Could This Be The End For Competency Frameworks?

For almost 25 years (yikes!), we've specialised in the delivery of behaviour-based learning. That means we focus less on what people do at work, and far more on how they go about doing it. Over the years, this approach has led us to some unexpected insights about what really drives performance, commitment and capability in the workplace.

Much of our thinking has been shaped by our backgrounds as HR and L&D practitioners in large, complex organisations. Like most businesses, these organisations relied heavily on competency frameworks to define and assess performance. On the surface, this makes sense: competency models aim to describe the behaviours required to perform a job effectively and provide a consistent benchmark for assessment.

However, over time we began to see a problem.

Many competency frameworks struggle to keep pace with the reality of modern work. They are often built on an outdated assumption that there is such a thing as an “ideal employee” — someone who neatly fits a fixed set of behavioural standards. The idea is that if we can define the perfect formula for success, we can capture it, share it and replicate it across the organisation.

In practice, work is far messier than that.

A Simple Exercise That Reveals a Bigger Truth

When we work with groups from different roles, sectors and levels of seniority, we often run a simple exercise. We ask participants to write a job advert for their own role, using just ten words to describe what a peak performer looks like. To raise the stakes, we tell them their future reputation — and income — depends on getting it right.

The results are remarkably consistent.

People tend to choose words like collaborative, persuasive, flexible, empathetic, creative, decisive and resilient. What’s striking is not what appears on the list, but what doesn’t. Technical skills and specialist knowledge are rarely mentioned.

This surprises participants every time, but it reflects a familiar workplace reality. Organisations often recruit people based on technical expertise, qualifications and experience. Yet once someone is in the role, judgements about capability — and decisions about promotion — are usually based on how they work with others, how they respond to challenges and how they get things done.

As the (occasionally subversive) band The Fun Boy Three once put it: “It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it.”

This disconnect explains why so many people experience what we call the “magic weekend”. On Friday afternoon, they’re the best technical expert in the team. By Monday morning, they’ve been promoted to supervisor or manager — and are suddenly expected to excel in a completely different set of skills they’ve never been taught.

Even Google Learned This the Hard Way

This isn’t just anecdotal. Google — one of the most technically advanced organisations in the world — discovered something similar through its well-known Project Oxygen. After analysing years of performance data and employee feedback, Google identified the eight qualities people valued most in their managers.

Once again, technical expertise came last.

What mattered most were human skills: listening, coaching, empathy, decision-making and trust.

What Do Employers Really Value?

While Project Oxygen showed what employees want from their managers, it didn’t fully answer a different question: what do organisations want most from their people?

To explore this, Endor Learn & Develop received funding to undertake a ten-year longitudinal study — the Language of Work Project. We gathered feedback from more than 8,000 UK businesses across all sectors, with one aim: to identify the skills most closely associated with success in any role, here in the UK.

What we uncovered was a small set of highly valuable, transferable skills — what we call “transferable currencies”. These are adaptive work skills that consistently add value across different roles, projects and career stages. They increase flexibility, improve performance and remain relevant no matter how jobs evolve.

At first glance, this might sound like just another competency framework. But it’s fundamentally different. Rather than prescribing a fixed list of behaviours for a specific job, these skills can be developed and refined throughout a career. They help people adapt, learn and grow as work changes — which it inevitably does.

Moving Beyond Fixed Job Profiles

The pace of change in today’s workplace makes traditional role profiles increasingly unrealistic. People move rapidly between projects, tasks and responsibilities. Trying to shape them to fit a static job description no longer works.

Instead, organisations get far more value by developing people around the future requirements of the work they’ll need to do — focusing on the right mix of adaptive skills for each project or challenge. Once one task is complete, the focus shifts again to the next set of demands.

This approach prepares people not just for their current role, but for whatever comes next.

If you’d like to learn more about these transferable currencies — and how they can help your people build the skills most associated with success in your organisation — get in touch. We’re always happy to chat over a coffee.

 Annie Munroe, Learning Facilitator