Columbia, Md. — Feb. 28
Avilar Inc., a provider of e-learning and competency management, has released a white paper titled, “Common Competency Management Pitfalls: How to Avoid Detours on the Road to Talent Management.”

The white paper, written by Director of Workforce Solutions Christine Hipple, includes 27 tips on how to avoid mistakes commonly made on competency management projects.

The white paper is divided into three sections: planning pitfalls, competency model pitfalls and execution pitfalls.

Each section includes descriptions of three common mistakes, and for each mistake, there are three avoidance tips, making 27 competency management project tips within the paper.

“As a true believer in competency management and its benefits to all organizations, it’s somewhat painful to acknowledge all the potential difficulty and downsides, but as with any large-scale project there are plenty of areas for mistakes,” Hipple said. “The key is to learn from the mistakes of others and prepare to do things right from beginning to end.

“Along with the other consultants at Avilar, I wrote this paper with the hope that everyone who reads it will take at least one of the tips – probably several — and see better results in the end.”

The white paper is full of stories from consulting projects that create concrete examples for the reasoning behind the tips. In one example, Hipple cites a company that had no consistency in the wording of their competency model.

Each department had composed its own portion of the model, and when it was time for leaders to make decisions based on the assessment data, they were unable to understand the results because of the
technical definitions.

The client had to take an unnecessary step of translating the assessments into a language everyone could understand.

As a tip, Hipple recommends model writers “make assessments more accurate by defining nontechnical skills in observable, behavioral terms and avoiding technical jargon.”

“This white paper is aligned with Avilar’s approach of
practicality and grounding consulting advice in best practices,” Hipple said. “What better way to prove
Avilar’s approach than by demonstrating our use of those principles?”