The People Capability Maturity Model (PCMM) is a well documented set of practices that enable growing original workforce competencies. It is more of a strategic management framework for building and growing original competencies. The PCMM practices help to retain, grow and nurture competent individuals. PCMM is an evolutionary framework that guides organizations in selecting high priority improvement actions based on the current maturity of their workforce practices. It is conceptual model based on state-of-the-art workforce practices. It focuses on continuously improving the management and development of the human assets of an organization.
The PCMM initiative enables an organization to gain insight into its capability for managing and developing its workforce. Organizations need to identify the strengths and weaknesses of their current human resource management practices in order to understand what steps should be taken to improve them. The organization can then relate its strengths and weaknesses of its practices with the best practices indicated in the model, which helps the organization to prioritize their improvement actions and focus on changes that are most beneficial in the near term while having a roadmap for the long term objective.
Experts opine the primary driver for acquiring PCMM certification is getting greater volumes of business. An assessment certification provides an objective view to organizations and helps them strengthen themselves. It also helps a company communicate to the external world that its HR processes are stable, and hence the output that they receive is more likely to be consistent. Clients of such companies who are worried about getting a consistent output are satisfied that their source of supply is having a certification of PCMM and may even be willing to pay a premium for the work they outsource from them. When certification becomes the entry condition, it helps companies obtain business. It also builds the company brand with customers. This is why software companies have been very meticulous about getting themselves assessed, since a large number of their clients are in the US. However, experts also believe that when going in for certification, the driving motive should be to take human capital practices to increasing levels of sophistication where learning, and not the achievement of perfection, is the main objective. This certification will definitely create strong brands internally and externally. If organizations do it just for the sake of it without proper implementation they may not derive the benefits from it in the long run. In a highly competitive global business, recruiting talents with technical skills is not enough anymore. On top of their technical competencies, workers must have the necessary business skills, particularly in making decisions that are not only technically sound, but also consistent with the visions of their organizations. Human resources and workforce managers used to hire workers on the strength of technical knowledge alone; but in order to harness the technical knowledge of workers into tangible products (for example: a piece of software), managers have realized that staff development within the company must be compatible with internal process improvements. In a nutshell, it means helping workers help top managers steer project processes according to current and target capability levels and project directions, as well as providing a framework for optimizing employee competencies for greater measurable value. For human resources and worker development practitioners, PCMM serves as a framework for developing employees from mere knowledge workers to knowledge managers.
Organizations that have achieved a certain level of maturity assign people development to immediate managers. There is still a certain degree of arbitrariness at this level, but the role that employees play in the smaller organization (for example, a project team or a department) is being reviewed and measured according to agreed-upon standards that managers expect from their subordinates. The focus is mostly on the performance of workers, not on the long-term competency development. As people continue to gain further competencies through training and mentoring, it is expected that they become empowered to eventually make professional and organization decisions. The workforce as a whole should develop integrated or complementary competencies and be able to manage their skill sets at organizational level. They must be able to make (or suggest) decisions based on what they know and the processes established within their organizations. When organizations have developed integrated capability sets among workers, it is then that they can continue to innovate products, services, and processes. Innovation is nearly impossible when the people who should be championing new directions in their business domains have no clear course on how they can get from the basic service delivery level to top class product development. Moreover, poaching by competing firms and high turn-over can be prevented if employees understand the value of their place and contribution to the organization.