This service appeals to those partners who principally work with organisations around competency assessments, talent management, succession planning etc. You will most likely already have or use mature processes for competency assessment, succession planning and related human resource management issues. You are however, looking for new ways to explore opportunities for leveraging human capital within your client base while at the same time effectively managing the risks involved. You are also looking for way to differentiate yourself from the many competitors working in this space.
What this service offers is a compelling complementary approach to core competency assurance. The critical element that we analyse is the knowledge sharing relationships between and with key staff. Our relationship maps are able to uniquely identify who the critical ‘go to’ staff are in an organisation. These are the staff who if lost through unforeseen circumstances, consequences for the organisation can be dire. They are not always obvious, especially at the more operational areas of an organisation. We are also able to pinpoint where core competency risks exist by viewing how well key discipline leaders are connected as a community. A highly connected community of discipline leaders identifies a far stronger capability than an organisation where the discipline leaders are isolated from each other. Traditional competency assessment tools focused on individuals will not identify this situation.
Case Study - Rail Utility
Context A major rail utility with 15,000 staff and responsibility for both metropolitan and regional passenger rail services.
The Problem With an ageing workforce the organisation was concerned about the potential deterioration of their core areas of expertise.
The Solution A Succession Planning process was undertaken across the organisation to identify what the true risks were for their ageing workforce. Organisational Network Analysis techniques were used to identify the critical roles and people based on the number of their peers that nominated them as a critical resource. Identified staff were then subjected to a second round of analysis looking particularly for the relationships that they maintained that were more or less exclusive to them and therefore making it difficult for potential successors to effectively conduct their roles.
The Benefits For the first time the organisation was able to collect data on succession risks based on peer dependency. This proved particularly valuable for the key technical competencies that are not distinguished necessarily by their position on the hierarchy. More effective succession interventions could then be tailored to each specific risk.
Case Study - Petroleum Exploration
Context A global petroleum exploration and production firm with operations in Australia, USA and Europe.
The Problem The organisation was critically dependent on the rare expertise of specialist engineers, geologists and geophysicists. They were concerned about their depth of capability in some of the more critical areas. They were also concerned that they were not leveraging the scarce skills they did have across their global teams.
The Solution An organisational network analysis showed them that overall a sufficient density of expertise was available in the majority of the regions and therefore presented no significant risk. However the analysis also showed that expertise was not being leveraged between the regional silos. The organisation decided to implement a low cost but effective expertise "yellow pages" but with only the key brokers identified in the network analysis. The idea was that with one call to an identified broker, a staff member could get a qualified connection to who could best help them anywhere in the world.
The Benefits The organisation had initially contemplated the building of a 'yellow page' directory containing records for all of their staff. This would have proved to be an expensive exercise with no guarantee of effective use. The solution provided required a single web page for each of the identified 8 'brokers' at a substantially lower cost and a better result all round.
Deliverables
The mapping of the competency relationships is a key element of this service. The most common method is via a direct survey. Access to Optimice’s ONA Survey tools with a pre-defined template of key questions is provided. Partners are able to add additional questions as they see fit, but as a minimum, the template questions are required.
Some example outputs are provided here:
Core Competency Network Map
The different colours denote different specialist disciplines. Size of nodes reflects discipline leaders (got to people). Fragmented disciplines means diminished capability for the discipline.
Key Player Analysis
The above analysis identifies how vulnerable the organisation is to a loss of key players. Benchmark data is available for comparison with like organisations.
Succession Risk Analysis
The Pareto Chart shows degree to which a target staff member shares common relationships with others in the organisation. A low common relationship percentage indicates a high succession risk. This is related to the key player risk report. Again benchmark data is available for comparative purposes.
