Competence Management

Competence or skill management is an essential task in the context of quality management that is demanded by quality standards. It shall ensure that any involved persons have the capabilities and skills required for successfully performing their jobs and tasks.

The iQ-KOMPETENZ module supports creating, maintaining, and managing skill tables for all employees as well as documenting measures for getting specific skills or competences such as training or course events or Web-based trainings (WBT's) created and stored in iQ-KOMPETENZ.

Workflow

In a first step any relevant owned skills need to be assigned for all persons whose competences shall be management using the software. To accomplish this goal all relevant skills are created and maintained as master data. Skills have properties that can be used to establish relations to the properties of personal records. First, many skills could be arranged in skill groups that could be assigned to one or multiple groups of persons. Second, the skill type could be set to make the skill relevant for all persons. And third, there is a mapping field available for skills and persons that, if matching, means that this skill is relevant for this person.

The relations between these skill properties and the attributes of a person (such as the membership in a group of persons) are evaluated using a software feature that automatically determines the relevant skills for this person and creates corresponding assignments. Skills that cannot be found this way could still be assigned manually.

The assigned skills of the persons needs to be specified in terms of a target and an actual skill level that represent the current niveau of the person regarding this skill and the target niveau. If the target level is higher than the actual level this deficit is highlighted optically and could be evaluated statistically. Assigned skills can have an expiration date that is taken into account automatically for keeping the actual level up-to-date.

The actual level of a skill owned by a person can be changed implicitly by maintaining and documenting trainings or courses and course events. When creating a course record it is possible to specify a skill level that is reached by participating in a corresponding course event. If the participation of a person in this course event is documented this automatically updates the actual skill level of the person. A special case of such a course event is a Web-based training (WBT) that can be designed and stored in iQ-KOMPETENZ and be performed by participants using the CAQ-PORTAL. If a person performs a WBT successfully the software updates the actual skill level of this person automatically as well.

Finally, iQ-KOMPETENZ supports the concept of job training plans that define training measures for a person and have a direct impact on the person's skills. Whether the training measure is a WBT or another type of documented effort to get a skill does not matter. Performed training measures are confirmed by the trained person and a responsible for the job training plan on a page in the CAQ-PORTAL.

Important Features at a Glance

Skills

• Can be combined to skill groups that for their part can be assigned to groups of persons
• Support skill types (such as core operating skills) and defining a certain person mapping (such as for representing a category of persons e. g. specialist)
• Can have an expiration date that is taken into account to determine the current skill level of a person
• Can be described by formulating a short and a long text

Employee skills

• Automatic "base assignments" of skills for persons depending on their properties and membership in groups of persons
• Clear representation of the skill matrix for the person in the person's master data

Courses

• Can be linked with skills so that the skill is automatically achieved by participating in an event for this course
• Planning feature for course events including an information mail to scheduled employees
• Planning feature for sub events with employees who have not been able to participate in the main event

Web-based Trainings (WBT's)

• Special case of a course that also allows for planning course events
• Can be designed and created in iQ-KOMPETENZ using an integrated HTML editor
• Can contain any number of content pages and any number of questions in terms of a quiz
• Number of questions that need to be answered correctly freely selectable
• Automatical update of the skill level of a person when successfully finishing a WBT that is linked with the skill
• Optionally, creation of participation certificates

Job training plans

• Allow creating formal plans for getting any number of skills for a person
• After confirming the performance of a plan automatical assignment of the skills to the person
• Supports automatic deadline monitoring (requires iQ-PROJEKTE)
• Confirmation of the finished performance of a job training plan by the corresponding responsible and the trained person in the CAQ-PORTAL
• Can be applied to any number of persons

Reports

• Target-Actual-Delta matrix for skills
• Soll-Ist-Delta-Matrix für Kompetenzen
• Upcoming course events
• Course status per employee

Data protection

• Organigrams allow to uniquely define who is permitted to access the data of other persons

Separate user interface

• Start tab with access to the own actions/measures, courses and job training plans
• Quick access to the editing forms for skills and courses as well as for retrieving the skill to person assignments
• Separate tabs with overviews for skills, courses and job training plans as well as for persons
• Menu access to forms for editing skill groups and levels, working areas and groups of persons

Interfaces to Other Modules

• CAQ-PORTAL for performing Web-based Trainings (WBT's) and for documenting the performance of job training plans
• iQ-PROJEKTE for deadline monitoring and training measures
• iQ-GRUNDLAGEN for storing master data and for an alternative user interface
• iT-MAIL for sending automatic notification emails