1. What is labour competency?

There are multiple and diverse conceptual renderings of labour competency. A widely accepted concept defines it as the effective ability to perform a fully identified labour activity successfully. Labour competency is not the possibility of success at a job; it is a real and proved ability.

A good categorisation of competency, which allows to access definitions in a better way, is the one that distinguishes between three approaches. The first one regards competency as the ability to carry out tasks; the second one concentrates on personal attributes (attitudes, abilities) and the third one, called “holistic”, includes the two previous ones.

Below there appear a number of definitions on labour competency made by experts, national training institutions and national standardisation and certification institutions.

Definitions made by some experts

Some definitions have been selected in order to offer a range of possibilities that is as complete as possible.

Agudelo:(1) Comprehensive ability of a person that allows him to have an efficient performance in specific labour situations.

Bunk:(2) A person who has occupational competency has the necessary knowledge, skills and capacity to perform in a profession, is able to solve occupational problems in an autonomous and flexible manner and is able to contribute to his professional environment and the organisation of work.

Ducci:(3) Labour competency is the social construction of significant and useful learning to perform in a real labour situation. It is obtained not only through formal learning but also - and mainly – through experiential learning in practical labour situations.

Gallart, Jacinto:(4) A group of properties under continuous change that need to be put to the test of solving practical problems in labour situations that create certain degrees of uncertainty and have technical complexity […]. These properties are not obtained from applying a curriculum […] but rather from applying knowledge under critical circumstances.

Gonzci:(5) A complex structure of necessary attributes to perform in specific situations. This has been considered a holistic approach in the sense that it integrates and relates attributes and tasks, it enables several intentional actions to occur simultaneously and it takes into account the context and the culture of the workplace. It allows us to incorporate ethics and values as elements of competent performance.

Le Boterf:(6) A construction obtained from a combination of resources (knowledge, know how, qualities or aptitudes and environmental resources -relationships, documents, information, etc.) which are mobilised to achieve a satisfactory performance.

Mertens:(7) He makes an interesting contribution that helps to distinguish between qualification and competency. While we understand that qualification is a group of knowledge and capacities that individuals acquire during socialisation and training processes, competency refers only to certain aspects of the store of knowledge and abilities: the ones necessary to achieve certain results demanded by a specific circumstance; the actual capacity to achieve an objective or result in a given context.(8)

Miranda:(9) In a general way, it is understood that labour competency gathers the attitudes, knowledge and skills that allow developing a comprehensive number of functions and tasks successfully in accordance with the performance criteria that are deemed appropriate in the labour environment. They can be identified in real work situations and they are described by grouping productive tasks according to areas of competency (more or less permanent functions), specifying in each of the tasks the criteria through which the performance can be assessed as competent.

Prego:(10) “… those personal qualities that allow to predict an excellent performance in a changing environment that requires multi-functionality. The ability to learn, potential in its broad sense, flexibility and the ability to adapt are more important in this sense than specific knowledge or experience in the management of a certain programming language or an IT tool in particular”.

Kochanski:(11) Competencies are the techniques, skills, knowledge and characteristics that make a certain worker stand out over a regular worker with the same function or work category because of his performance.

The above is a good sample of the competencies approach based on the attributes of the person. It is frequently used in the competency-based processes of human resources management. This approach focuses on the definition of competency as attributes of individuals which allow them to achieve a higher performance. It was originated in the research work of David MacClelland.

Zarifian:(12) “I understand that competency is taking initiative and responsibility successfully when facing a situation at work, both at the level of the individual and the group”.

Another example of the competencies approach that focuses on personal attributes can be found in the report known as SCANS (13) which distinguished between two big groups: one base group and another group of mainstream competencies.

Report of the “Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills” (SCANS) Basic competencies: Basic skills: reading, writing, arithmetic and mathematics, speaking and listening. Analytical skills: thinking creatively, making decisions, solving problems, seeing things in the mind’s eye, knowing how to learn and reasoning. Personal qualities: responsibility, self-esteem, sociability, self-management, integrity and honesty. Mainstream competencies: Resources management: allocating time, money, materials, space, personnel. Interpersonal skills: team work, teaching others, serving customers, developing leadership, negotiating and working with people from culturally diverse backgrounds. Information management: acquiring and evaluating data, organising and maintaining files, interpreting and communicating, operating computers. Systemic comprehension: understanding complex interrelationships, understanding systems, monitoring and correcting performance, designing or improving systems. Technological command: selecting technologies, applying technology to the task, providing maintaining and troubleshooting equipment.

 

 

 

 

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1 Agudelo, Santiago, Certificación de competencias laborales. Aplicación en Gastronomía, Montevideo, Cinterfor/ILO, 1998.
2 Bunk, G. P., La transmisión de las competencias en la formación y perfeccionamiento profesionales en la RFA, in: Revista CEDEFOP N°1, 1994.
3 Ducci, María Angélica, “El enfoque de competencia laboral en la perspectiva internacional”, in: Formación basada en competencia laboral, Montevideo, Cinterfor/ILO, 1997.
4 Gallart, M. Antonia; Jacinto, Claudia, “Competencias laborales: tema clave en la articulación educación trabajo”, in: Formación basada en competencia laboral, Montevideo, Cinterfor/ILO, 1997.
5 Gonzci, Andrew; Athanasou, James, “Instrumentación de la educación basada en competencias. Perspectivas de la teoría y práctica en Australia”, in: Competencia Laboral y Educación Basada en Normas de Competencia, Mexico, Limusa, 1996.
6 Le Boterf, Guy, La ingeniería de las competencias, París, D´organisation, 1998.
7 Mertens, Leonard, Labour competence: emergence, analytical frameworks and institutional models, Montevideo, Cinterfor/ILO, 1996.
8 This distinction between qualification and competency has brought up an interesting debate which is well-described in: Rojas, Eduardo, El saber obrero y la innovación en la empresa, Montevideo, Cinterfor/ILO, 1999, pp. 242 and ff.
9 Miranda, Martín. “Transformación de La Educación Media Técnico-Profesional” in: Políticas Educacionales en el Cambio de Siglo. La Reforma del Sistema Escolar de Chile, Santiago de Chile, Universitaria, 2003 (Cristian Cox, editor).
10 Muñoz de Priego Alvear, Julián, “Implantación de un sistema de selección por competencias”, Training and Development, Nº10, Madrid, 1998.
11 Kochansky, Jim, “El sistema de competencias”, in: Training and Development digest, Madrid, 1998.
12 Zarifian, Philippe, El modelo de competencia y los sistemas productivos, Montevideo, Cinterfor/ILO, 2001.
13 Secretary´s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS), 1991.

 

 

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