Information on CIPFA's Competency Model
A competency model (or competency framework) is a set of behaviours or skills that are essential for effective performance in an organisation, and that can be measured and observed.
The CIPFA Finance Competency Model comprises behavioural competencies, which are concerned with HOW we perform our roles, HOW we apply our technical knowledge and meet our performance objectives.
The CIPFA Finance Competency Model applies to and enhances a variety of people management processes:
- Job profiling and restructuring of teams and organisations
- Recruitment and selection (eg, competency-based interviews)
- Performance management
- Learning and career development
- Diagnostic – understanding why teams do/don’t work effectively
- The concept of competency reflects the evolution in the demand for ongoing professional development and the competency model is a tool that aids in this process of continual improvement.
The CIPFA Finance Competency Model will enable you to identify the behaviours that drive successful performance and enable you to deliver your services in a more effective way by focusing on a range of competencies that affect an individual’s performance. You can select which competencies are best suited to any given role.
The Model will help you establish a common ground around work practices and how staff are expected to behave in delivering the priorities set down in key corporate documents.
Behavioral competencies are a signal from the organisation to the individual of the expected areas of individual focus and associated levels of performance. They provide the individual with an indication of the behaviours that are valued and recognised by the organisation.
How can the Competency Model help you?
The Competency Model will help and enable you to identify the behaviours that drive successful performance and enable you to deliver your services in a more effective way by focusing on a range of competencies that affect individual’s performance.
You can select which competencies are best suited to any given role and tailor their selection for your organisation.
It will helps you establish a common ground around work practices and how staff are expected to behave in delivering the priorities set down in key corporate documents.
The Competency Model can help you to undertake a whole range of people activities including assessing your overall resilience within the Finance team:
- Job profiling and restructuring of teams and organisations
- Recruitment and selection (eg, competency-based interviews)
- Performance management
- Learning and career development
- Diagnostic – understanding why teams do/don’t work effectively
How CIPFA can help?
Using the CIPFA Finance Competency Model to support organisational development
Behavioral competencies emphasise the behaviours that are crucial for success in the organisation. They provide us with a clear focus for development. They help staff and line managers have a more focused development discussion and they also help us to take charge of our own development. Development actions become more focused as a result (against an evidence base) and we work more effectively with people across the organisation.
Using the CIPFA Finance Competency Model to support career path planning and development
A career path may take many forms of education, skills acquisition in the workplace and on the job experience. The competencies articulated in the CIPFA Finance Competency Model represent a broad range of Finance and Finance-related competencies. For example, the competencies cover skills for the information age, business skills and the core competencies expected of Finance Business Partners.
Soft skills are as important as technical skills. We often find that the focus is on technical skills which are an important and are a core feature to enable an individual to deliver their role. Irrespective of the individual’s (development) situation, the Model can be tailored to each individual and should be utilised in a continuum of training and development in order to advance one’s career.
The CIPFA Finance Competency Model comprises all aspects of a modern organisation reflecting skills, conduct and knowledge.
The CIPFA Finance Competency Model as a diagnostic tool
Applying the Competency Model allows you to identify where the gaps are in your organisation. The Competency Model can also help identify issues (too few or too many skills in any given area) and enables you to have conversations at individual and team level regarding skill/competency mix and balance to meet the organisational objectives.
The results of running the Competency Model will enable the organisation, teams and individuals to create action plans to address development gaps. The reporting will enable the results to be viewed at organisation, team and individual level. Focusing on the individual is important but using the Competency Model to focus on assessing team performance, team dynamics etc is also equally important and powerful.
Using the CIPFA Finance Competency Model
The CIPFA Finance Competency Model is easy to use. It’s a Microsoft Forms based questionnaire that presents the individual (employee) with a customised set of competencies relating to their work area. The competencies can be pre-tailored during a Customer Design Phase, where CIPFA will work with you to reflect the best possible fit of competencies to your organisation’s needs. Depending on the number of competencies selected for an individual, the Competency Model shouldn’t take more than 30 minutes to complete. A customised link will be emailed to each individual who will review each set of descriptions (per competency) and select a score (1-5). We recommend that the individual also provides a short description of any relevant evidence they have acquired in justifying their scores. This could include attendance on a training course, prior experience in another role in the same or another organisation etc. Once started, the individual can return to the Competency Model as it will save each score as they complete it. Once complete, all of the output will be presented in a set of standard (and customised on request) reports using PowerBI.
Why the competency model is relevant to the public sector.
The Competency Model has been developed for the public sector to be used by a range of public sector organisations.
