Step 5: Sustain the Program
A. Maintain Communication and Leadership Support
- Ensure that leadership continues to be well informed and their support is active and visible.
- Continue to communicate expectations, program progress, and the availability of program supports to all key stakeholders
B. Monitor, Measure and Report on the Program
Monitor the organization’s competencies
Monitor and report on the current state of individual, team, departmental, and organizational competency. Periodically review and evaluate each individual’s success in achieving target proficiency in each AM Competency, as set out in the organization’s competency profiles. Assess against team, departmental, and organizational targets. Track trends over time. Identify where in the organization gaps are not closing according to plan. Identify actions to improve and maintain progress towards targets. Utilize appropriate assessment methods including:
Key Performance Indicators
Carefully choose indicators that effectively measure changes in proficiency level on an individual and group scale. Measure individual, team, departmental and organizational results against key performance indicators. Organizations might consider tracking:
- The increase or maintenance of self- or manager-reported proficiency levels by individuals
- Percentages of individuals in various groups meeting proficiency targets or improving proficiency
- Trends in incidents that could be attributed to competence
- Improvement in compliance reporting capability and accuracy
- Trends relating to compliance training and recertification
- Reference to specific competency development on individual development plans
- Increase in the performance of employee development activities specifically attributable to the pursuit of competencies
Benchmarking
Identify industry best practice performance measures and compare the organization’s performance against these year over year. Focus on trends, improvements and how the organization compares to similar organizations rather than a ‘score.’ Because the AMCF is new however, note that there is currently limited availability of best practices on the AM Competencies. This will be an area of focus in future development of the AMCF.
Small/new to AM organizations can utilize a yearly staff review process to document the proficiency of individuals in their organization. Use a simple spreadsheet to track changes over time. Make an informal exploration of these changes part of the review process as well.
CNAM has developed the AM Competency Development Planning Tool to help with this step. Utilize the tool to assess the competency proficiency of staff in your organization and plan and track their development efforts over time.
Monitor the organization’s competency management
Monitor and report on how well the AM Competencies have been integrated and incorporated into organization’s people management processes, procedures and practices. Compare outcomes to activity objectives, milestones and performance metrics. Track trends over time.
Monitor the organization’s Competency Management Program
C. Review, Analyze and Evaluate the Program
Evaluate the organization’s competencies
Periodically, it is useful to critically review the competencies themselves to ensure that the competencies and profiles are still relevant for the organization.
Evaluate the organization’s competency management
Review and evaluate the results of the competency development activities. Analyze potential root causes for missed targets. Identify potential solutions.
Evaluate the organization’s Competency Management Program
Audit the organization’s program management systems. Identify where changes are needed to improve program governance, decisions, and plans.
D. Continually Improve the Program
Continuous Improvement is one of the twelve AM Competencies. Ensure that this competency is not omitted from the Competency Management Program. Implement the solutions the organization identified above to fix issues and maintain timelines. Nothing is perfect, and the organization’s Competency Management Program can always be improved.
Don’t forget to download the AMCF Implementation Worksheet to help guide you through the process.
Now, continue the process cycle and return to the DEFINE step
