subject: Reasons Why Your Employees Need Competency Based Training [print this page] Are you in a managerial position directly responsible for the performance of your subordinates? You must have noticed that work is being done less lately and when you take a closer look, it is not because your employees are getting less motivated or that they are doing something illegal at work, but because their skills are not up to par. That is where a competency based training is needed.
Both the business and the government sectors have started to embrace the need for competency training. It actually refers to a set of standards that are defined in an employee's job roles that can be measured against well-accepted standards, which in turn defines the employee's capability to do his job. These capabilities can then be improved through proper training, making the person up to the standards of the job or simply to make him more efficient at work. And training can be focused on just one aspect of the job like the software an employee is using or as whole, like how he does certain processes in his job.
The challenge really falls into the design of the skills training to be done for the employees. There are a few reasons for this:
One is that training becomes both a challenge or easier to perform when done on a group of employees doing the same job. For example in a sales group where the people are basically selling the same products and using the same approach or techniques. It becomes easy because of the fact that there is a need for just one training program as compared to having to create a number of trainings for different skill types or jobs. The challenge is in the actual training of a large number of people.
Another problem that you might stumble upon is if the employee does not readily accept the training, thinking that it is proves his inefficiency or even incapability to perform what he was hired to do. Some employees may see a training as an opportunity to improve themselves, while there will always be those people who think about it negatively. Motivating these people to go into training and make full use of what they learn there is another task that you may have to undertake. It falls under your responsibility to convince that person that the training he will be undergoing is just to help him become better in what he is doing, and not as a show of lack of confidence in his skills.
Human resource and operations managers must both realize that in this information age, there is always a trend in the way changes are done in any organization. There are many catalysts for this. It can be with the advancement of the machines used in production, or of the software to help automate work, or with the processes themselves on how things should be done in the office. These constant changes, especially if it these are made rapidly, can have a grave impact on the competencies of the employees. Therefore these should always be taken into consideration when designing a competency based training program.
