Competency Framework: HR practice that needs salvation

Since many decades, organizations have been advised to have business centric Competency Frameworks, suiting to their unique business natures and defining the core of their businesses. Frameworks are must for organizations because they help in identifying distinct ‘Organizational Capabilities’ and their continuous development to provide much required edge over their competition.

Products, Processes and Marketing, may provide initial edge to organizations but they remain vulnerable due to their easy imitations by the competition. What makes organizations impregnable is their organizational capabilities.

And what does make organizations impregnable? Their possessing  right Competency Frameworks. Frameworks which provide comprehensive directions to organisations, right from defining & driving core values, chosen paths to tread through their thoughtful  purposes and visions; take into account proven hierarchical and functional contours in terms of requisite competencies.

Historical Run for Competency Framework

Let’s briefly touch upon the history of Competency Framework practice.

Practice finds its roots in the early 20^th century when efficiency was ruling the fray. This was the time when measurable tasks and corresponding outputs were given more importance than the skills and behaviors. Frail job descriptions were full of task and output measuring parameters. But this can be construed as the beginning of the Competency Framework creation practice.

Then came the period when the importance of competencies started gaining momentum.  In his paper “Testing for Competence Rather Than Intelligence,” published in 1973, he put across for the first time that it is the competencies that are critical for success than mere having intelligence.

Competency Framework became popular in performance management, training, and succession planning that was followed by the concept of core competencies, promulgated by Prahalad & Hamel, in 1990 that linked competencies to organizational strategy for competitive advantage.

In the last 25 years, the acceptance of having a Competency Framework has gone up manifolds. Many Competency Frameworks have evolved in last couple of decades. Prominent being SHL, Lominger, Mercer, CIPD Professional Map & Thomas models.  These models primarily emphasize behavioral indicators.

A careful scrutiny of all these models reveal figuratively one thing common in all; they all talk about what all need to find in people which can be aligned with the needs of the organizations.

None of these models say anything about what all need to be looked at first at the Organization level.

Strategic Comprehension Failure

The problem started from here. Organizations in the pursuit of looking good began adopting Competency Framework practice without realizing the fact that these frameworks are not relatable in any way to their specific business needs and therefore are not usable practically.

The first argument for this is that most of the Competency Frameworks were created on the basis of functional needs. Functional heads are huddled into meeting and are forced to suggest using methods like Card-Sorting, competencies required.  The ‘Team’ finally picks up a number of Competencies deemed to be needed by the organization and announced as a part of Competency Framework.

The second argument is that no scientific study ever recommended the ideal number of competencies required to be a Competency Framework. Still, users have started talking about ideal range of competencies that may range from as low as 6 and as high as 12. Here lies the second and perhaps the most challenging problem.  Visualize a situation wherein an organization really wants to make the best use of the concept and therefore, wants to pragmatically assess its need to cover multiple functions, different geographies, its peculiar business nature etch to derive an ideal range of competencies;  the range may really come out to be so big that it may become a challenge for the organization to make it usable by users first and then to handle the data flowing out of the framework. Not possible. And this is the reason that practioners started recommending as low number of competencies on a framework so that data management can be ensured. This on the other hand led to a very drowning reality. Functional Managers stopped using these Competency Frameworks at all. At different levels of their uses like Recruitment & Selection, Promotions, Succession Planning etc where it is recommended to use prescribed competency frameworks, these frameworks were not in any way being used or in organizations where you find notional practice, frameworks were dictated to be filled in by HR Managers after a decision was arrived at.

The third argument is that the management of company does not know how many employees are contributing to the values as seen crucial and are really working to achieve the company purpose and vision. When I do ask question to CXOs, ‘What percentage of your employees are aligned with the Purpose or Vision of your Company’, they fail miserably to answer.  In my encounter with so many CXO level employees, so far not a single CXO could answer it. Yes, they do some guesswork, but  answers are far from the reality.

The fourth and the most vital argument is what these Competency Frameworks are meant for? Inarguably, any framework prescribed to an organization is to ensure that this helps in laying down a framework for ‘Organizational Capabilities’ that cannot be copied and used by any competition.  But, in reality, all designed frameworks do not have such competence in themselves to ensure it. Reason is that none of them considers the basic fundamentals of a business and the coherent organization.

 Any of the business practices if does not systematically and practically provide solutions, the end result shall be in its untimely death. That is what can be said about this cardinal HR practice which has lost its sheen even before it reaches its maturity.

Plural Tactical Challenges

Besides the strategic factors, making the practice unviable, there are some tactical challenges.

1. Too Generic and Not Role-Specific Competencies

Most frameworks use broad competencies like “communication” or “leadership,” which sound good but don’t translate into actionable behaviors for specific roles. Employees struggle to see how these apply to their daily work.

2. Lack of Business Alignment

Competency models are often created in isolation by HR without linking them to strategic business goals. If competencies don’t drive measurable outcomes, they become a tick-box exercise.

3. Overly Complex

Some frameworks have dozens of competencies and proficiency levels, making them hard to understand and apply. Managers and employees often ignore them because they’re too cumbersome.

4. Static in a Dynamic World

Business environments change rapidly, but competency frameworks are rarely updated. What was relevant five years ago may be obsolete today, especially with digital transformation and AI-driven roles.

5. Poor Integration with HR Processes

If competencies aren’t embedded into performance management, learning, and career development, they remain theoretical. Many organizations fail to integrate them into real workflows.

6. Lack of Measurable Impact

Competencies are often subjective and hard to measure. Without clear metrics, they don’t influence hiring, promotions, or training decisions effectively.

7. Employees & organization’s equally See No Value

When employees perceive competency frameworks as bureaucratic or irrelevant, engagement drops. They want practical tools, not jargon-heavy documents. Likewise, organizations see Competency Frameworks untenable and redundant HR practice. Many organizations invest heavily in competency frameworks, but they often fail to deliver the expected impact. Here are some reasons why they are often considered useless or ineffective:

Solution Apparent: Competency Wheel Model [CW Model]

Every organization starts its journey having a reason of its creation revealed through its purpose; likewise, to remain focused on business outcomes, it has a vision. Vision is followed by having a distinct culture that helps in attracting right people in the organization; however, the Value system later becomes central to the existence of the organization. Promulgated hierarchical structure is to ensure that at every distinct level of it, role holders should have definite competencies to handle responsibilities well.

It genuinely means that if an organization wants to identify a suitable structure for it in terms of ‘Organizational Capabilities’, it has to first consider all the congruent factors of Core Values, Purpose, Vision, Hierarchical Bands and of course different functional capabilities. Any miss of any of these factors, organizations will certainly fail to build unique ‘Capabilities.’ In other words, organization itself helping in its ‘Aging’ and eventual decline & fateful death.

Prajjo Competency Framework Creator: AI-Centric Software

A competency framework is required because it provides a structured way to define, measure, and develop the skills, behaviors, and knowledge needed for success in an organization

Seema Sanghi wrote in her book “The Handbook of Competency Mapping”. At the heart of any successful activity lies competence or skill. Top management is identifying corporate core competence and skills to establish them throughout the organization.’

 

 

Advantages Umpteen

Competency frameworks fail when they are generic, disconnected from strategy, overly complex, and not actionable, but with the AI centric automation of the concept ‘Competency Wheel Model’ the entire practice has become free from all sorts of challenges, either strategic or tactical as mentioned above. Some of them are:

1.      Easy to create and handle, holistic in nature

2.      The Prajjo creator has helped in ‘Empowering’ employees and managers equally.

3.      Making all employees know what is critical for success in the organization.

4.      Bringing employees and the management near to each other.

5.      Building Participatory Management practice.

6.      Flexibility to organizations to look at the framework periodically and make required changes.

7.      Ensuring that the framework so adopted is unique and works exclusively for an organization.

8.      Helps in having unique Organizational Capabilities and make business sustainable.

And, as being a CXO, you can now answer the below question well,

“WHAT PERCENTAGE OF YOUR PEOPLE ARE ALIGNED WITH THE VISION OF THE COMPANY?