A Competency Framework Built from Job Descriptions Alone

Client Overview

A diversified holdings group operating across several business lines, with a workforce spread over multiple operating entities and a central Learning and Development function responsible for capability across all of them.

The Challenge

The organisation needed a competency framework covering its entire workforce and had a constraint most framework projects do not survive: the business could not be taken offline for consultation.

Traditional framework design leans heavily on workshops, interviews and validation sessions. That was not available here. The only reliable source material was the organisation's existing job descriptions, which varied in quality, age and level of detail.

The risk was a framework built on thin evidence that looked complete but described work nobody recognised.

The Solution

Ben built the framework working from the job description library, applying a structured derivation method rather than a generic template.

The approach involved:

• Systematic extraction of the technical and behavioural requirements embedded in each job description.
• Clustering those requirements into competency domains based on the nature of the work, not the org chart.
• Writing competencies to a consistent standard so that a competency means the same thing wherever it appears.
• Building in a core competency domain describing what is expected of everyone, and a leadership domain covering those with people accountability.
• Flagging, rather than inventing, the places where the source material was too thin to support a competency.

The result was 53 competency domains covering the entire organisation, written in language drawn from the client's own documents.

Results

• Delivered an organisation-wide competency framework of 53 domains from existing documentation alone.
• Kept demand on the client's team to a small number of review cycles rather than a workshop program.
• Gave the organisation a consistent competency structure it can apply to role models, development planning and recruitment.