The success of a company can significantly improve with a knowledgeable, skilled and well-trained workforce. For organizations to remain adaptable and competitive, improving competencies allows an organization to contribute to increased productivity and greater revenue. The benefits of an investment that ensures competency improvement, far outweigh the costs.
Improving employee competencies is an opportunity every employer should embrace.
Here are 10 quick tips for ensuring continuous competency improvement in your organization.
1. Create a community of learning.
2. Get visual.
Add visual awareness by strategically posting signs around the workplace. Not only are these job aids reminders of best practices, they also reduce workplace incidents.
3. Have a clear plan.
Establish job competency profiles (JCP) and competency development plans for each JCP. A Competency Development Plan is designed to help employees and managers identify development activities that will assist in building organizational competencies.
4. Know knowledge capture.
Implement a knowledge capture process for capturing task related tacit knowledge. Knowledge capture can use a variety of techniques to elicit facets of an individual’s technical knowledge and lessons learned can be shared to mitigate organizational knowledge loss.
5. Be approachable.
Create a non-threatening approach for eliciting input for competency improvement strategies and/or solutions. Not only create an open-door policy, actually carve out “free” time in your day that employees can use to discuss their ideas for solutions.
6. Have mini-sessions.
Hold learning sessions to discuss and capture knowledge acquired from various work related incidents.
7. Create the infrastructure.
Ensure the necessary infrastructure is in place to support competency development through:
- learning by doing on the job activities and participating in job simulations
- learning through participation in various training activities such as online courses, webinars, classroom sessions, practical demonstrations and watching videos
- learning by listening and observing others at work, i.e. job shadowing.
- learning by reading whitepapers, manuals, books, procedures and documents describing best practices.
- learning through skills assessments such as walk-downs, dry runs and peer-to-peer quizzes.
8. Run drills.
Run drills that improve critical thinking and decision-making capability.
9. Get competitive.
Create monthly competitions that are fun for personnel to participate in. The competitions should provide opportunity for learning and/or competency improvement and include a reward for achievement.
10. Give rewards.
Establish a bonus plan as an effective approach to encourage personnel to improve their competencies
Building a competent workforce starts with a competent culture. Use these tips to get moving in the right direction.
Contact SMT Learning to find out how our Knowledge Capture process can benefit your organization.