Hi John
Yes thats right - competencies for positions should be added to a learning plan to be able to be accessed by the individual irrespective of their role.
The assigning of the competencies to learning plan can be automatically done through
Site Administration > Learning Plans > Manage templates > Workflow > Custom workflow > Advanced workflow settings > Competencies> Automatic Assignment > automatically assign by position.
There are quite a few additional settings that can also be set here for competencies such as requiring a due date for the competency.
Craig