Two thirds of training investment has no discernible impact on business performance (according to Peopleway). It is therefore no surprise that sales and marketing organisations are looking for smarter ways to utilise their training budgets and demonstrate return on investment.
Read our 3-step approach to choosing robust learning interventions and benchmarking change in organisational performance.
Step 1. Defining the competencies
Competencies are the set of knowledge, skills and behaviours required to successfully perform in a job. A clear competency framework can help focus an organisation on the things that matter when recruiting and developing talent, as well as provide clarity to managers and employees alike.
With the world of work ever changing and organisations evolving to meet the shifting demands, it is crucial that a competency framework is reviewed and updated regularly to reflect the skills required by its employees.
As a first step, organisations must review their competency frameworks and decide if they are reflective of the current business environment.
Five questions you should ask yourself:
- Does our competency framework reflect our organisation’s current values?
- Do we accurately incorporate all the roles within our organisation globally within the framework?
- Can our employees clearly assess their level of competence against the framework?
- Does the framework contain a good level of detail without being overbearing?
- Is the framework futureproofed?
Step 2. Assessing the competencies
Once the competencies have been defined, the next step is to assess them.A recent article from BBC highlighted the Dunning-Kruger effect on leadership mobility, with some organisations still falling foul of subjective assessments of competence. An infamous example of this in action was when MPs vastly overstated their confidence in their abilities around simple mathematics.
With so much importance placed on assessing competence, many organisations are seeking alternative or complementary ways to measure this.
At Kantar, we help clients combat the complications of the Dunning-Kruger effect by using our COMPASS© tool. Through a tailored competency-based questionnaire, we can objectively measure a department, team, market, or individual’s level of understanding and confidence. As a result, we provide insight into how different parts of the business are performing and can identify development needs.
Five questions you should ask yourself:
- Do we have an objective system for assessing competence?
- Do we assess understanding as well as confidence?
- Are individuals being consistently assessed against our competency frameworks?
- Are we creating actionable insights from the assessments?
- Do we use the insights from competency assessments to reshape our training curriculum?
Step 3. Tracking the competencies
It is important that competencies are tracked for the following reasons:
- Development needs will naturally shift over time
- You can identify whether training interventions are closing development gaps.
Turning competency assessment into a yearly cycle can yield great benefits for an organisation and, in turn, foster the culture of data-led learning and development, which we see in outperforming organisations.
With our COMPASS© tool, Kantar can help you benchmark your sales and marketing organisation’s results to a peer group of leading CPG, retail, B2B and pharmaceutical companies.
Once your organisational benchmark is complete, we can translate it into strategic recommendations to encourage alignment, momentum, and growth.
Five questions Kantar can help you answer:
- What capabilities and competencies do our functions need to be future proof?
- How do we ensure that our training investment decisions are data led and provide a return on investment?
- How do our people’s knowledge and confidence levels compare to our competitors?
- How do we turn subjective assessment into objective assessment to support performance reviews?
- How do we track and measure change in commercial capability?
Kantar’s Organisational Performance team can help: please contact us for more information.