Module II ( Human Resource Planning)

Manpower Profiling
To hire the appropriate manpower for open positions in your company, you must employ some levels of
profiling. You'll create a profile of the job duties, as well as the expected experience, skills and
competencies you'll need from an employee (competency profiling). During the recruiting process,
you'll include profiling aspects from candidates through their applications, resumes and the personal
interviews. Match the right candidates with the right jobs to reduce attrition rates and increase
production and profitability. Match the employee or manpower profiling with competency profiling to
find the right candidate.

Core Data Entries for Employee Profiling

1. Identification and Personal Record-

 Surname, first and middle names, previous names

 Address, telephone numbers, email address

 Next of kin (including address and telephone numbers)

 Gender

 Date of birth

 Marital status, dependants

 Nationality, work permit number

 Race (for employment equity purpose)

 Social insurance number, union membership etc.

2. Work History

 Date of hire

 Employment status (full, part-time or contract)

  Current job title, department

 Length of time in current job

 Previous job titles and dates for service for each

 Work history prior to joining the company

3. Career and Competencies

 Employee’s desired future positions, target positions recommended by supervisor

 Individual performance-appraisal data, readiness for movement

 Specific skills and competencies

 Certificates, diplomas and degrees

 Recent training activities

 Hobbies and interests

 Community and volunteer activities

 Professional or trade association memeberships

 Geographical location preferences

 Foreign language competencies

 Honours and awards, publications

4. Accounting and Compensation Data

 Gross compensation

 Compensation band

 Hours/shifts worked per week

 Overtime and bonus

  History of compensation changes

 Vacation taken or banked

 Deductions

 Leaves of absence etc.

Competency Profiling
In today’s competitive market, companies are aware that their workforce must be properly trained and
fully competent over a range of tasks within any given work discipline. Competency profiling is a
collection of success factors necessary for achieving important results in a specific job or work role in a
particular organization. Success factors are combinations of knowledge, skills, and attributes that are
described in terms of specific behaviours, and are demonstrated by superior performers in those jobs or
work roles.

What are Competencies?

Competencies, in the most general terms, are “things” that an individual must demonstrate to be
effective in a job, role, function, task, or duty. These “things” include job-relevant behavior (what a
person says or does that results in good or poor performance), motivation (how a person feels about a
job, organization, or geographic location), and technical knowledge/skills (what a person
knows/demonstrates regarding facts, technologies, a profession, procedures, a job, an organization, etc.).

 Competencies are identified through the study of jobs and roles. There can be:

 General/Organizational Competencies

o The first kind are general or organizational competencies, which represent the skills,
knowledge and behaviors that need to be demonstrated by all employees within the
organization. These competencies should mirror the company's overall objectives, goals
and mission. An appropriate organizational competency for a customer service
supervisor, for example, might be "interpersonal relations." This means the supervisor
should be adept at noticing and valuing the differences between team members,
establishing open lines of communication, and fostering partnership-oriented goals.

 Specific/Individual Competencies
 o The second category of competencies you'll want to include in the profile focuses on
specific or individual competencies. These represent the position-specific skills,
knowledge and behaviors that need to be demonstrated by the individual employee.
Consider the level of authority, the job responsibilities and the specific skills and
motivations that are necessary for completing the tasks effectively. Individual
competencies help guide recruitment, training and development efforts and provide a
benchmark against which to measure success. A retail customer service supervisor, for
example, should be competent at "coaching" her team members by clearly defining their
goals and expectations, sharing constructive feedback and guiding independent problem-
solving.

 Competencies can be hard or soft. Hard- ability to build technologies or soft- ability to retain
employees.

Thus, a competency is any knowledge, skill, trait, motive, attitude, value or other personal
characteristic that:

 is essential to perform a job (Threshold Competency).

 differentiates typical from superior performers (Differentiating Competency).

Department of Personnel Training, GOI

How do competencies differ from skills and knowledge?

Competencies only include behaviors that demonstrate excellent performance. Therefore, they do not
include knowledge, but do include "applied" knowledge or the behavioral application of knowledge
that produces success. In addition, competencies do include skills, but only the manifestation of skills
that produce success. Finally, competencies are not work motives, but do include observable behaviors
related to motives (eg. coming on time to work, finishing tasks in time and with standard performance.

Competency models can be used to support various practices such as:

 Employee orientation
 Employee development
 Performance management and
 coaching Career strategies
 Candidate interviews
 Team assessment
 Succession planning
Competencies are generally presented with a definition and key behavioural indicators. For
example:

Risk Taking-Initiating action that tries to achieve a recognized benefit or advantage when
potential negative consequences are understood.

Key Actions ƒrequired are:

 Actively seeks opportunities—Pursues situations or opportunities that can

lead to either substantial benefit or significant negative consequence.

 Calculates risk—Gathers information to understand probability of success,

benefits of success, and consequences of failure.

 Commits to action—Initiates action despite uncertainty of outcome; is

willing to accept the consequences of failure.

Competencies do not include "baseline" skills and knowledge (i.e., commonly expected performance
characteristics such as finishing assigned work, answering the telephone, writing follow-up letters, etc.),
job tasks.

Competency Profiling:

It is typically a method for identifying specified skills, knowledge, attitudes and behaviour
necessary to fulfilling a task, activity or career. It helps in making an assessment regarding how well
the personal attributes of a potential employee matches the requirements of a role.

All organisations have periods of expansion, consolidation and renewal, during which it’s necessary to
recruit new members or carry out succession planning. These activities are not possible unless
competencies have been defined and so every organization develops a competency framework
appropriate for their needs.

These can include tools and techniques such as: assessment centers, behavioral event interviewing, and
psychometric testing. Assessment of competencies is complex and reliance on any one method is likely
to result in a bias. The best results are often achieved through triangulating (using different methods) a
number of different techniques.
J. K. cements India is using competency maps for each of the supervisor and managerial posts. J. K.
Cement has developed a set of 21 competencies such as record keeping, team spirit, retention,
information management, strategic orientation and problem solving etc. divided into five levels from
basic knowledge to expertise

Benefits of implementing a competency-based approach

For The Company, competency-based practices:

 Reinforce corporate strategy, culture and vision.

 Establish expectations for performance excellence resulting in a systematic approach to
professional development,
 Improved job satisfaction and better employee retention.
 Increase the effectiveness of training and professional development programs by linking
them to the success criteria (i.e., behavioural standards of excellence).
 Provide common, organization wide standards for career levels that enable employees to
move across business boundaries.

For Managers, competency-based practices:

 Identify performance criteria to improve the accuracy and ease of the hiring and selection
process.
 Provide more objective performance standards.
 Provide a clear foundation for dialogue to occur between the manager and employee
about performance, development and career related issues.

For Employees, competency-based practices:

 Identify the success criteria (i.e., behavioural standards of performance excellence)

required to be successful in their role.
 Support a more specific and objective assessment of their strengths and specify.

Limitations of competency model:

1. They are broad and ill-defined, not practical in using to for performance of job duties.
2. Focus more on behaviors than results.
3. Some people only see it as an extension of job analysis that focuses on what is common across jobs.

Difference between job analysis and competency based approach:

1. Job analysis focuses on KSAs to do the job while competencies can be for a broader occupational
group
2. Job analysis is more focused on task and duties while competency model is more worker- oriented.
3. Competency encourages team work rather than the classic interaction of individual job with well
defined boundaries.

Assessing competencies:

1. One simple assessment method is to infer what the competencies are from the job class
specifications and position descriptions.

2. To conduct a general assessment of employees using a checklist of the future desired competencies
that have been identified through the demand forecast.

How to Build a Job Competency Profile

A job competency profile is designed to define a particular job's knowledge requirements, skills and
expectations. When done right, the profile can help improve a company's employee recruitment,
performance evaluations and compliance with human resources policies. These profiles contain itemized
lists of the job's primary tasks as well as detailed explanations of necessary core competencies. They are
typically maintained by the HR department -- ideally in digital form so the profiles are easily available
for analysis and updates. To encourage career development, profiles should also be accessible to
employees within the position and associated management personnel.

A Clear Job Title and Description

Begin with the job title and description, which will lay the foundation for the rest of the job competency
profile. The job title should accurately reflect the type of work expected and level of authority afforded.
For the job description, summarize the position's main purposes, avoiding lengthy task lists and
explanations, which come later. A "Retail Customer Service Supervisor," for example, suggests that the
job is for a front end store manager. The job description need only mention main objectives, like
overseeing sale associates, coordinating staff schedules and handling customer issues.

Important Details and Job Responsibilities

Provide pertinent background information about the job, like the salary range, associated department,
managers to whom the position reports and groups or departments the individual supervises. List the
job's prerequisites -- the customer service supervisor, for example, should have at least a high school
diploma, five years of retail experience and familiarity with retail POS systems -- and provide additional
considerations such as travel expectations or occasional supervisory roles. Create a prioritized list of the
primary job responsibilities, beginning each line with a present tense action verb -- for example,
"resolves customer complaints regarding sales and service."

The Competencies Explained

Identify the competencies -- or the skills, knowledge and behaviors -- associated with the position,
focusing on both required as well as desired competencies. Aim to include seven to 10 competencies,
with a detailed description or bullet points explaining each. To develop an accurate list, observe
employees performing similar tasks, consult with department managers, or implement a company-
wide survey. A competency dictionary, which lists sample jobs and associated competencies, will
also help in brainstorming. A number of these dictionaries are available free online.

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Manpower planning in service industry:

The manpower planning problem receives considerable attention by the

management of service organizations because they are typically labor
intensive. Not only must optimal staff sizes be determined over an extended
horizon, but optimal staff schedules which assign labor to tours of duty and
specific tasks, given the available staff size, must also be found.

In most commercial organizations, its ultimate purpose is to provide value to

the external customer.

Over the last ten years, particularly within service industries recruiting staff
on the basis of their competencies has become mainstream practice. ‘If you
get the right person it’s easy to give them the skills’.

Benefits and Drawbacks of This Methodology

Profiling has both positive and negative aspects associated with it. Deciding whether it is
the right methodology for your organization depends on a variety of factors.

Potential benefits of this method include:

 Intuitive. While many assessment methods can be a bit confusing, the idea behind
profiling makes sense. Look at your best performers and develop a profile that
can be used to make sure you hire persons who look just like they do.
  Fast. While many assessment methods can take a long time to implement,
profiling can usually be implemented relatively quickly. One reason this method is
so fast is that the same test content is usually used, so no content modifications are
required.

 Provides options to consumers. There are quite a few companies offering this
type of method, so consumers are not limited to only one or two choices. Even
better news is that many companies offer slightly different takes on how to
implement the profiling method as well as different types of assessment content.

Potential drawbacks of this method include:

 Deficiency. Because there is only one assessment used for all situations, you may
find that the content of this assessment does not fully capture all of the things
required for performing the job in question. This can be an issue because if the test
does not measure a key construct required for job performance, that piece of data
will not be available as part of the candidate evaluation.

 Robustness of profile. In many cases, the profile created as the hiring standard is
created by only a few individuals. The fewer the data points used to construct the
profile, the less confidence one can have that it is actually a full and accurate
picture of performance. When using the profiling method, have as many
incumbents as possible complete the benchmark assessment.

 Failure to account for change. The profiling methodology does not account for
the fact that the top performers surveyed may have had a different profile at the
time of hire. In many cases, job performance and on-the-job training may allow an
individual to learn and develop in many positive ways. Thus, the profile they
provide may be an unrealistic one for persons who have not performed the job in
question.

 Focus more on behavior than results. They are too generic.

  Assumes inverse relationship. In many cases, bad performance is not simply the
opposite of good performance. By hiring individuals based only on what high
performers do, you may end up failing to account for some of the things that lead
to low performance.

 Over-reliance on “the profile.” In many cases, there can be more than one profile
that can define success. Holding too closely to one set of ideals may create
unrealistic standards that can lead to over-reliance on some attributes and under-
reliance on others. Hiring decisions should be the result of balanced information of
many types, and the best hiring systems are designed to provide key decision-
makers with a variety of information.

Many of the above criticisms can apply to other assessment methods. But they’re
legitimate things to consider when evaluating the relevance of profiling methods for one’s
own needs.

Here is a list of situations in which profiling is a good option for organizations to

consider:

 An off-the-shelf assessment is needed quickly. Profiling is one of the fastest and

easiest assessment methods to implement.

 The job in question is a relatively common one that does not have complex or
unique demands. The fact that most profiling uses one set of content for all jobs
means that the more mainstream the job, the more likely the profiling assessment
content will be relevant.

 The organization feels strongly that there is one profile that is essential for
performing a job. In many cases, a strong profile may have proven itself time and
again. In this situation, profiling is more likely to be a good option.

 The organization is just getting started using assessment and is getting push
back on more complex assessment methods. In many cases, the idea of
 conducting a job analysis and creating customized content is too advanced. The
simpler and more intuitive profiling method may be an easier sell internally.

 The organization is too small or there are too few incumbents to do a proper
validation study.Validation research requires relatively large numbers of
incumbents. While it is important to try and maximize the number of individuals
used to create the profile, it is usually easier to use this method when the number of
persons available is low.

The ultimate decision regarding the relevance of profiling methodology for a company
needs boils down to the tradeoff between speed vs. accuracy. In general, the more time
one spends understanding the key elements that comprise job performance and on
creating specific assessment content to measure these things in a systematic way, the
more accurate the assessment process will be.

However, organizations often feel it’s impractical to invest the time and money it requires
to follow this methodology. In such situations, speed and expense are often key decision
criteria and a reduction in accuracy is accepted as a result. In these cases, profiling is a
legitimate option and one that will still provide more accuracy than using no
assessment or simply using an unstructured interview.

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