown in many examples of documentation for ISO certification and for the standardization of competencies, some companies are concerned about the possibility that their way of doing things and the secrets of their organization will leak out in the concepts of the standards.

Thus we find that big organizations tend to define their models insisting on aspects like quality, but do not describe in the standard the productive functions which lead to quality, rather the personal conduct and the attitudes of a competent worker who exhibits his concern for quality in his daily work.

Who defines competency? The people in the organization or the management of the organization?

A characteristic aspect of many models of HTM by competencies is the definition of competencies by the management of the company. In such cases it is often argued that there is no better way to define competencies than by the needs detected by company management themselves. In fact, when dictionaries or catalogues are available it is more expeditious for management to select a framework of competencies and institutionalize it. Very often this institutionalization is subject to "negotiation" or at least "concertation" with workers' representatives.

The systems of training and the certification of competencies which are promoted by national training institutions or by ministries of labor or education recommend worker participation in the identification of competencies. We hear it said that nobody understands the work to be done better than the workers themselves.

Training as an element which facilitates the development of competencies, and as a clear protagonist in the worker's working life, is coming to be seen more and more as a worker's right. Thus participation in the development of competency frameworks implies participation in the planning of training, and the best successful experiences have been those which involved such participation.

An enveloping standardized system (top-down) or a "custom made" system of activity (down-top)

There is a great variety of examples on this point. On the one hand there are the countries that have defined national systems of norms and competency certification in an effort to create rules of play and transparency in the training and development of human talent nationwide. These systems have enjoyed full government support, and one of their main efforts centers on the increasing incorporation of companies for the identification and validation of competencies. Examples of this approach are the standardized systems in England, New Zealand, Australia and Mexico.

On the other hand there are those cases of specific applications of the competency training and development focus at the level of companies or sectors. When it comes to specific action, there are experiences like that of the SENAI in the automotive industry in Brazil, for example, where, as new factories have been set up in new cities, joint work by SENAI and the manufacturing company have led to the development of custom made models for the training and management of human resources. Currently SENAI maintains very close connections in its attention to training needs in this industry. In the case of Mercedes Benz for example, they practically maintain a school in one of the large plants in the State of Sao Paulo, where work by competencies for personnel management has begun.

De Moura Castro mentions training in colleges in Oklahoma, and describes these as a case in which training serves demand and is not its victim. "The courses are given by people from industry, they are created because there are jobs, and they are terminated if there are not". "Courses are not given out of charity, nor because the school is committed to some cause, nor because the students are in a condition of inferiority".

More recently, there are experiences like that of Mertens (2002) that have to do with the application of competency models at company level, connecting the management of human talent with the management of productivity, and seeking an integrating framework for the company's development activity which considers people as a valuable asset. Under this assumption, competencies are integrated into the company's strategy of productivity and competitiveness. In fact, productivity cannot be attained using only a scheme of investment in technology Competent human talent is a clear solution in the search for improvement in the input-product relation.

In the light of this evidence, some questions such as those set out below should be analyzed:

Can the company define a model and rely on training institutions to develop it?
What spaces can national models take advantage of to effectively consider business logic through the norms of competency?
Is it feasible to construct a mixed form in which the public interests of training and the immediate interests of the company come so close to each other?

As has been seen, there are many good experiences in countries like Brazil, Mexico, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic, where a competency model has been constructed as part of the competitive strategy of the organization, and with direct significance for a company or at least for an economic sector. Here the two kinds of logic are mixed, and good results are obtained making the most of common advantages. However, not all training institutions can come up to the level of companies in generating "custom made" attention. In the short term this is more costly and demanding in resources.

What is the ideal point? That point at which satisfactory results for both sides can be attained through a rational use of resources?

Personalized attention is more desirable in the business models of human resources management. However, the definition of national standards is still part of the work of many institutions, certainly with companies and workers as partners. It is here that part of the answer may lie.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

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