ARE YOU ON THE BUS? Trained Workforce or Competent Workforce?

Some time ago, I adopted and pushed a ‘mantra’ that I believed helped cut through the theory of competency management and provided people with a simple but effective ‘ask these questions and all will be well’ concept. The mantra was simple, interrogate each element of a competency system with these three questions:

1.      USEFUL: is it useful, meaning is there value and relevance to the individual and organization

2.      USABLE: is it usable, meaning is what you have put in place actually ‘doable’ by those expected to do it

3.      SUSTAINABLE: is it sustainable, meaning are there processes in place to make sure it remains useful and usable

The concept was great, the acronym – UUS – was terrible!

Each time I ran a competency workshop I challenged the participants to come up with a better acronym. And in October 2017 it happened! Many thanks to Bader at Orpic (Oman) for coming up with BUS; a simple but effective change of one word and we have BUS:

1.      BENEFICIAL: is it Beneficial (useful), meaning is there value and relevance to the individual and organization

2.      USABLE: is it usable, meaning is what you have put in place actually ‘doable’ by those expected to it

3.      SUSTAINABLE: is it sustainable, meaning there are processes in place to make sure it remains useful and usable

ARE YOU ON THE BUS?

So, what does that mean and why is it important to you and your organization?

Before we go move ahead, a few questions for you to think about – and mentally store your responses for later:

1.      Do you want a Trained Workforce or a Competent Workforce?

2.      How do you measure competence, and perhaps, more importantly, the value of competence?

3.      How would you answer the comment “Competence Management is all theory and is too difficult to make work?”

4.      Who owns, drives and champions competence in your organization?

We will come back to those points later …… but why BUS?

But it didn’t stop there, as it became clear we could use the connection of the word to a well-known and understood mode of transport to highlight and address many of the challenges faced with competency development; hence the title of this book ‘Are you on the BUS?’

For example:

1.      A bus takes you on a journey – and competency management is a journey, so, where are you on the journey? And indeed, are you on the right bus going to the right place? The Beneficial part of BUS.

2.      How do you make sure that the bus has enough seats of the right type for people to use, and what if you need to add more seats for more people? The Usable part of BUS.

3.      How do you make sure the bus remains serviceable and fit for purpose? The Sustainable part of BUS.

This book is based on asking a series of questions, and then discussing the concepts and solutions around that question, in a user-friendly and usable way. The questions and responses are based on the ‘real-world’ application of competency and avoiding as far as possible the thick glue-like theory that seems to appear on a regular basis from academic ‘experts’. Theory is great, and necessary – but how does it help the BUS function? It need to meet the real-world, and that is quite often the first failure point of competency.

So, are you ready to get on the bus?

Available from 1st February 2018 (and on pre-order), 'Are you on the Bus' is a user-friendly guide on how to make competency development and management a success.

Extract:

DO WE NEED A BUS?

An obvious question one would think, but experience suggests that the decision process in some companies is based on ‘well everyone else has one so we want one’.

Not a great entry point to what is without doubt one of the most important strategic tools a company can put in place (if you get it right), but like all tools you need to know why you want it before you decide the what and how. The fact that everyone has one, which of course is not actually true, is no indicator that you need one.

Remember that first question we posed?

‘Do you want a Trained Workforce or Competent Workforce’?

Think of your answer – no doubt you picked Competent Workforce, an obvious ‘no-brainer’ choice you would think. Well, yes, it is a no-brainer, but that does mean that people understand the difference!

So, what is the difference? This is always a good starter discussion in workshops. I often get the discussion going by saying that I went to the Training Centre in one global company and in the reception area there was a very large display screen with a smiley face and the words “we did 10,000 hours of training this year, and spent $15 million on training.” The implication of this was that the organization was ‘doing the right thing’. I was perusing the screen when the Training & Development Manager appeared; he opened the conversation with “isn’t that great!” Now I know that as a consultant I should always play nice … but I looked him in the eye and replied, “I don’t know, is it? Did it make a difference?” A stunned pause later and we sat down to discuss the difference!

In many organization, focus and effort is invariably around training, as it is easy to measure in terms of time and cost, although in the absence of robust evaluation it is less easy to measure in terms of effectiveness.

The difference between the two could be summarized as:

1.      Trained Workforce – based on delivery and measurement (time / $$) of training, and maybe some element of Evaluation of the training

2.      Competent Workforce – based on the delivery and measurement of performance, such as:

a.   “we demonstrated improved capability”

b.   “productivity up, incidents and accidents down”

Which one is your company right now … and how do you know?

Most organizations where we pose that question trend more to the Trained Workforce element, primarily for the reasons we outlined above. The main reason is that the KPI / metric used is around training done using the hours / $$ measure. More about training later when we look at the Return on Investment (ROI) of our competency bus.

But do we all align to what we mean by competency?

There is a very large body of literature, from the deeply theoretical to the very specific, around the meaning of competence or competency. Even dictionary definitions vary and include statements such as:

·        The condition of being capable; ability

·        The state of being legally competent or qualified

·        The ability to do something successfully or efficiently

·        The ability of an individual to do a job properly. A competency is a set of defined behaviours that provide a structured guide enabling the identification, evaluation and development of the Behaviors in individual employees.

You need to be pretty competent if you are exploring space, and in NASA’s view, competencies are “brainpower, know-how, knowledge, and real capabilities – what it takes to accomplish the mission. Employees possess competencies, and positions have competency requirements which, when filled, enable NASA to accomplish its work.” My own background is military aviation and Oil & Gas, two other organizations where competence is, or should be, core to performance and effectiveness.

One of the most useful overall definitions is this from the Australian National Training Authority: “The broad concept of industry competency concerns the ability to perform particular tasks and duties to the standard of performance expected in the workplace. Competency requires the application of specified skills, knowledge and attitudes relevant to effective participation in an industry, industry sector or enterprise.”

In essence, competence is the ability of an individual, and by extension, groups of individuals, to PERFORM to a defined content and standard.

To add a few more aspects:

·        The combination of experience, knowledge, skills and behaviours that enables performance to the required standard in the job, i.e. what is expected in the workplace.

·        Aligned with strategy and key business objectives and values that help foster an organization’s success

·        A standard to guide employees at all levels in what to know and do to perform their jobs safely and effectively

Here’s another, hopefully, memorable phrase for you:

Right People (with the) Right Skills (at the) Right Time

In other words, the required performance has a business context; no point in developing competence in the wrong people at the wrong time, and certainly no point in developing the wrong competencies!

Amongst the many useful things one of my mentors, Ford Brett, has said over the years was that: “For competency management to become more than a Human Resource Management fad it will have to demonstrate quantified financial return. Unless competency management efforts are specifically designed to add value to the organization, they will only succeed through luck.” A heavy-hitting statement around the B of our BUS, the beneficial, in this case to the organization, of putting competency management in place. The full text of the article is shown an Annex A, and I am grateful to Ford for allowing me to include this in the book.

Whilst it is well and good to talk about ‘developing our people’, and ‘our people are our greatest asset’, and numerous other such HR phrases, the bottom line in business decision-making remains the financial one. As an example, the Oil & Gas industry has recently (2016-2017) suffered a downturn with low oil prices; the immediate reaction in most companies was, as always, to cut training and cut travel, as these are quick and easy hits to reduce cost.

If training is linked to competence development and workforce performance, as of course it is, then this is a in a whole range of ways a dumb decision. Likewise, decisions on capital investment, and competency development is a capital investment, were put on hold or impacted in ways that made success less likely!

However, let us assume for now that you have made a good case to management of the B (Beneficial) aspect of putting Competency Management in place in your organisation. The conclusion of the process is the management decision to:

“Go get a bus”