The limitations of traditional PMS

Traditional PMS uses the performance appraisal approach, which is open to bias and there are concerns that it does not accurately reflect an individual’s performance capability.

CBPM encourages frank and non-adversarial communication between employees and their managers on performing work aligned to their competencies. Employees’ work results are aligned with the achievement of the organisation’s strategic objectives. It affords the opportunity to identify and develop much needed competencies and establishes a work environment where the roles, relationships and responsibilities of both managers and employees are well defined, as indicated in Figure.

The arrows in Figure show that the major differences between CBPM and traditional performance systems is that the individual job competence requirements are based on organisational and functional competencies that are necessary for the corporate mission, goals, objectives and strategies. Therefore, the concern of managers is the extent to which individual competencies are displayed and linked to superior job performance. Therefore, areas of improvement will target specific talents and competencies. Similarly, employee reward and development strategies and activities are tied to talents and competencies identified and assessed during review and appraisal.

The establishment of individual job performance and the limitations of job descriptions There are key differences between the traditional human resource recruitment and selection process, and that of the competency based processes. Different authors have documented their experiences and practices, which are well summarised by Kumar (2006):

Figure ;  Competence based performance management

· Under the traditional approach, job descriptions tend to focus on activities or responsibilities instead of measurable outcomes or results.

· The traditional approach does not take the abstract requirements of the job into account, which compromises customer satisfaction, and cannot be written quickly enough to keep up with work changes.

· Under competence based human resource management, individual performance is determined by comparing the outputs or results with the expectations of those who receive or use the outputs. The internal and external customer is the ultimate decision maker.

Reward management

Although some organisations may use performance related pay systems to reward their employees, in practice, once an employee accomplishes what was expected, more often than not the reward is given regardless of the ability to measure the outcome. The CBHRM system rewards employees based on their ability to demonstrate specific competencies in accomplishing key tasks and responsibilities. Spencer & Spencer (1993: 305) define competency based pay as compensation for individual characteristics, for skills or competencies over and above general pay for the job in the organisation. Therefore, the performance benchmark is the exemplary performer. Therefore, employees continuously strive to improve competencies related to specific behaviour, tasks, activities and jobs in order to be rewarded accordingly.

 Human resource development

Development is any means used to narrow the gap between a competency model and an individual who has been assessed. However, advances in learning organisations focus on continuous learning and development as a strategy towards organisational competitiveness. Human resource development hinges on developing knowledge, skills and attitudes mostly for managerial jobs as part of planning for the replacement of a manager. There is little to no attention paid to matching individuals with organisational competencies. As a result, employees may be developed but cannot cope with the organisational competence as it was not suited to them. CBHRM emphasises developing core, functional and technical competencies in an integrated manner. In this case, training and development needs are identified in terms of talents and competencies and alternative courses of action are developed and implemented, based on the extent to which they can cost effectively minimise learning gaps. The major differences between CBHRM and traditional HRM are explained briefly by Kumar (2006) and are summarised in Table.

 Table; Differences and similarities between CBHRM and HRM

Competencies for human resource professionals

Based on South African experience, Clark (2009) has identified desired attributes for generic human resource (HR) competencies in a South African situation. A desired attribute is a generic requirement applicable to all HR practitioners and describes the ideal attribute to be displayed by all HRM practitioners, irrespective of their position. However, due to the complexity of competency frameworks, such attributes do not seem to be distinctly different from global experiences and trends.

Implementing a competency framework for human resource management

Usually, for the effective use of competency based human resource management, the development of organisational tailor made functional competencies for human resource job is important. The following are the important competency clusters:

Generic competencies

a) Professional ethics,

b) People skills, and

c) Emotional intelligence/Cognitive personality profile.

Functional competency clusters.

a) Business/operational strategy translation and alignment of HR management strategies,

b) Talent management,

c) HR administration,

d) HR information and knowledge management,

e) HR research and process development, and

f) HR monitoring, evaluation and reporting.

The evolving competence approach to managing people in organisations has created the opportunity to identify key competencies required for effective human resource managers. Research conducted by Ulrich (1998) in Redman & Wilkinson (2009) shows the relative importance of some competencies over others in Table .

Table ;  Professional competencies in human resource management

A close look at the competence profiles reveals that such profiles mostly focus on leadership qualities. Managing people is about influencing others and that the influence has to come out of personal credibility, trust and a sense of commitment. This will explain why personal credibility comes at the top. Ability to manage change is next because effective human resource management goes hand in hand with creativity and innovation. New strategies, procedures, and practices, which will require both managers and employees to move out of their comfort zones through continuous learning, have to be adopted. Ability to manage and internalise changes is critical for a human resource officer. Since change management involves creating new aspects of the organisation’s culture, ability to manage culture is also ranked relatively high. Human resource knowledge is also important but is ranked lower than other attributes because of the current shift of emphasis from what employees ‘know’ to what they are ‘able to do’ effectively.