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Using competence frameworks for CPD

A guide to using competence frameworks for continuous professional development

Competences and Professional Development

Competence frameworks are a powerful tool to support many business activities, but are most commonly known for their use in learning and development. You may be working with competences as part of an employer scheme, for professional registration or to help you structure your professional development. Whatever the reason, using a competence framework is simple and effective.

What is competence?

It is easiest to define competence as "the ability to perform activities to the standards required in employment using an appropriate mix of knowledge, skill and attitude". All three aspects must be present if someone is to be effective in the workplace. Therefore to become competent you need to increase not only your knowledge, but also your understanding of how that knowledge can be applied, your skill in applying it, and the underpinning professionalism to apply it safely and appropriately.

In order to decide if you are competent you will need to have a definition of the knowledge, skills and attitude required for your role – usually described as what a competent person might be able to do. As individual roles are often made up of a number of tasks you will need the definition for each task.

There will also be definitions of generic skills (such as communication) and behaviours (such as attention to detail or team-working), which sit alongside the more specific technical aspects to form an overall picture of competence for a role. The complete bundle of descriptions makes a framework.

Building competence frameworks can be a complex process requiring much analysis and verification. It is best if they are benchmarked against similar roles in other organisations or sectors to ensure completeness and consistency. In many areas, this work has already been done and there are a large number of existing ‘recognised’ frameworks that you can draw from to provide the basis for your personal competence profile. You may be familiar with some of these such as UK-SPEC, OSCEng and SFIA, but there are many others, usually sector or role specific frameworks that you can use.

Help with using competences

If you want to explore how to use competence frameworks effectively, advice on making them part of your professional development process is available on the Competences in the Development Cycle page and in the planning section of the PD-How2 guide.

Alternatively, the IET workshop ‘Working with Competences’ is a short, interactive session that will help you get started.

Competence frameworks for organisations

The use of competence frameworks to support all functions related to the recruitment, development and management of human resources is now truly embedded in recognised good practice. Having a competence framework tailored to and integrated within your business processes, can co-ordinate and support these activities such that you are constantly aware of the available talent within your organisation, can plan, track and monitor the effectiveness of performance management, succession and career planning, recruitment, project team deployment, and learning and development; and can more effectively meet the demands of regulatory compliance.

Your choice of framework is entirely yours. Many, larger organisations create their own, although usually starting from an existing, benchmarked standard, which is subsequently adapted and tailored. Even this can require a significant investment of resource, but the benefits soon justify the initial outlay, and creating a culture where competence is considered a key measure will encourage all staff to contribute to maintaining and developing the standards.

If your aim is to encourage and develop your staff to achieve professional registration, then you will need to either use UK-SPEC directly, or map your own/other framework(s) to it in order to facilitate the provision of evidence against the UK-SPEC competence statements, which is necessary when making an application.

If you prefer to adopt and use an existing framework, at least initially, then you may wish to approach the Sector Skills Councils and Professional Bodies related to your sector for guidance on what is available. For example, organisations working in the IT sector, or with staff in IT roles, may wish to use SFIA (Skills Framework for the Information Age) as this is a widely recognised and utilised framework in this area.

For organisations who want to tailor a framework, or create their own from first principles, the IET has some initial guidance that will help you plan your approach.

IET/BCS/HSE Safety Critical Systems Framework

IEC 61508 advises that organisations involved in safety-related work should have procedures in place for ensuring the competency of staff but does not recommend a specific framework or standard. The IET, BCS and HSE have produced a framework for professional engineers engaged in safety critical systems, which describes the generic task and behavioural competences for specific roles. Level descriptors are provided to aid assessment.