Competency Framework

The need clearly to define the competencies, particularly the behavioural competencies, to build and maintain a knowledgecentric culture was discussed in Chapter 5.

With jobs becoming increasingly more fluid, and performance management systems focusing on the ‘How’, as well as the ‘What’, people need to have a clear understanding of how they are expected to behave in a culture that is focused on building its knowledge base.

Where organisations do not already have a competency framework, adopting an inclusive approach to developing the competency framework can be a positive way of demonstrating the cultural values that are essential in knowledge-centric cultures, i.e. openness, fairness, collaboration, respect for individual contributions. In other organisations, it may simply be a case of revising an existing competency framework to include knowledge-creating and sharing behaviours, and to reflect the organisation’s overall knowledge management aspirations and goals.

Once defined the competency framework should then inform, or certainly not conflict with, other HR practices such as recruitment, performance management, career management, as well as learning and development practices.