Glossary

Behavioral competency

Apr 5, 2024

What is behavioral competency?

Behavioral competency is a set of skills, abilities, and behaviors that an individual must possess to achieve a desired outcome. It’s similar to personality traits, but different in that it doesn’t focus on personality characteristics. Instead, behavioral competency focuses on what an employee must do to achieve their goals and objectives. Examples of behavioral competencies include communication skills (such as listening), problem-solving ability, teamwork skills, adaptability, and emotional intelligence; all of which can be measured through objective tools such as 360-degree surveys or performance reviews.

Benefits of using behavioral competency

If you carefully read the behavioral competency definition, you’ll see, that it is a way of measuring and improving performance. It can be used to identify gaps in performance, areas for improvement, and areas where individuals need to develop new skills. There are many benefits of using behavioral competency.

  • Behavioral competency is a way to measure the skills of an employee. It helps to identify the skills that are needed to perform the job and also measures how well an employee performs in those areas.
  • Behavioral competencies can be used in hiring decisions, performance evaluations and succession planning.

Examples of behavioral competencies

Here are examples of behavioral competencies list:

  • Communication skills (listening, speaking clearly and concisely)
  • Problem-solving skills (identifying problems, developing solutions)
  • Teamwork skills (working collaboratively with others)
  • Time management skills (planning work activities; managing time so as not to exceed deadlines or budgets) and many more.

How to measure behavioral competency?

Behavioral competency is a measurement of how well employees perform their job. It is determined by assessing the behaviors of the people who work for you and how they interact with each other, as well as with customers and vendors. To measure behavioral competency, you need to know what behaviors are important to your organization and then develop a method for measuring these behaviors.

HR behavioral competencies should be aligned with business strategy so that they help achieve organizational goals in areas such as customer satisfaction or employee retention.

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