Competency Development Framework for AFL

AFL need to grow its ability to develop innovations to meet any customer need or respond to any competitive advance. AFL must rely on its employees’ ability to understand the needs of a changing marketplace and then combine that understanding with their knowledge of how to design and produce garments and services for delivery to its customers. Effective use of tacit knowledge and relationships and the company’s ability to manage them better than the competitors will determine AFL’s success.

AFL will need to develop and implement a competence development framework which will consider the needs of its garment technicians, as well as other employees in order to carry out their job more effectively and also to reduce the time it takes for new employees to perform as productive employees.

AFL’s competencies:
A clear linkage between competence development activities and the company’s strategic and tactical needs;
A strong motivation among the employees to engage in their own competence development;
And a clear and strong strategic and financial ROI on the investments it makes.

Staff of AFL must be organized into an integrated framework for employee competence development. The AFL’s “employee competence development framework” could be built upon the concept of ‘plan-allocate-implement-feedback’. A balance between encouraging employees to learn and develop new knowledge and dedication to their personal lives must be created.
In order to take advantage of the link between employee competence development and the company’s strategic and tactical goals management can begin to allocate resources to develop corporate universities provide tuition reimbursement programs and encourage employees to take full advantage of them. AFL employees will need to begin to take evening and weekend courses. Online training schemes during work also can be increased. AFL’s management will need to reward these competency development efforts by paying bonuses for attaining certifications and degrees.

In order to aim at restoring the balance between work competency development and personal life, a new set of objectives can be created for AFL. Creation of competence savings account into which employees could pay part of their salary from AFL and promising to match the employee’s contribution is an effective attribute to competency development framework.

For employees with only minimum education 15 or more years of experience or aged 45 and over AFL could match the contribution at a ratio of for example 3:1. Therefore at some point in the future funded by his or her competence account money the employee could take time off.
Methods for employee savings towards their sabbatical could be used as an interesting development. Employees will want to identify ways of best spending their competence account money and there a website where employees are able to develop and manage their own competence growth plan could be created for employees. Employees can be helped this way to determine their career path and the specific competencies needed to achieve their goal. The website will contain the tools and links employees need to implement their competence development plans. These include the rules and regulations governing the program/framework. It also includes links to several universities and training organizations that have created special programs for AFL employees. A calendar of when these programs are offered at AFL and internal job postings for employees’ competence account information (for example account value) and the tools necessary to manage that account.

Reference:
www.scandia.com