Appraisal and recruitment systems are fairer and more open?

Whilst this may or may not have been true in the 1980's, the proliferation of successful diversity and discrimination lawsuits levied against companies today would suggest that this is not the case today. The subjective assumptive strategy behind the development of competency frameworks make them a corporate risk-management liability today, as they reflect the situation that existed when the assumptions were made, not the situation that exists today. In today's 'no win - no fee' litigation environment, an out of date competency framework will provide an evidentiary gold mine to demonstrate unfair and closed appraisal and recruitment processes.

There is a link between organizational and personal objectives?

There is without doubt a corporate benefit to identifying employees whose personal objectives are aligned to organizational objectives - provided the objectives do not change. In the 1980's, corporate change was perceived as a linear function, and a long-term mutually advantageous alignment profile through to retirement could be predicted. As the linear change model progressed to an exponential change model, the link between longevity of organizational and personal objectives collapsed. As organizational objectives switched from maintaining collaborative loyalty to reacting with immediacy to survive change, so personal objectives switched to a separated survival focus with the obvious effects on retention rates we see today. The major risk in linking organizational and personal objectives today is that the link will probably contravene diversity and discrimination legislation. 

Processes are measurable and standardized across organizational and geographical boundaries?

Whilst measurement and standardization of processes produce a cost-benefit impact potential in a static environment, they conversely introduce risk in dynamic situations. Corporate recognition of, and reaction to change requires innovation and initiative to mitigate risks that critically far outweigh the cost benefits attributable to the strategy of standardization. An argument can be made for competency standardization across technical, trade, production and safety personnel, and for employees operating interface procedures with other areas of a corporation. However, this standardization can inhibit the development of best practice, and often risks being a mirror system for qualifications that already exist. The concept of standardization across geographic boundaries is unfortunately strategically flawed. Processes frequently have a significant cultural relevance component which, when transported, can negatively impact the process. As an example, a motivational induction process developed in the U.S. can produce results varying from belly-laughs to horror when exported to Central Europe or Asia.

The major disadvantages put forward against the establishment of competency frameworks were:

• Competency is not guaranteed to translate into performance as there is an attitudinal and behavioral component required for this translation. 
• Competency frameworks can favor employees who are good in theory but not in practice and can fail to achieve the results that make a business successful.
• Competencies are based on what good performers have done in the past and this approach works against rapidly-changing circumstances by setting one particular group of attitudes in stone and not finding people with the right skills and attitudes for new ways of working.
• Competency based assessments run the risk of producing clones rather than a team with mixed skills who balance each other's strengths and weaknesses.
• Competency frameworks become out of date very quickly due to the fast pace of change in organizations and it can therefore be expensive, time consuming or even impossible to keep them up-to-date.
• Because of earlier discrimination against certain groups in society, the models used for developing competencies tend to exclude the attitudes of these groups so it subsequently becomes difficult, for example, for women, or people with disabilities or from ethnic minorities to match the underlying prejudicial assumptions of the competency framework.
• Some behavioral competencies are basically personality traits and it is unreasonable to make decisions based on these rather than demonstrated performances.

Do Competency frameworks fit into a 21st century organization?

If the organizational strategy is to focus on potential - the answer is - Yes!

If the organizational strategy is to focus on performance - the answer is categorically - No!

Competencies relate to assumptive potential performance based on qualification. Performance is a value determined by quantification. The two are not only incompatible, but qualification can have a detrimental effect on performance. 

• Theoretically qualified individuals progress, and performance exemplars go unrecognized by competency frameworks.
• Significant investment is made into developing 'talent' identified and fast-tracked based on previous competency qualifications instead of current performances, and significant effort is then put in to retaining talent that has yet to (and frequently doesn't) demonstrate engagement in the organizational ethos and mission by producing performances.
• Succession planning follows the talent management competency-based strategy and actively suppresses performance-based promotion "from the ranks."
• The front-line innovation and initiative essential to developing new best practice to deal with change is sublimated during recruitment and operations as these competencies are assigned to a more qualified competency category. 

• communication skills
• people management
• team skills
• customer service skills 
• results-orientation
• problem-solving. 

These competencies appear on the surface to be quantifiable - an individual can be easily rated as "poor" or "good" against the definitions - but in reality they are too generalized to be meaningful when they need to be applied specifically to a performance-focused organization. If we take "customer service skills" for example - just what are the specific performances that we are evaluating?

• Can follow and read a script over the telephone?
• Understands a system and can diagnose customer problems against that specification?
• Can assist a customer to make an informed choice?
• Can question effectively to determine real issues?
• etc. etc. etc.

It would be impossible to include all these specifics in a competency framework and keep them updated as skills improve, but more importantly, it's not necessary as the specifics already exist in the Learning Management System. The diagnostic phase of a Training Needs Analysis is designed to take generalizations and turn them into specifics that can be benchmarked, trained and evaluated by a LMS.

If it is accepted that in a performance-focused organization "Investment in People" is a strategic imperative, and employees will therefore be trained to perform to the best of their abilities, and competencies are dynamically updated through the quantitative evaluation associated with this training, then the obvious question must be asked - Where is the Return on Investment for a Competency Framework?