The People Capability Maturity Model (P-CMM) is a framework developed by The Carnegie Mellon University (2009) that helps managers to address the critical people issues inside organizations. The P-CMM framework guides companies to improve their processes for managing and developing their workforce. It also helps them to identify their level of maturity according to their workforce practices, to establish a continuous workforce development program, defining improvement actions, to integrate both processes of development and improvement, establishing a culture of excellence.

All CMMs are divided in five maturity levels. A company achieves a new level of maturity when it establishes or transforms a system of practices to provide capabilities it did not have previously.

BRF does not use yet this method, however, according to their workforce practices that will be described forward we have identified in which maturity level the company is nowadays.

To illustrate, the five levels can be observed in the figure that follows. Source: The five maturity levels of the People CMM. Adapted from Humphrey [1989] and Carnegie Mellon University [1995] with permission.

The Initial Level is the first P-CMM maturity level. According to the authors, companies at this level commonly have difficulties in retaining talented people. They are not properly equipped to respond to talent shortages. This means that they are often ad hoc and inconsistent. Besides, they sometimes do not have defined workforce practices or do not develop their individual responsibilities to perform such practices (Miller et al. 2009).

Moreover, in the first maturity level, managers are generally low prepared to perform their responsibilities, assuming that their management skills are innate. In addition, basic and fundamental activities such as interviews are often performed without adequate preparation.

During the interview at BRF, we could notice that the HR managers are well prepared to deal with talented people. It is real that the company is currently facing a new challenge of expatriating people and it will face another big challenge of retaining the repatriates in the future. However, as HR managers are already concerned about it we believe it is not going to be a future concern. Besides, HR managers also put their efforts on developing leaders’ management skills in order to define their responsibilities and activities. For this reason so far, we agree that the company succeeded in the first maturity level.

According to the P-CMM framework the first step to improve the capability of the workforce is to get managers to consider workforce activities as one of their main responsibilities. At the second maturity level, which is called The Managed Level, managers focuses their attention on unit-level, for instance, staffing, coordinating commitments, providing resources, managing performance, developing skills, and making compensation decisions (Miller et al. 2009).

At this level, the best practices will address immediate problems and prepare managers to implement workforces at higher levels. Team leaders, human resources specialists, trainers, peers, or others can perform it. It is interesting that at any level of maturity, perhaps many of them, workforce practices may be performed by individuals or groups who are not so called managers.

Moreover, according to the framework, the main cause of turnover is the poor relations with the immediate supervisor. Once people start to have rational thinking in their units, they begin to see the organization as a way through which they can achieve their career goals.
The case of BRF shows us that people within the organization have low power distance; the best practices are implemented to develop the workforce in all levels, making people believe in a career plan at BRF. Therefore, the maturity level 2 is not the case of BRF.

At the maturity level 2 it is identified critical skills to define competences for open positions, evaluate training needs and provide proper feedback. However, there is no matching between common skills among units and the determination of the most efficient practices to their developments (Miller et al. 2009).

The third maturity level, known as The Defined Level, therefore, has the objective to develop an infrastructure that ties these best practices of the workforce to strategic business goals (Miller et al. 2009). According to the authors, the main objective is to develop several competences in order to do the company gain competitive advantage. The competences must be combined to its workforce. All of this will support the strategic business plan. Moreover, this level establishes the infrastructure for the defining measures of competences. The company adapts its workforce practices to the business strategy and then, promotes the development of knowledge and skills (Miller et al. 2009).

When organizations achieve this level, they typically develop their organizational culture. In addition, at this level, conditions required for empowerment are established: competent people, effective processes and participatory environment.
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The fourth stage is The Predictable Level, in which the organization is able to its competencies and performance quantitatively. The framework of competencies is usually sustained by mentoring activities. The framework enables organizations to use their competencies. Managers trust more the results they produce when people perform using proven competency-based processes. This trust makes managers more confident to empower workgroups because they sense less risk on doing this. The quantitative management capabilities help management with strategic decisions and their inputs (Miller et al. 2009).
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According to the framework, at the Optimizing Level, the whole organization is focused on improvements that are made to the individuals and workgroups competences, to the workforce practices and to the competence-based processes.

People are, therefore, stimulated to make continuous improvements by analyzing their work and making improvements. There is a possibility of having mentoring and coaching activities in order to guide improvements at individual and workgroup levels (Miller et al. 2009).

Considering all that was exposed about the Human Resources management at BRF, it is possible to allocate them in a transition stage between the Level 3 and Level 4. At Level 3, the organization is able to adapt its workforce practices to its business needs, by motivating and developing competences. With the HSE, Leaders Development Program, Evaluation System, Individual development plans and so one, BRF fulfills all the characteristics of an organization at the Defined Level. However, it is still starting to develop the points that characterize Level 4.

In the Predictable Level, the organization manages and exploits the capabilities created by the competences framework developed in Level 3. At BRF, the competences framework are already developed and put in practice. However, as all the tools still are very new, the Human Resources Management was not able to assess all the results. Therefore, it is not possible to say if management still really trusts people to work on competency-based processes. In addition, managers still centralize responsibility, but it is changing with the competences development. Apparently, the company is starting to give greater levels of authority to its workforces to manage daily activities as competences are developed. However, it might evolve as assessment on the new tools are made.