Competency Mapping - A Strategic HR Tool in Globalized Era

As global business competition shifts from efficiency to innovation and from enlargement of scale to creation of value, management needs to be oriented towards the Strategic use of human resources. Human Resource Management needs much effort or skill to accomplish for their survival which is important to address with the changing nature of organizations. The organizational success earlier depended on physical and financial assets, today the success solely rely on the intangible ability and capability that lie in the human capital and manifested in the form of competencies. Human capital is the most valuable asset in the current era and companies are thriving for performance through developing their employee‟s competencies. Competency is the ability of an individual to perform a job properly. Competency mapping becomes confusing for most of the organizations because of various models and competencies available. Competencies provide standard roadmap for effective and efficient performance. Successful competency management in organizations ensures that employees can execute the company business plan, and guide the way in organizational challenges of skill readiness, skill shortages and leadership. Every well-managed firm should have well defined roles and responsibilities and list of competencies required to perform each role effectively. Such list should be used for the functions of Human Resources (HR) such as recruitment, performance management, training, succession planning and compensation. This paper focuses on the fundamentals of Competency mapping which is a new dimension of management in the globalized era. This paper also brings out the current practices used by organizations which have successfully integrated competency-based systems in their Human Resource initiatives.