8 Steps to Effective Competence Development: A Guide for HR Professionals

Each employee in your organization, from long-standing team members to new hires, comes equipped with their own set of competencies. These are their personal blend of knowledge, skills, behaviors, and experience that dictate how they perform in their roles.

Of course, these competencies aren’t set in stone—as business goals, industry standards, and technologies change, employees must continue to develop their competencies so they remain relevant in the modern era.

This guide provides an eight-step guide to competence development and tips on how to track the return on investment of your framework.

Step 1: Create competency-based role descriptions

Effective competency development begins with building a foundation of descriptions for every role in your org chart, detailing each position’s key objectives, responsibilities, and outcomes. Craft these with a competency-based approach, outlining the specific skills and behaviors necessary for success in the role. These should include core competencies, technical competencies, functional competencies, or even Lominger competencies for leadership roles. They’ll identify potential skills gaps or areas for improvement within your current workforce.

For example, a junior-level accountant might require:

• Core competencies: Attention to detail, learning agility, ethics, and integrity
• Technical competencies: Basic accounting principles, simple financial reporting and bookkeeping, familiarity with accounting software
• Functional competencies: Accurate data entry and basic compliance, time management for transactional tasks
• Soft skills: Basic communication, problem-solving, team collaboration

Higher up the ladder, a senior-level accountant would require:

• Core competencies: Change management skills, stakeholder management skills, regulatory knowledge
• Technical competencies: Advanced accounting knowledge of topics like tax and consolidations, financial reporting, budgeting, and analysis, mastery of ERP systems
• Functional competencies: Risk management, advanced compliance, strategic financial decision-making, mentoring junior staff
• Soft skills: Leadership in projects and the ability to communicate complex information effectively

By plotting competency-based role descriptions for each position, it should be easy for employees to understand what they need to work on to advance from one role to the next.

Step 2: Conduct a skills gap analysis

Using these competency-based descriptions as a base, consider the skills and competencies required in each role to drive your business forward. There will almost always be gaps between your current and desired skills and competencies, for example, in the following scenarios:

• Your business plans to expand into new geographical markets, and you need language competencies your current workforce lacks
• Your business is scaling up its marketing efforts and needs more specialized skills like data analysis or social media management
• New technologies are disrupting your industry, so you must up your skills to stay competitive

Reveal where these areas of improvement lie using our free skills gap analysis template, which you can customize to your particular organization.

For example, you might identify gaps by leveling competencies based on a three-level framework, including basic, competent, and expert, or a six-level framework encompassing beginner, developing, competent, proficient, advanced, and expert.

Whatever your approach to developing these competencies further, be proactive in addressing them. For example:

• If you need to develop data analysis skills, arrange training sessions or provide access to online training courses
• If your employees require a better understanding of cultural nuances, consider arranging cross-cultural communication workshops
• If your team members lack proficiency in specific software, bring them up to speed with hands-on training or virtual competency learning

Step 3: Set competence development goals

Organizations can take an individual or company-wide approach to developing competencies.

For example, if your company pivots to a new, highly regulated product, you may need to set competency goals for the entire company to ensure compliance.

However, competency development is also an individual pursuit, enabling each team member to build upon their current skills and competencies toward a goal meaningful to them.

The SMART goal-setting framework is helpful for creating fleshed-out development goals, ensuring they’re specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. These goals should be based on individual career development plans.

Examples of competence development goals

• Individual competency development example: “I will become proficient in social media marketing by completing an online course within the next six months.”
• Company-wide competency development example: “Each team will complete 20 hours of cross-cultural communication training within the next quarter to support our expansion into international markets.”

Of course, it’s possible to combine goals for individual employees, teams, and the company as a whole by first identifying gaps in company-wide competencies and then aligning individual development plans with the organization’s overall strategy and goals.

Blended competence development goal: “Based on our company-wide goal to achieve B-Corp status, I will complete a 10-hour sustainability course this quarter.

Step 4: Design training and development plans

An effective training and development plan should include focus areas for an employee to work on during the next growth cycle. Each should include the following elements:

Competency goals

As determined in step 3, goals should detail what your employee needs to achieve, such as completing a specialist certification within X months.

Individual learning preferences

Ask your employees about their learning preferences to understand what works best for them. Then, document how your employees learn best to shape your training methods.

For example, a kinesthetic learner will prefer practical, hands-on training activities. Alternatively, an auditory learner may prefer listening to podcasts or recorded webinars to accelerate their knowledge adoption.

Personalized learning paths

Detail each employee’s expected professional trajectory by mapping their current goals, overall career aspirations, and any lateral moves they’re interested in.

Tip: AI-powered tools provide personalized learning paths and assessments to enhance competency development. Deel Engage’s AI assistant suggests development plans based on the worker’s career path, competency model, and past feedback.

Competence development tools

Consider which of the following tools and resources would best suit the learner in reaching their competence goal:

• Learning management systems: LMS platforms enable you to upload training content, manage learners, and track progress
• Internal mentorship and coaching: Partnering seasoned professionals with junior colleagues can pass on niche expertise and institutional knowledge you wouldn’t pick up from a formal course
• Cross-training and job rotations: Exposing employees to a range of skills and competencies encourages individual growth and prepares them for new roles
• External training programs and certifications: Certain industry-recognized training programs and certifications can boost competence. For example, Deel is recognized by SHRM as offering Professional Development Credits (PDCs) for SHRM-CP® or SHRM-SCP® recertification activities

Step 5: Define a system for check-ins, feedback, and plan revisions

Establish a system for regular check-ins to ensure your talent develops competencies effectively and their plans remain relevant. Your check-in cycle could include:

• 1:1 meetings: Schedule meetings between managers and employees on a cadence that suits you—for example, weekly or monthly meetings allow space to discuss progress and address any current challenges
• Performance evaluations: Incorporate competency development into your regular performance reviews and provide actionable feedback on strengths and weaknesses
• Peer reviews: Encourage rich multi-source feedback from team members or colleagues from adjacent departments to create a culture of continuous learning and improvement
• Space for updates: Be open to revising the competency development plan as often as needed if your business needs or individual progress changes

Step 6: Measure the success of competence development initiatives

Once you’ve rolled out your competence development framework, including relevant goals and role descriptions, how will you track whether your initiatives produce the expected results? The answer is to baseline some of the following metrics and then track how these change as you continue to build competencies:

• Employee satisfaction: Measure employee engagement and retention rates to gauge whether your training and development efforts yield positive results
• Knowledge assessment: Create assessments for each competency before training begins, then test again after a specific time to track improvements
• Training evaluation surveys: Collect post-training feedback from employees to determine usefulness and areas of improvement
• Performance evaluation ratings: Monitor performance reviews to identify any rating changes related to specific competencies—pair this data with feedback from managers, peers, and self-evaluations, providing qualitative insights as additional context to the metrics

Step 7: Make competence development a continuous process

Competence development should be an ongoing process, not a one-time event. Encourage continuous learning by providing regular opportunities for employees to develop and refine their skills. This could include:

• Continuing education: Offer tuition reimbursement or support for employees who wish to pursue further education
• Knowledge-sharing sessions: Host internal workshops where employees can share knowledge, best practices, or new techniques
• Industry conferences: Sponsor attendance at relevant events to expose employees to the latest industry trends and build their professional networks
• Job rotations and secondments: Allow employees to work temporarily in different roles or departments, giving them hands-on experience and a broader understanding of the organization

Step 8: Assess the ROI of competence development

Is your competence development strategy worth the effort? Check your return on investment by comparing the cost of your initiatives to their impact on performance management and business outcomes.

Consider including the following metrics in your ROI calculation:

• Cost per training hour: Calculate the total cost of each training session, including materials, instructors, and employee travel expenses. Divide this cost by the number of hours trained to get a baseline cost per training hour
• Time-to-competence: Measure how long it takes an employee to reach their targeted level of competence after completing training or development activities
• Increase in productivity: Track employee performance and productivity improvements after participating in development programs
• Employee retention rates: Check if your employees are staying longer (and how much longer) with the company after engaging in your competence development initiatives
• Revenue impact: Monitor if employee performance improvements lead to increased revenue or organizational cost savings

Develop your workforce’s competencies with Deel Engage

Deel Engage is a powerful talent management platform designed to support organizations in:

1. Defining essential competencies through tailored competency frameworks for each department or role
2. Evaluating employees’ skills using 360-degree feedback or performance assessments
3. Developing competency-based training programs, either independently or with assistance from our AI-powered tools
4. Connecting competency-focused training directly to specific role levels
5. Facilitating individual career growth with customized development plans
6. Deel HR, our truly global HRIS solution, is always included for free

Ready to build in-depth competencies in your organization? Book a demo to learn how Deel Engage will help you build a high-performance workforce.