Author: Dan McCann

Why does a business professional need to know this?

To keep pace with innovation and execute on transformative initiatives, organizations need to make skill development, and any needed re-skilling, a core component of the employee journey. And employees need to continue to master new skills as quickly as possible.

Competency-based learning is a key strategy to help companies meet these challenges. It helps ensure that training is relevant to the work by putting the tasks learners will do on the job into the learning content.

Competency-based learning begins with a needs analysis, which identifies the actual competencies required for mastery on the job. Equipped with information from the needs analysis, subject matter experts, and prospective learners, the learning and development team crafts learning content that challenges learners to perform aspects of the work as part of the curriculum.

Typically, competency-based learning allows individual learners to practice until they reach a designated mastery level before moving forward. Practice or repetition might take the form of simulation practice, scenarios, timed drills, etc. It might also include peer mentoring, coaching, and demonstration of mastery. This repetition and practice is especially helpful when the job tasks carry a risk of harm or injury.

Successful and effective competency-based learning provides learning content that is as close to real-world experiences as possible. This includes methods such as simulations, scenarios, hand-on exercises, timed drills, task observation with feedback, etc. Well-designed competency-based learning helps learners connect what they are learning to what they will be doing on the job.