Traditional and new ways in competence management: Application of HR analytics in competence management

Abstract This article within the magazine Gruppe. Interaktion. Organisation. (GIO) provides an overview of established and new ways in competence management, with a focus on the HR Analytics approach. Competence management has come a long way. Since the beginning of competence research in the 1970’s technological progress and altering competence demands among employees have drastically reshaped the landscape of employment. Handling complexity and large amounts of information has become essential in order to keep up with developments of today’s world. The globalised competition has fostered an increasingly intense ‘War for Talents’ under volatile circumstances. How can an organisation develop an anticipative competence strategy if there are so many variables regarding the future? Since digitalization and the evolving field of big data and predictive analytics enable new ways of information processing, new concepts for human resources management are required. The most prominent approach nowadays is a company-specific competence model that is derived from the organisational strategy. Employees are developed with regard to the competence strategy—even though it might turn out as too rigid to react flexibly to changing environmental conditions in a steadily faster global competition. We state that this process can be extended by a data-driven approach in order to support HR departments and achieve an improved rate of correct assessments for future HR developmental measures.