Knowledge, skills and abilities of people are the most demanded resources in our time. To fully master these elements, specialists need decades. A large number of industries use interdisciplinary approaches, while performing not one, but several tasks at once. Companies accumulate experience that can be stored in a competence center. This is a special department of the enterprise. It will be discussed in detail in our material.
Competence Center - what is it?
In the modern economic system, the most valuable product is information. For its production, knowledge is needed - a special resource that needs to be accumulated. Optimization and use of the mental activity of people are the most important processes in the field of organizational management.
Information, like any other resource, has several problems. Information and knowledge may be lost. For businesses, it's alwaysfailure: the team is disbanded, employees leave or change plans. Often, the loss of information is fraught with the loss of money, time, and, worst of all, goals.
The solution to this problem is connected with the creation of competence centers. This authority is engaged in the systematic collection of the most important knowledge, documented skills or abilities. The available information is distributed among specialists. This ensures optimal use of human resources within one organization.
Competence center is a special kind of structural element in an enterprise. It controls one or more important lines of business. Thanks to the competent authority, relevant knowledge is accumulated, and ways to solve problems are also searched.
The idea of competency management centers is not new. To one degree or another, it is implemented by scientific and technical information departments, as well as archives, quality and standardization groups, etc. Further, however, we will talk about an instance whose activity is the integration of knowledge, expert work, modernization processes, etc. Of particular importance here is not even information, but the totality of social connections that form knowledge.
Structure of professional competence centers
The functionality and structure of the competent authorities depend on the defining task that the organization is called upon to solve. Thus, four types of centers are best known. They can act both separately and as part of a single system.
The first competence center isbody for the collection and storage of best practices. The main tasks of this instance are the accumulation, formalization and dissemination of best practices at enterprises. The center's specialists find and analyze the main processes, make recommendations of a technical nature and form standards for their use. Also, programs are being developed to manage integration processes and make certain changes to them.
Building excellence can be related to sales techniques, consulting services, customer service, product development, project management, and so on. Specialized centers of excellence associated with the accumulation of excellence are the easiest to develop and apply in the management system.
The second type of competent authorities is associated with the formation of technological standards. Such centers acquire certain knowledge, but the emphasis is on their technical component - software development and selection of appropriate equipment. Specialists standardize and generalize processes on a single technological platform.
Distributed service is the third type of centers of excellence. The task of such a unit is the use of resources by the teams that participated in the project. Staff is committed to supporting numerous knowledge management initiatives, including product training, software evaluation, and more. Distributed service is one of the most used models in the West.
Finally, the last structural element of the competence body is the centralized service unit. It has its own budget and set of cost recovery methods. Such a center accompanies a considerable number of projects, develops requirements and standards for information and technical subsystems, and also promotes the exchange of knowledge in the enterprise. When choosing such a model, it is recommended to conduct a thorough diagnosis of the organizational culture of the enterprise, evaluate this policy and the procedures being implemented.
Creation of competence centers
How to form the optimal type of competent authority in an enterprise? To begin with, it should be realized that each of the organizational forms listed above has its own disadvantages and advantages. Before you start creating a body, you need to correctly formulate the goals and expectations for the work of the existing unit. Only then should a certain strategy be developed.
Sometimes competency development centers can emerge spontaneously. This happens on the basis of the previous professional activities of practitioners, their associations, interest groups and other formal and informal structures in the entire procedure of their formation.
The most relevant approach to creating a competence center is the top-down strategy. The predominant role here will go to the executive manager - the person who will start moving the project towards the goal. At the center of integrationstrategy will always be a set of people, processes and technologies, even despite the large number of dimensions. An integration strategy will have to be regularly considered to compare it with organizational entrepreneurship, outsourcing (transfer of authority to another company), partner support, financial policy, choice of standards, etc.
Problems of organ formation
Organization of a competence center in most cases is associated with a considerable number of problems. What difficulties may arise in the way of the formation of competent authorities? The most common problems should be listed.
The first one is lack of resources and time. Gathering resources in many enterprises may act as an optional rather than a core activity. In this regard, many experts simply do not have time to engage in the collection of knowledge or their exchange. There is also the opposite problem, when there is time to collect material, but there is not enough material itself. To conduct trainings, participate in conferences or implement IT, a certain amount of resources is required, which enterprises may lack.
The next problem is the lack of proper managerial attention. Managers are most often concerned only with the process of achieving their own operational goals. They do not have the proper amount of knowledge about the state of affairs in the center of competence. Labor productivity, as well as the accumulation of experience, will be impossible under such conditions.
Another difficulty in shapingcompetent authorities is associated with internal competition. Within the boundaries of one organization, barriers may arise in the exchange of knowledge between experts from different departments. The solution to the problem will be the organization of the work of practical communities in which enthusiasts will add knowledge to third parties.
An aging workforce is one of the most common barriers to building competency bodies. If an expert takes a well-deserved rest in a year or two, then he is unlikely to start accumulating information. Another difficulty is seen in the lack of enthusiasm and new perspectives. The emergence of new ideas and relevant concepts will become extremely unlikely.
Finally, the last major problem is the body of obsolete knowledge. An organization will degrade if it does not think innovatively and invent something new.
Competence center benefits
What is the role and importance of competent authorities? Can some benefit be derived from them? These questions are increasingly being asked by representatives of various organizational structures. The advantages of the centers for the development of professional competencies do exist, and they are significant. Such units collect key knowledge, group and systematize it.
Competence centers monitor the competent and regular production of expertise, do not allow people and project teams to disperse. The work of the institutions under consideration will allow achieving significant financial savings, as well as eliminating duplication of functions and processes. Knowledge will be reused andas a result - optimization of project implementation, competent use of resources and their management. This will free up experts' time for consultations, and the company will be able to provide services to a larger number of applicants.
In the West, competence centers have long been integrated into the management system, they have become an integral part of it. Third-party consultants are hired for a lot of money, and the number of consulting firms is growing. All of them cooperate with different enterprises, or are part of their structure.
In Russia, however, many companies are missing out on significant profits, because they themselves could sell their knowledge to others. That is why domestic specialists should think about accumulating the best experience - one of the steps towards the introduction of more ambitious knowledge management programs. Often the concept of best experience is defined as the most efficient way to do a particular job or achieve useful information. Such knowledge is concentrated not in documents, but in the minds of the people themselves.
Competence centers aim to share knowledge, analyze the organizational culture of the enterprise and increase the motivation of employees. The successes and difficulties of the ongoing project are largely determined by the form of organizational culture and the established practice of group work.
Functions of competence centers
The institutions under consideration perform tasks related to the accumulation of knowledge and the exchange of knowledge in a particular area of business. Thus, a simple regional center of competence is capable ofexecution of the following powers:
- Reflecting the current state of organizational knowledge management. This is the formation of knowledge maps, corporate expert sheets (the so-called yellow pages), processing of internal and external requests and much more.
- Transform hidden and individual expertise into formal documentation that can be accessed by most employees.
- Continuously improving the quality of expert work and maintaining a leading position in a certain market area.
- Checking changes in global trends and technologies.
- Providing descriptions of knowledge from project deliverables, converting them into the most appropriate formal document (success stories, key experiences, database, etc.).
- Distributing the knowledge that was collected by the center to other departments of the company.
- Managing enterprise knowledge bases, indexing and cataloging them.
- Ensuring high-quality and effective communication links between specialists and experts.
- Create, use and protect the intellectual property of the enterprise.
- Care for the change of professional generations, regular training of young employees, transfer of experience to newcomers from experts.
It should be taken into account that every enterprise has its own interests and priorities. Despite differences in experience, goals and areas of activity, companies are gradually coming to realize the value of intellectual assets. Specialized competence centers are being created, whichhelp you achieve your goals by gaining valuable experience.
Types of competencies
Having de alt with the formation and organization principles of competence centers, we should move on to the competencies themselves. So they call a certain circle of someone's powers or issues in which a person can be well aware. There are four types of competencies.
Corporate competencies are accepted in companies. They are the same for any position and help, for example, to work effectively in a team. The set of powers or issues of this kind are typical for small regional centers of competence.
The next group of elements is called management. It includes competencies, the presence of which helps business leaders to successfully achieve their goals. Here one should highlight the ability to effectively solve one's problems, the ability to competently plan one's work, control the service process, make decisions independently, generate new ideas, respond to changes in the situation, etc. The management group is typical for large organizations and extensive, federal centers of competence.
The third group of competencies is called professional. This includes elements that may apply to certain job groups. For example, these are sales skills, product knowledge, understanding of the retail business as a market segment, etc.
The last group of competencies is called personal. This includes various aspects thatinclude individual achievements and value judgments about results. For example, these are activity, discipline, leadership, a high level of self-organization, increased adaptability, the ability to work with voluminous information, analytical skills, initiative, manageability, and much more.
Any center of information competence incorporates several elements from each presented group.
Collecting and organizing
In competence technology centers, there are three types of knowledge and skills, systematized depending on the degree of occurrence. The first group of elements is called natural. These are the basic qualities given to a person from birth. Here you can highlight openness, sociability, charisma and much more.
The second group of competencies is called acquired. This includes skills, abilities and knowledge that a person was able to acquire based on previous experience. In particular, it is the ability to plan.
Finally, the third group of competencies is called adaptive. This includes qualities that allow a new employee to achieve the designated tasks as quickly as possible in a new professional environment. Here it is necessary to highlight the emotional qualities of a person that cannot be possessed from birth. They are developed over time, that is, in a phenotypic way.
In different centers of competence, the provisions on knowledge and skills are also different, and therefore the following classification should be discussed. In this case, skills, abilities and knowledge differ in degreedifficulties. They are divided into simple, threshold, differentiating and detailed.
A simple group includes a single list of knowledge, skills or abilities that are observed in human actions. The threshold group includes information that is necessary to acquire permission to perform work. A detailed group consists of several information levels, the number of which is determined by the purposes of using a particular organizational model. Thus, federal centers of competence include from five to several dozen levels, and regional centers - no more than five. Finally, the last, differentiating group is aimed at identifying behavioral characteristics that distinguish the best employees from outsiders.
Any assessment of knowledge and skills should be carried out on the condition that the results of the assessment will not be stored for a long time. The new procedure will have to be implemented in a year, maximum two. To this end, there are several interregional centers of competence in Russia, which allow for regular verification and systematization of information about employees.
Competency models
The employer or his representatives draw up a profile of each employee, which is reduced to a single system of criteria. Private or public competence centers form a package of information about each person. To do this, they take into account the following factors:
- how the employee achieves the goal;
- what qualities helped the employee achieve positive results;
- what exactly is required fromemployee.
Any competencies specified in the employee profile should be ranked as much as possible in order of priority. They should be divided into major and minor, as well as desirable and necessary.
Each type of competence should be measurable, formalized, understandable, structured, relevant and flexible. Flexibility should be shown to accommodate all kinds of changes.
Federal competence centers provide general schemes for the formation of profiles. So, they can consist of the following elements:
- professional competence cluster - a set of interrelated knowledge, skills and abilities that are united by some homogeneity;
- competence level;
- specific competence;
- behavior indicators.
Thus, each competence is a set of certain psychological and behavioral indicators. They are combined into levels and blocks, but depend on the semantic volume. The total number of levels can be different - it all depends on the type of organization and the built competency model.
It should also be noted that the competency should have a simple and concise name, for example:
- decision making;
- personality development;
- relationship management.
The existing clusters can be divided into four areas: actions and interactions (working to achieve results and connecting with people), intellectual activity (working with information) and developmentstrategies.
Relevance of competence centers
In practice, many HR professionals confuse concepts such as "competence" and "competence". In the first case, we are talking about the ability that reflects the specified behavioral standards that can lead to performance at work. Achieving a certain level of performance results is interpreted as competence.
It should also be mentioned that today there are many definitions of the concept of "competence". Two approaches were identified by experts:
- European, which is a description of the expected work results and tasks;
- American, where competence is a description of an employee's behavior. The employee must show the right behavior, and as a result, achieve high and effective results in the course of their work.
In the CIS, the basic definition is used, according to which competencies are personal abilities and qualities, professional skills and abilities that are given to an employee for the successful implementation of their job duties. Here we should highlight such elements as leadership, competent planning, focus on goals and results, communication skills, adaptability to change, personal development, the ability to set clear goals and objectives, generating and accumulating certain ideas, and much more.
Thus, competence is an integral part of humanpersonality. Special competence centers help to effectively reveal the capabilities of employees.
