Core Competencies: Why competencies and assessments are important to supervisors

CORE COMPETENCIES: Why Competencies and Assessments are Important to Supervisors

BY ANNA TAYLOR • PUBLIC AFFAIRS SPECIALIST PHOTOS BY LUKE BEASLEY • NNSY PHOTOGRAPHER Employee Development Pipelines will have a long-term impact on supervisors within the shipyard, and in early December, departmental representatives attended the second Core Competency Summit at the Dry Dock Club. The goal of the summit was to review the departmental progress being made on these pipelines in support of the Norfolk Naval Shipyard (NNSY) Performance Improvement Plan, as well as to promote an opportunity for team learning.

Leaders from every NNSY Department, as well as individual production resource shops, shared learning experiences, best practices,

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and ideas for continuous improvement to “Accelerate the Change” at America’s Shipyard.

For supervisors, building a qualified workforce is essential to long-term success, and the Employee Development Pipelines are designed to support all of a department’s core competencies by integrating development, experience, and training. Each of the pipelines contains checkpoints for recruiting, employee onboarding, indoctrination, and reaching full performance level, which creates clear indications of progress within the pipelines and makes gathering milestone

metrics easier. Arranging these requirements in a spreadsheet and creating flow charts unique to each of the trades makes it less complicated for resource managers to forecast future workload gaps and to adjust manning and training accordingly.

“The supervisor benefits because they will have the resources when they need them,” explained Stephanie Jacocks, Structural Group (Code 920) Continuous Training and Development. “They get people who are qualified. It’s a full package, it’s a complete person. Right now, that planning piece isn’t exactly linked together.”

Developing the workforce includes growing leaders, and every position at NNSY will have a pipeline to follow. “As far as supervision goes, we’re laying out the path, giving them the tools they need to make sure they get the training to be effective leaders,” said Daniel Shirley, Code 920 Planning Manager. “From a resource perspective, [the pipelines] are important for supervisors because it enables them to see who is coming up in the ranks, in work leader positions, and helps identify who has those leadership traits and who is ready to move forward.”

The Core Competencies and Pipelines developed during fiscal year 2015 are now in the implementation phase, with a focus on the ability to track progress and close gaps in the areas most critical to executing our current- and near-term workload. According to John Snell, Production Training Division (Code 900T) Superintendent, the goal is for the pipelines to serve as tools for both resource regulation and employee development by the time they are finalized at the end of this fiscal year.

The pipelines create clear ownership and accountability for department heads and superintendents and ensure continuity and standardization within the initiative. “By the end of FY-16, we want to have the majority of our folks aligned and progressing through the pipelines to have a firm feel on where our biggest gaps are as far as capacity and critical core competencies versus fully qualified employees,” said Mike Zydron, Engineering Planning Manager (Code 200). “We are setting the foundation with every shop and every code, identifying core competencies with a focus on knowledge, skills, and abilities, and we are transforming those into pipelines. Our goal, to accelerate the development of our workforce, is more important than ever.”

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