KJ Associates Launches Competency Frameworks Consultancy
A new Competency Frameworks consultancy programme has been launched by Ringwood-based KJ Associates to enable companies and organisations understand which behaviours are important within their staff to be fully effective.
KJ's Katie Jones said: "Competency Frameworks help define standards and the means to achieving them, so companies use less energy delivering products and services to customers on quality, deadline and price.
"We go in and help a company develop a framework by working with its staff to determine which behaviours they believe are the most important within the business. Employees then know specifically what skills, experience, attitude and behaviour their employer expects.
"It produces measurable increases in their performance."
Competency Frameworks include both competencies, which considers behaviour and how people do their jobs, and competency, which is more to do with their skills, activities and experience.
Competencies are a set of behaviour patterns that differentiate between the performances of people in situations. They are motives, traits, personal attributes that are inherent in everyone and the level of performance will be affected by how easily and effectively a person can carry out the necessary behaviours.
Katie said: "An example is a customer service assistant who may know how to use the telephone and all about the company and its products or services - he or she can use these skills and experience without a customer noticing.
"But what the customer will remember is how the assistant behaved towards them. If they didn't look at the customer, they were rude, or carried on talking to their friend - the customer is likely to take away a negative image and go to a competitor."
Organisations seeking to gain Investors in People Accreditation (IIP) will especially benefit from this advice because competency and clarity of performance play key roles in IIP.
And Competency Frameworks make life easier for the manager and supervisor because of the clarity employees have regarding the behaviours that are expected in their job roles.