Applying Competency Management Correctly in Human Resources Development

1. What is competence management?
2. What are competences?
3. Why is competence management important in personnel development?
4. 5 steps to a strategic competence management concept in personnel development
5. 3 tips for competence management in personnel development
6. Helpful tools for creating a competence management concept
7. Conclusion

Motivated and competent employees are a key factor for long-term business success. At the same time, it is necessary to systematically record the performance of each individual in order to derive suitable qualification measures. That's why competence models are a popular tool in personnel development. Our guest author Linh Grethe shows you how to create a successful competence management concept in this article.

What is competence management?

By definition, competence management is the practice of identifying the key components necessary for an employee to achieve target performance in their specific role. It then involves developing and optimizing these competences to align them as closely as possible with an organization's corporate strategy.

Tasks of competence management in personnel development:

• Identification of key competences
• Ascertainment of potentials, talents through diagnosis of employee and team competences
• Closing of competence gaps by targeted competence development
• Prevention of competence migration
• Needs-oriented planning, control and success monitoring of sustainable personnel and organisational development measures

Objectives of competence management in personnel development:

• Utilize the capabilities and skills of employees to the maximum through efficient control and direction
• Better management and control of personnel and organizational development
• Ensuring competitiveness sustainably
  

What are competences?

To understand the importance of competence management, it is helpful to first look at the competences themselves.

There is no generally accepted definition of competence to date. In short, competences are self-organizational skills. That is, connecting knowledge and skills in such a way that professional tasks can be handled independently, responsibly and appropriately according to requirements. Or in simpler terms: Facilitating work independently through your strengths. Competences can be differentiated into four competency fields:

1. Personal competence:The ability to be self-critical as well as to develop productive attitudes, value systems and ideals (e.g., self-responsibility, loyalty)
2. Activity and action competence:The ability to actively implement knowledge, results, social communication as well as personal values and ideals, while integrating all other competences (e.g., initiative, resilience)
3. Social-communicative competence: The ability to deal with others, to cooperate creatively and to communicate (e.g., conflict management, communication skills)
4. Technical and methodological competence: The ability to solve complex problems with professional and methodical knowledge (e.g., creative techniques, problem solving ability)

These four dimensions can be further differentiated and combined. The result is a comprehensive competence atlas by Prof. Dr. John Erpenbeck and Prof. Dr. Volker Heyse with 64 partial competences:

Source: https://www.kodekonzept.com/wissensressourcen/kode-kompetenzatlas/

Why is competence management important in personnel development?

Structured competence management allows foresighted personnel development. Further development can be designed for each individual employee along the company strategy as well as his/her personal and professional career path and clearly communicated in personnel development talks. This makes it easier to agree on goals, and also makes performance appraisal easier. By recognizing competence gaps at an early stage, the HR department can take action quickly, such as through upskilling.

This allows your employees to stay agile and keep up with the ever-changing demands of the job market. Employee retention is improved, and employees who feel that their management team is investing in them are more likely to stay in their job. As a result, the valuable skills and knowledge stay within the organization.

A strong culture of competence management will enable a company to develop both employee and organizational competence, thus creating added value for the company as a whole.

5 steps to a strategic competence management concept in personnel development

With the following five-step plan, you can introduce a competence concept in your company quickly and easily. For success, it is important that the competence model is specifically adapted to the operational requirements, value system and company goals.

Step 1: Defining objectives

First, you need to determine what developments your company is aiming for in the future. From this, you can then derive specific growth objectives.

Step 2: Needs analysis

The next step is to determine the personnel requirements taking into account internal and external conditions. It is necessary to consider which competences are necessary for the desired corporate development. In which areas should these competences be built up and which employees need to be promoted for this?

Step 3: Analysis phase

The analysis of the competences already available follows next. What skills do your employees already possess, where are their strengths and which competences need to be developed further? An IST and SOLL analysis is helpful here.

Step 4: Personnel development measures

Now, determine which measures are necessary to achieve the defined objectives. The derivation of individual measures should always be based on the competences and experiences of the individual.

Step 5: Success measurement

In the final step, check if the measures implemented were successful. This can be done by quantitative or qualitative measurement. In the final evaluation phase, it is also important to consider your employees' satisfaction in order to optimize further development measures in the future.

3 tips for competence management in personnel development

Tip No. 1:

Try to be as precise as possible when determining the needs in your company. Only in this way can you determine as accurately as possible which kind of personnel development would be useful for your company and your employees. It is also crucial to check what budget you can invest per employee you want to promote.

Tip No. 2:

Your employees have a variety of development wishes and needs. A one-size-fits-all solution is ill-suited here. Assemble the development plans individually with each employee and allow him/her to choose the right measures. Your company could also provide a development budget that each employee can freely dispose of.

Tip No. 3:

Stay the course! By conducting regular feedback talks, you can ensure that your employees stick to their goals. It is important to check if the goals you've jointly considered are actually achievable. If they are not, you should adjust the respective competence management concept. Because working towards a goal that seems unattainable can hinder motivation.

Helpful tools for creating a competence management concept

In general, it is possible to establish competence management in the company without digital support. In this case, the information and results must be compiled in written form. Unfortunately, this requires too much time and resources. Moreover, it's difficult to compare employees and their skills. Therefore, it's advisable to work with a competence management software in practice. Which competence management software you should choose primarily depends on the field of application.

We have selected for you three exciting software which, in our opinion, can help you in creating a competence management concept:

1. HRworks

HR WORKS offers an all-in-one solution, including skill management. Here, you can capture, evaluate and analyze employee development in detail.

2. Skilltree

Skilltree is a Skill Management solution for New Work companies and those who want to become one. Competences are managed decentrally and agilely by the employees themselves. The competences are represented in an ability tree, a skill tree. This is an interactive map that is much clearer and more scalable than a classic skill matrix.

3. AG5 Skills Management Software

AG5 Skills Management Software is a competence management platform that allows HR professionals to manage the professional and personal skills for each employee. The software also offers an app that allows you to easily perform competence evaluations on the go.

If you need more inspiration for tools, you can look at the HR Management Softwares on our platform. Here you will find a huge selection of software and ratings that will help you make a decision.

Conclusion

Competence management is a very demanding and time-consuming task. Not only for the HR department, but also for supervisors and all employees. It takes a lot of time until everyone has agreed on an appropriate competence model and all competence profiles are worked out. Patience is the key here!

The introduction of an effective competence management program is one of the keys to successful business growth. It aligns your employees' skills with the company's goals, lowers the turnover rate in the team, increases employee performance, and aids in effective succession planning.