1. KAUTIR (Kerala Agricultural University Theses Information and Retrieval)

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    Competency mapping among employees of Kerala agricultural university
    (Department of Agricultural Extension Education, College of Agriculture, Vellanikkara, 2024-12-11) Aaysha Kamar.; Helen, S
    Kerala Agricultural University (KAU) is the primary agricultural higher educational institution in the State to provide human resources, skills and technologies required for the sustainable agricultural development through education, research and extension. At present, university has nine colleges under the Faculty of Agriculture, Agricultural Engineering and Forestry, six Regional Agricultural Research Stations (RARS), seventeen research stations, seven Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs) and seven other extension units. The university has the workforce of 486 teaching staff, 1077 non-teaching staff, 36 technical officers and 1601 labourers as on 01/09/2024. Competency mapping is an important tool for an organization to ensure its employees have the abilities to meet the institutional goals. With this backdrop, competency mapping was conducted among a selected sample of 70 scientists, 40 technical officers, 70 administrative staff, and 70 labourers using simple random sampling technique. Competency models tailored to each category of employees were adopted and modified focusing on the core competencies aligned with the specific job requirements for each category. According to the TAASK-based competency model, scientists at KAU showed the highest competency gap in knowledge with an index of 56.80, and the lowest gap in attitude with an index of 34.84. By adopting hexagonal competency model for technical officers, it was identified that the highest competency gap was in knowledge with an index of 70.42, while professional ethics had the smallest gap of index value 24.60. The Lancaster competency model adopted among administrative staff highlighted creativity as the area with the largest disparity, recording a competency gap index of 56.27, whereas professional ethics showed the smallest gap of index value 26.25. According to the Pyramid competency model for labourers, knowledge exhibited the highest gap index value of 65.39, while communication had the lowest gap index value of 28.07. It was found that majority of all the four categories of employees exhibited moderate level of job performance. To delineate the factors affecting the performance of employees of KAU, seven factors were identified among scientists viz; career progression and learning, workload, job stress, research productivity, personal efficacy, work environment and job engagement. Six factors were determined among technical officers viz; job engagement, workplace resources and job mobility, personal efficacy, achievement motivation, career progression and occupational pressure. Five factors like career progression and job mobility, job engagements, infrastructural facility, personal efficacy and occupational pressure were identified among administrative staff. Seven factors were determined among labourers viz; age, personal efficacy, infrastructural facilities, organizational climate, achievement motivation, occupational pressure and job engagement. The overall training needs of KAU employees were assessed under technical, organizational, and socio-psychological domains. The urgently needed trainings among scientists were in the technical domain with an index value of 50.16, followed by socio psychological domain (42.50) and the least training need on organizational domain (39.70). The overall Training Need Index (TNI) of scientists at KAU was 44.12. The urgently needed trainings among technical officers were in technical domain with an index value of 30.25, followed by socio-psychological domain (23.75) and the least training need on organizational domain (19.38), resulting in an overall TNI of 24.46. The most needed rainings among administrative staff were in technical domain with an index value of 38.57, followed by organizational domain (30.83) and socio-psychological domain receiving the least training need index (19.57) and their overall TNI was 29.66. Similarly, the training needs of labourers were the highest in technical domain with an index value of 31.99, followed by socio-psychological domain (24.29), and their overall TNI was 28.14. Based on the findings of the study, the training modules were designed based on the specific training needs of each category of the employees. Eight modules for the scientists of KAU, seven modules for the technical officers, three modules for the administrative staff and five modules for the labourers were designed to enhance the competency of the employees of KAU. The implications such as developing a competency software for university to visualize performance gap for individual employee, to encourage inter-disciplinary or cross-departmental collaborative projects to bridge the knowledge gap among scientists and to implement competency-based talent management system which enable university to assess employees’ current competency were recommended from the findings of the study to increase competency level of university employees.