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Competency Mapping and Competency Framework Consulting

Competency mapping gives everyone the same answer to a simple question: what does good look like in this role? We help growing organisations define their roles, the functional skills each one needs and the behaviours that lead to success, built with your managers so they actually use them.

84 role descriptions written where none existed · 95 functional skills defined across 17 functions · Top 75 leaders aligned on new values and behaviours

The Problem

Why Competency Frameworks End Up in a Drawer

Roles Were Never Written Down

As businesses grow on experienced people and informal know-how, nobody stops to define what each role actually needs. Hiring and development run on instinct.

Borrowed Frameworks Do Not Fit

Generic competency libraries describe an imaginary company. Managers cannot see their own work in them, so they stop using them.

The Framework Is Not Connected to Anything

If competencies do not shape hiring, performance, promotion and development, they stay a document rather than a way of working.

HR Owns It, Managers Do Not

A framework written by HR alone rarely survives contact with line managers. It has to be built with the people who will use it.

What We Do

Our Competency Mapping Consulting

We build the foundations every other people decision depends on.

Role Descriptions and Job Architecture

We map your organisation, agree a standard role template, and write clear role descriptions function by function, so every role has a defined purpose, scope and set of expectations.

Functional Skills Mapping

We define the knowledge and skills each department needs, with proficiency levels that show what basic, competent and expert look like in your context.

Behavioural Competency Framework

We identify the behaviours that drive success in your organisation, and the ones that derail it, working with your people through focus groups rather than importing a list.

Leadership Competency Framework

Where values or culture are changing, we translate them into leadership competencies that leaders can be hired, developed and promoted against. For wider culture change, see our organisation development consulting.

Built Into Your People Systems

A framework only works once it shapes decisions. We connect it to hiring and capability assessment through our skills gap assessment and competency-based hiring work, and to bench strength through succession planning.

How It Works

How a Competency Mapping Engagement Works

01

Map the organisation

Gather role and workforce data, map the structure, and identify where roles overlap, are missing or need redefining.

02

Define the roles

Agree a standard template and write role descriptions with functional heads, function by function.

03

Define skills and behaviours with your people

Draw out functional skills from each role, and identify success and derailing behaviours through focus groups, so the framework reflects how work is really done.

04

Build the dictionary

Set proficiency levels for each skill and descriptors for each behaviour by grade, and get sign-off from functional heads and the business head.

05

Hand it over in use

Train managers to use the framework in conversations with their teams, and connect it to hiring, development and succession.

When to Act

When Organisations Bring Us In for Competency Mapping

Growth has outrun role clarity

The organisation has doubled, but roles are still defined by the people in them.

There are no formal role descriptions

Hiring, onboarding and appraisals all start from scratch each time.

Values or culture have changed

New ownership or strategy needs leadership competencies to match.

Assessment or succession is next

You cannot assess capability or plan succession without first defining what good looks like.

A new centre or unit is being built

Capability centres and new business units need role and skill architecture from day one.

Our Work

Competency Mapping in Practice

Building the Talent Architecture for a 500-Person Precision Manufacturer

With no formal role descriptions across two manufacturing units, the business had no shared language for skills. We wrote every role, built a functional skills dictionary and a success behaviours dictionary by grade, and trained managers and employees to use them.

Result: 84 role descriptions, 95 functional skills across 17 functions, and a framework now used for hiring, with 98% of new hires retained.

From Values to Leadership Competencies at a Major Indian Airport

Moving from family to private-equity ownership, the airport needed its new values to show up in how leaders were hired, assessed and promoted. We translated the values into leadership competencies and built them into hiring, performance, promotion and rewards.

Result: Top 75 leaders aligned on the new values and behaviours, with competency-driven people systems institutionalised.

Laying Talent Foundations for a 250-Person Engineering Company

Working with the top leadership, we mapped the workforce and wrote role descriptions, then defined skills and behaviours with the people who do the work. Gap assessment and succession for critical roles follow.

Progress so far: 21 role descriptions, more than 100 skills and competencies, and six success and two derailing behaviours defined.

Engagements

How Our Competency Mapping Engagements Are Structured

Competency Framework Design

Roles, functional skills and behaviours for an organisation or a business unit, typically over three to six months.

The Foundation of a Wider Talent Engagement

Competency mapping as the first phase, followed by gap assessment, hiring and succession, typically over six to twelve months.

Leadership Competencies for Culture Change

Translating new values into leadership competencies, as part of a wider organisation development programme.

Every engagement is shaped around your organisation, and built with your managers and functional heads, not handed to them.

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Begin a Conversation About Your Roles and Skills

Tell us where role clarity is costing you most. We will help you see what a competency framework built for your organisation would look like, and how quickly it could be in use, for organisations across India and the UAE.

Frequently Asked Questions About Competency Mapping

Competency mapping identifies the skills, knowledge and behaviours each role needs to succeed, and sets out what good looks like at each level.

Competency mapping is the work of identifying what each role needs. The competency framework is the result: the structured set of skills and behaviours, with levels, that the organisation then uses.

Functional competencies are the knowledge and skills a role needs, such as financial analysis or quality control. Behavioural competencies describe how people work, such as ownership or collaboration, and apply across roles.

No. We build the framework from your roles and your people, through role analysis and focus groups, so managers recognise their own work in it.

For an organisation of a few hundred people, roles, skills and behaviours typically take three to six months, depending on how many roles there are and how much already exists.

We train managers to use it in structured conversations with their teams, which also show where skills are missing. See our skills gap assessment work.

Yes, and it should be. We connect it to interview guides, performance discussions, promotion criteria and succession planning, so it shapes real decisions.

Yes. We work with organisations across India from Bengaluru and across the Gulf from Dubai, in person and virtually.

Planet Ganges is a prominent player in Business Transformation, delivering tailored interventions in Organisational Culture, Climate, and Leadership Capability. 

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