Many organizations know that they want certain outcomes, such as lower turnover, increased job satisfaction, or increased productivity. These organizations also want to ultimately achieve an organizational mission and instill organizational values in their employees, such as mutual respect and team work.

To achieve these broad goals, organizations must design positions that accomplish certain duties and tasks in line with these outcomes and objectives. Additionally, certain capabilities, including knowledge, skills, abilities, and other personal characteristics (KSAOs) are needed in order to accomplish these tasks and duties.

The question then becomes, how can organizations determine these capabilities and performance requirements to ensure that they are achieving their desired outcomes and objectives?

Competency modeling and job analysis are the mechanisms through which organizations can achieve these goals. Competency modeling and job analysis practices serve to assess the appropriate mix of capabilities and determine the essential features of the job so that organizations can achieve these desired outcomes. The assessment can be done using a few different approaches.

The Bottom-Up Approach

The first approach is the bottom-up approach, which asks:

What are the personal attributes (knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics) that form into competencies and predict successful performance?

The Top-Down Approach

The second approach is the top-down approach, which asks:

What are the organizational values, mission, and strategy, and how do they impact the KSAOs and competencies that are selected or trained and the responsibilities of the position?

These approaches are certainly not mutually exclusive, and indeed many organizations often implement both for different purposes.

Which Approach is Best?

As just alluded to, the different approaches have different purposes.

• Bottom-up or individually focused competency models are useful for selection, promotion, training, and both performance appraisal and development for a specific position because these practices rely on being able to differentiate between individuals.
  
  
• Top-down or organizationally focused competency models are used for career planning, organizational planning, compensation, performance appraisal for a broad group of jobs, and talent allocation to teams because these practices rely partly on the organizational mission, strategy, or vision, or use information about groups of jobs, departments, or the whole organization.
  

Additionally, organizations should be aware of the fact that the specific competencies that are important for an individual position may change over the tenure of one’s career.

At ICF, our trained professionals take all of these factors under consideration when working with clients to develop top-notch competency models or conduct sound job analyses.

For More Information

Have questions? Check out our Frequently Asked Questions.

If you're interested in learning how ICF can help to improve your organization through competency modeling or job analysis or to learn more, please contact competencies@icfi.com.