Competency Science: How to Prepare for Change

End of the Industrial Era: The Transition to a Cross-Functional Organization
In the past, HR management systems were built to manage employees. They siloed individuals by job function and department, leading to unintentional neglect of employees' needs and wellbeing. At a time when workforce engagement is becoming a top strategic business priority for senior leaders, the acceleration towards connectivity and creating value through project-based tasks is changing how organizations optimize their people.  

Today, traditional functional jobs, which are typically divided by departments, are now giving way to more fluid and flexible ways of working by organizing people around projects, tasks and deliverables. Even before the pandemic, new ways of working were emerging, specifically the rise of what is now being called the “skill-based organization.” Legacy HR systems are centered on experiences and keywords, which often lack the key details needed to optimally match people to roles and determine advancement gaps. In order for leaders to adequately prepare for this transition, the granular details of their firms’ human capital must go beyond quantifying hard capabilities—this is where competency science softwares come in: creating value by digitally mapping employees’ human capabilities, adjacent skills, and potential. 

Rewriting HR for the Digital Age
In an age where digitization has the potential to reshape the talent market, competency science and machine learning are uniquely positioned to help HR executives redefine how they hire. When nearly 70% of competencies are shared across industries, it’s critical for organizations to buy into a competency-based approach that will drive the most value. New HR softwares need not organize people, but should be used for engaging and retaining employees. That’s where platforms like Claira come in: creating direct value by mapping out a firm’s human capital but digitally, using competency science and machine learning.

It’s no secret that technologies that enable transformation to a competency-based organization already exist. Yet according to Deloitte, the main barrier to adopting new ways of managing people is legacy mindsets. While 32% of leaders agree that they experience difficulties keeping up with the changing skill sets needed to optimize their teams, nearly half of CEOs surveyed agreed that entrenched mindsets about what it means to manage talent and work is hindering their organizations.

In order to plan for hiring and expansions in the future, leaders need to be cognizant of their teams’ current capabilities and their untapped potential. While this problem is not easy to overcome, leveraging machine learning to challenge the status quo can help leaders update their talent matrix to also include employee interests, preferences, and professional development goals—which can have valuable implications for employee retention and engagement. 

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Agility and Precision in the Age of Competency-Based Organizations
Leaders who leverage competency science and machine learning can realize up to a 107% increase in placing talent effectively. Claira’s dynamic platform provides business leaders with continuous value, generating competencies from new and unbiased datasets that improve over time. 

The future of work demands that workforces become cross-functional and flexible: understanding people’s strengths and growth trajectories can enable leaders to unleash the true human potential of their workforce. Leveraging a competency-based framework for human resource management presents a tremendous opportunity for professionals seeking to adapt their organizational processes, especially when it comes to identifying what’s working and how to optimize for success.