This book may help:

Promoting a Development Culture in Your Organization: Using Career Development as a Change Agent by Peggy Simonsen

Thanks everyone for sharing your perspectives and resources. At this point my project team is building a structure that incorporates core competencies, skills, & job functions. I agree that a competency-based approach provides a more realistic view of career growth/progression.

The important thing to keep in mind is - don't get overwhelmed. Remember, simple is better. I tackled such a project 6 years ago for an organization of over 18,000 employees and 800 job codes. The project is what brought me to the organization-what a challenge. It took 3 years to complete. I performed much research before starting - books, seminars, online tools, interviewed college professors and "experts". Results - lots of theory but very few have actually done the work. You must build competency models that are unique to your organization. We built our own competency dictionary (70 terms) with definitions at a 7th grade reading level, a process, tools for selection of competencies, communication plan and a timeline. Through our LMS (which we also built) every employee can access their competency model. The competencies are defined, resources listed for development (books, seminars, web sites, etc.), behavioral based interview questions. The latter allows the employee to prepare for an interview for another position and to help interviewing managers with questions. Every employee can see the competencies required for every position in the organization just by selecting the position name. That allows an employee to plan their own career path in the organization. The competencies now link to our performance management system (also built in-house) for performance appraisals, talent review, succession planning, etc. I'll be glad to discuss with you further. One thing I learned - there is no right or wrong way to build, just what is right for your organization.

Hi Patience,

My name is Alan and I'm a performance management consultant. I'm making some of my resources available for free to people who sign up on my website (www.firststep-performance.com). There's no charge.

I've done a lot of work on career pathing and succession planning and I'm currently writing an article that includes information specific to both. You may find them helpful.

Please feel free to call me. You can get my number from the website.

Alan

I am new to this group and have been tasked with assisting in a career pathing project that has already begun. The approach from what I can see is somewhat competency-based. I think they may have been referring to "behaviors" as the competency... How would I know. Is there really a difference between behavior and competency? Or is it just wording. If so, any references would be great. In looking at how they are using the behaviors, I think they could go either way.