What is a competence management maturity model?
A maturity model is a framework that describes how established, consistent, and effective an organization's competence management processes are. It lets you target development work where the gap between current state and target level is widest.
Five maturity levels
Maturity is rated on a 1–10 scale, and scores fall on five levels:
- Initial (1–2): processes are missing or ad hoc; work depends on individuals.
- Developing (3–4): processes are emerging but inconsistent and do not cover the whole organization.
- Defined (5–6): processes are documented and followed.
- Advanced (7–8): processes are systematic and continuously improved based on measurement data.
- Optimized (9–10): processes represent industry best practice and renew proactively.
Three assessment dimensions
The mere existence of a process says nothing about its quality. That is why each sub-area is assessed from three perspectives: operational (does the process exist and is it in use), experiential (how do employees experience it), and impact (does the effect show in the business). The gaps between dimensions are typically the single most important finding: a documented but poorly experienced process is a different problem than a missing process, and it is fixed with different means.
What is a maturity model used for?
A maturity model gives leadership, HR, and managers a shared language: the numbers 1–10 and the levels Initial–Optimized mean the same to everyone. Repeated measurement shows the trend, and when development initiatives are logged at measurement points, their effect on maturity becomes visible.
Read the full picture in the competence management guide or see how MaturityHR implements the maturity model in practice: pricing and trial.