Change management
Skills development
Project planning

7 misconceptions about competence mapping

June 23, 2022
5 min
7 misconceptions about competence mapping
Estelle
Content manager

Competency mapping is a must-have in many companies. However, not everyone uses it in the same way, not taking into account all its possibilities. Indeed, some professionals think they know it inside out. We take stock of the preconceived ideas about competency mapping in this article!

1. Competency mapping is a snapshot of the company at a given moment... and nothing else!

If the skills map does indeed make it possible to know, at a given moment, what skills are held by all the company's employees (level of expertise, certification, etc.), it is essential that the map be evolving and dynamic in order to be constantly updated. It is therefore not just a simple inert document that transmits a photograph of your employees' skills profiles.

In fact, defining the competency map as a photo at a given moment is very simplistic. Your competency map also details in great detail the know-how and interpersonal skills of your employees. It is not for nothing that some companies allow you to identify the skills development desires (also called "aspirations") of employees by means of a colour scheme...

It is therefore a living document, enriched by a wealth of information from all the company's employees, which quickly becomes obsolete or unusable if its database is not updated regularly.

A word of caution: a skills map in Excel will never be as accurate or as up-to-date as one produced using a specialised tool. specialized tool.

2. Competency mapping is a useless document in project planning

Do you think that competency mapping is useless for carrying out your strategies assignment ? Do you think that it is a tool only for HR departments that only intervenes in training or recruitment strategies? A myth that impacts not only the motivation of your employees but also the performance of your project teams!

Indeed, a dynamic competence map holds vital information for making project planning decisions very quickly, such as

All of these elements make it possible to create competent and motivated project teams, which will have every chance of succeeding in their project. Your whole structure benefits from this.

3. Skills mapping and job mapping are the same document

Job mapping is not the organisation chart, which only reports on the positions held within the company. The job map, also known as the job repository in some companies, reports on :

  1. These jobs are essential to the company to ensure its development and growth phase, 
  2. The number of posts allocated to each job (there may be several HR, several consultants, etc.),
  3. Vacant and expected positions in the company, 
  4. Trades to be created in order to develop the company. These jobs are very often linked to objectives of increasing skills, financial...

Skills mapping goes much further. First and foremost, it takes stock of the skills that are or are not available in your company and highlights the skills profiles and skills in tension (but also the soft skills, aspirations, diplomas, certifications, etc.). 

4. Competency mapping is not a tool for employees  

Just as the map is a valuable tool for managers, it is in the interest of your employees and your company that they participate in the construction of your competency map. From the outset, their involvement in the construction of the competency framework will ensure its completeness. Moreover, your employees are in the best position to give indications of their interests/disinterest in terms of skills development. 

Employees can also use the skills map to identify experts on certain skills outside their team, department or even office. Having a map helps to encourage mutual aid and exchanges between employees! In the R&D department of EDF, for example, communities of experts have been created so that employees can exchange information on common subjects thanks to the skills map.

5. Implementing competence mapping is difficult in a large company

This is one of the biggest misconceptions about mapping. Changing processes causes some concern among management and executives. However, there is a proven methodology for rolling out competency mapping across the organisation (just as there is for project planning software, for example). 

At Napta, in 4 months of work, the software is deployed within all the company's departments. To give you an idea, watch our webinar with Capgemini or EDF, two large companies. With them, the mapping was implemented in less than 6 weeks, on 1,300 and 2,000 employees respectively, with completion rates of over 95% from the first week of the launch. That's just great!

Find out how Capgemini Invent implemented a skills map for over 1300 employees! See the testimonial.

6. All data must be entered by hand

Another common mistake is to believe that competency mapping, when deployed deployment, requires you to enter all the information manually. The technical teams in charge of deployment enrich the skills map by connecting your mapping tool to other software in your IT system (HRIS, LMS, ATS, etc.) in order to extract the data. This extraction takes the following form: 

  1. Personal information on employees is automatically retrieved through integration with the HRIS
  2. Skills are consolidated in a repository that can be accessed by all employees from their profile and everyone is responsible for adding their skills to their profile
  3. Expertise levels are updated after automatic feedback (end of mission or end of year)

This extraction takes more or less time, depending on the number of cross-functional software applications you work with: HRIS, LMS, etc. The data from the software is centralised in a single tool, making it easier to analyse on a daily basis. 

7. It is independent of other digital tools

The last major misconception is that skills mapping is independent of digital tools. As we have just seen, skills mapping can be managed by a tool that integrates with your company's IS and interconnects with your other tools. When the data is extracted, the skills map is updated with the company's data. Whenever your employees use ancillary software such as HRIS, CRM, ERP, etc., the skills map is linked to the company's information system. These are interconnected with your assignment solution. 

You therefore benefit from a 100% efficient tool, which grows thanks to the data entered in the software and which feeds the other tools to avoid double entry. You benefit from an interconnected digital ecosystem in the company, through which you save considerable time on a daily basis. 

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