Key contact

Stephen Gee

Senior Development and Business Support Manager
Stephen.Gee@bitc.org.uk
Tel: +44 (0)20 7566 6624

How to Use the Competency Map - CR Practitioners

 

GUIDE for using the Map

A guide for CR Practitioners who want to use the Competency Map to better understand their role, the challenges they face, solutions to those challenges and build a personal development plan.

To help you get most value out of the map and construct your own personal development plan we have prepared the following documents, please download them before you start. 

Activity Area Prioritisation Tool.docx [docx]

Personal Development Planning Tool.docx [docx]

Behaviours Assessment.docx [docx]

STEP 1 - Login / Register your email address 

The whole competency map is publicly available but we require you to register on our system to see the whole map. If you are already registered on our website you can login using your existing details.

You will be asked to register or login when you attempt to access the Activities Map.

STEP 2 - Identify relevant Activities

View the Activities Map, this has various activities that CR practitioners are involved in.  It may take 20 minutes to look at each activity in detail so to keep the exercise manageable we recommend you use the Activity Area Prioritisation Tool to identify your top 5 activities and focus on them.  You may wish to choose activities that are currently part of your role, or ones that you would like to develop into.

Click on the Activity that interests you, we suggest stepping through your top 5 activities one at a time.

View the Activities Map

STEP 3 - Identify the Business Outcomes you are working towards 

Each Activity page starts with a list of Desired Business Outcomes, it is not exhaustive but captures the key insights that practitioners shared during development of the map. Click on the outcomes you are interested in achieving.

Add your Desired Business Outcomes to row 2 of your Personal Development Planning Tool

STEP 4 - Identify your Challenges

Each Desired Business Outcome links to an associated set of challenges.  Identify the challenges similar to those that you face and bear these in mind when you review 'knowledge and understanding', 'behaviours' and 'resources'. 

Add your Challenges to row 3 of your Personal Development Planning Tool

STEP 5 - Browse Knowledge and Behaviours for ways to meet your Challenges

Click on a Behaviour to be taken to a page which details observable and specific behaviours that practitioners have used to successfully tackle the challenges that they shared with us. The Behaviours listed are intended to be suggestions rather than a prescriptive list; they are a summary of the common approaches that practitioners identified as pivotal to their successes. We recommend that you focus on those behaviours that make sense in your situation and that you expect will work in your organisation.

Add your gaps in Knowledge and Behaviours to rows 4 and 5 of your Personal Development Planning Tool

STEP 6 - Identify Resources to help address Challenges

By browsing back to the relevant Desired Business Outcome (on the Activity page) you will be able to identify some of the resources that are availble to improve your knowledge, understanding and behaviours.

Add Resources to rows 6 and 7 of your Personal Development Planning Tool as appropriate.

STEP 7 - Inform your Personal Development Plan

If you have not done so already, use all of the relevant Knowledge, Behaviours and Resources identified in these steps, to inform/ construct a personal development plan. If you prefer we have developed a CR Professional Development Workshop run by a professional career coach, to help you do this.

Return to step 2 as appropriate

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Key Points of CONTEXT for the Map

  • The competency map identifies 16 different Behaviours and any CR practitioner (or CR team) is likely to have to demonstrate all of them to some extent.  For each Desired Business Outcome only the most prominent Behaviours to achieve the stated outcomes are listed.

  • A number of common business ‘skills’ were also identified as important, these include: Marketing & PR skills, project management skills,  coaching and training, presentation skills, negotiation skills and writing skills.

  • Influencing without power and change management skills were considered important for most challenges.  Where specific behaviours relating to these generic skills were identified they are included in the map.

  • Neither the list of Desired Business Outcomes nor Challenges are exhaustive but are the key Challenges that practitioners shared during the development of the map.

  • The map includes some of the key pieces of knowledge that were identified as important to overcome challenges but focuses on the behaviours and approaches that practitioners have taken.

  • When using this framework please consider that the organisational context you are operating in will be a significant factor influencing the success of the actions you take.  Key organisational influences identified were: time pressures, limited budgets, limited resources (including human resource to delegate tasks to), bureaucracy, internal barriers and politics.

  • To get the most out of the map we suggest that you use it for ongoing support and re-visit it as your circumstances change or when you just want to focus on one issue.  The map will be actively maintained by BITC.

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