Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities (KSAs)
Employee behavior is the employee’s knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs). It is clear that KSAs have a significant impact on employee performance. All things being equal, if employees lack the KSAs to perform a task or behavior, they will likely fail. Almost all HRD programs focus on improving or renewing the KSAs of employees.
Despite the ubiquitous nature of KSAs, these factors can be difficult to define with precision. Definitions differ according to the person defining them. Edwin Fleishman, a leading researcher of human abilities, defines abilities as general capacities related to the performance of a set of tasks. Abilities develop over time through the interaction of heredity and experience and are long-lasting. Skills are similar to abilities, but differ in that they combine abili- ties with capabilities that are developed as a result of training and experience.
Skills are often categorized as psychomotor activities (whereas abilities tend to be more cognitive), and skills are typically measured in terms of the ease and precision evident in the performance of some task.99 Increasingly, skills are being studied and addressed using the broader term of “competency.”
