Malia Campbell

SUMMARY

COMPETENCY FRAMEWORKS

A project to launch and design a competency framework helped spearhead one of our major goals in the Myriad HR department in 2017, which was to improve the ways in which our talent development efforts aligned with our organizational strategy. As a part of this effort, we needed to strengthen the performance-based feedback that managers provided to their teams.

WHAT ARE COMPETENCIES?

Competencies are skills and behaviors that help employees make an impact in their individual jobs and simultaneously move the company forward in reaching its strategic objectives. As Korn Ferry explains, “competencies are the embodiment of an organization’s strategy through its people. Competencies help organizations grow on a micro and macro level because they align talent strategy to business strategy.”

Core competencies are the collective skills and behaviors that make a company unique, competitive and successful. They should be a blend of the skills needed in present day and the skills that will be needed in the future. Core competencies have the most influence when they bring an organization’s values to life. Culture becomes a competitive edge.

Job-specific competencies help employees understand and master the skills that are most important in their current role as well as the skills they need to work towards advancing throughout their career path.

PROCESS

TRAINING + SELECTION

I first began this project by helping the partners and managers grasp the importance competencies. We then moved into a series of training sessions to help them understand and use the system.

Once they had a good handle on the framework, we worked together to select eight core competencies for Myriad, following the recommended methods outlined by Korn Ferry. We chose one to two competencies to align with each of our values. Because company values are often broad and have room for interpretation, competencies help define what success looks like in clear, business terminology.

We then established a set of 5-6 job competencies per role. This allowed us to develop career paths for each department so that employees understood how to succeed in their present-day role and what to work towards achieving over time.

TESTING

Before leading a company through a large change, small experiments are often helpful. I began testing out the competency framework in our internship program two years prior to rolling out our core competencies to the entire company.

To run the test, I created a set of job-specific competencies for our interns. I then designed behavioral interview questions to assess their potential performance and skill level for each competency, ranking them on a scale from 1-4. The highest scoring candidates moved on to a second round of interviews.

Competencies were incorporated into their onboarding and training so they understood why they were hired and what they could do to make an impact. At the end of each summer, we analyzed the interns’ performance against the original set of competencies. The interns who were hired through the competency framework out-performed all interns from previous years. Furthermore, the first intern who was offered a full-time position at our company was hired through the experimental competency interview process.

When I introduced the theory of competencies to the company two years later, I had strong data to back up my pitch and help the team understand its potential to help. This helped me gain immediate trust and buy-in.  

RESULTS

FEEDBACK, COACHING AND CAREER DEVELOPMENT

One of the biggest weaknesses that this system was designed to address was feedback. At the end of this project, managers gained a clear and concrete business language for their feedback and coaching conversations. I designed supplemental guides, toolkits and ongoing training sessions to support this need.

Competencies are also used in our job descriptions, career ladder materials and future-oriented development conversations to help employees understand the skills and behaviors that will help them succeed long-term.

HIRING AND ONBOARDING

We now conduct structured, competency-based interviews during our interview and hiring process. Our core competencies have been incorporated into our onboarding experiences and materials for new hires.

So, in addition to sharing our values, we now share the skills and behaviors that help employees succeed at Myriad over time. We have conversations about growth and expectations from the very beginning, and employees feel empowered and supported in their career development from day one.