IOSR Journal of Business and Management (IOSR-JBM) e-ISSN: 2278-487X, p-ISSN: 2319-7668. Volume 16, Issue 9.Ver. III (Sep. 2014), PP 20-23 www.iosrjournals.org www.iosrjournals.org 20 | Page Competency Based Human Resource Management in Process Industries with Specific Reference to Bhilai Steel Plant Jai Prakash Pandey 1 , Sanjay Guha 2 1 (DGM (Projects), SAIL, Bhilai Steel Plant, Bhilai, C.G., India) 2 (Professor and Head, Department of Management, BIT, Durg, C.G., India) Abstract: In present business scenario, companies are required to be vigilant to changing customer needs and emerging market trends. Proactive action to align the organization to these changes can be a competitive advantage for the organization. More-over, the process industries have limitations of less flexible product mix and raw material which further put constraints on their profitability. Steel industry is no exception to it. Competency development plays a major role in fulfilling customer requirements with minimum cost. Competency based human resource management tries to orient HR processes and systems to enhance the capability of the people at workplace. Present research work employs literature and empirical study of the HRM practices at Bhilai Steel Plant which are aligned to develop competencies of the people. It can be inferred from the study that strategic management of human resources play significant role in developing competency required at work place. Keywords: Competency, Customer, Cost, Organization, Proactive, Process, workplace. I. Introduction Organizations, today, are adopting growth strategies based on resources which are unique due to their inherent quality over their competitors. This becomes an asset to gain competitive edge and cope up with market dynamics from strategic point of view. People are one of the most important resources amongst organizational culture; reputation and relationship with stakeholders which are differentiating factor in today’s market dynamics. It is the need of the present business scenario to evolve and realize that it is the people who can earn the brand name for the company and therefore, all necessary steps need to be taken for operationalizing the process of competence development and its management within their own organization. Companies are coming to the conclusion that competencies can be used to overcome the financial turbulence and also at the time of market and financial stability and growth. Future success of the organization is analysed in light of state of the business in long run and accordingly key competencies, organizationally and individually, are assessed for future success. From strategic point of view, the companies have to differentiate themselves from their competitors and at the same time, achieve sustainable growth. They have to do so, on the basis of their capability to leverage their soft resources or asymmetries to their maximum potential. A study of a number of firms by Danny Miller [1] shows how some of the companies were able to build not so much on resources and capabilities as on asymmetries. Asymmetries are typically skills, processes or assets a firm’s competitor do not and cannot copy on a cost that affords economic rents. At the time of crisis in a particular location and situation, competencies are used to normalize it, but they are not propagated to other places and situations of works and therefore, they become past incidents in due course of time. Individual competency (dimensions of behavior lying behind a competent performer ) alone does not yield results in totality in an organization. Workplace competence gives the desired result which generally emanates from group competency at which the person is competent to specific areas of work. It requires establishing of the process of building the competencies. A competency is a set of behaviour patterns that the incumbent needs to bring to a position in the order to perform its tasks and functions with competence [2]. Competency is more precisely defined as the behaviours that employees must have, or must acquire, to input into a situation in order to achieve high levels of performance, while 'competence' relates to a system of minimum standards or is demonstrated by performance and outputs [3]. Therefore, the notion of competence integrates attributes with performance [4]. Competence development is possible by identifying, developing and nurturing the competencies for realizing the competence at workplace. In recent times, global industries like FMCGs, Finance and Banking, Automotive, White Goods, IT, Steel, Chemical and Fertilizers, Paper and Pulp and Leather have gone through the process of diversification, relocation and integration. Steel industries of South Korea and Europe are willing to invest into the Indian steel market and have started to make their presence felt. Merger of big companies in the global steel business and the capacity expansion in the domestic steel markets have brought the Indian and world steel industry at the same platform where measure of the bench mark will be same for domestic and international players. As a matter of fact, all these companies will have almost same process and equipments of world-class technology. In this