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Recap
If you’re a new reader, I’d recommend going back to Cronofy’s Competency Framework Journey Part 1 and Part 2, if you’ve already read that - welcome back! Thanks for sticking with me.
By this time, we knew what areas our Competency Framework (CF) would cover, but before the content, how do we measure success? As always at Cronofy we wanted to keep this simple. For each competency pillar there would be 3-5 statements which would be assessed on a scale 1-4:
Does not meet expectations: Does not meet the expectations that are appropriate for the role. Additional direction and support are needed, as is a willingness or ability to improve
Meets expectations: Achieves core goals for the role
Exceeds expectations: Sometimes exceeds expectations, requires little or no additional direction to achieve the core goals of the role
Consistently exceeds expectations: Exceeds expectations and consistently delivers beyond the goals of the position. Influences others to perform better
We intentionally went with 4 despite the temptation for 3 or 5 ratings. We were concerned that it would be too easy to go middle of the road (2 out of 3, or 3 out of 5) which we felt wasn’t enough.
The idea was that, during a review, each statement would be assessed on the above scale, and you’d end up with a total score. Between you and your manager you’d agree how far into an IC level you are, and subsequently what needs to be achieved / demonstrated to reach the next level, thus creating learning and development opportunities as well as clear career progression.
It also allowed us to get an idea not only how far through your competency level you are, but also how you should be compensated.
An example to demonstrate:
Let’s say you’re a Business Analyst at Cronofy at IC2 going into your review. You’re being paid £45K per annum, and the band for that role is £40-50K.
As your competencies are assessed, your average score is 3 (exceeds expectations). That would put you 75% of the way through your IC2 band, which means you should expect to be earning 75% of the budget.
Using this method, we’d increase your salary to £47,500 to represent experience and performance.
With the above example, it meant that we could be absolutely transparent to someone about how much they're being paid and why. Since rollout we've made a number of tweaks to our teams' salaries to reflect the level they're at. No one has had a salary decrease, but many people have had slight payrises purely on the basis of their competency and performance.
This was my 'ah-ha' moment. The cycle between performance and fair, equal pay with complete transparency.
Important details to note:
The assessment of your performance needs to be mutually agreed upon. The whole purpose of our review process is that it’s a discussion and mutual agreement between employee and manager. Two way communication is absolutely vital to making this a success.
final thoughts
This was a long journey but I feel like we’ve reached our ultimate goal - clarity on what success looks like at Cronofy, a fair and equal assessment process, but most importantly transparency on how and where people can progress with us.
Over time we’ll be refining this, and working hard to hold ourselves accountable for making sure people are as successful as they can be at Cronofy.
If you’d like to contact me to discuss this model, or even your own approach to competency frameworks please feel free. You can contact me via this blog site or by emailing mark@cronofy.com