Understanding Employee Competencies

You use competency management to track the competencies that employees possess and to compare them with those that are required for the employee jobs. You can track these types of employee competencies:

• Training

• Skills

• Accomplishments

• Certificates

• Degrees

• Languages

You can track a variety of competencies for each competency type. For example, for the Skills competency type, you can track programming skills, communication skills, and so on.

Before you enter competency information for employees, you must define the scales that you use to rate the levels of proficiency that employees demonstrate in each competency. You must also define the specific employee competencies that you are tracking for each competency type. You also can define training courses and specify the competencies that they fulfill.

You set up security for competency levels so that you can specify the type of user within the organization who is responsible for entering competency levels for employee competencies. This feature is particularly useful if the organization enables employees and managers to enter and update competency information using self service. In some cases, when the organization is using employee self service, you might also want to set up routing instructions for competency approvals. Routing instructions enable you to identify a person, other than an employee's supervisor, who is responsible for approving specific employee competencies or competency types.

When you assign competencies to an employee, you list each competency that the employee possesses, along with the level of proficiency that the employee demonstrates.