Employee profiles

Employee profiles are central instruments in the management of staff and changes. They provide the management of the enterprise with important information on how the corporate strategy can be implemented with the available or further to be developed employee potential. They lend orientation to staff recruitment / recruitment policy and employee support.

From the comparison of current and future target profiles in discussions between employers and employees, a projection can be made of which personnel development measures should be implemented to prepare employees for future requirements.
They help to identify which internal and external networks should be built up, on the one hand "to shop" for missing know-how and on the other hand to make an organisational knowledge base available to individual employees through joint learning in project teams throughout the enterprise.

Employee profiles reveal the knowledge, abilities, skills and experiences of employees.

Content of employee profiles:

Employee profiles should describe the interplay between technical and methodical proficiencies, social and communicative skills, personal competences and activity and action competences. The following areas of competences should be differentiated:

Technical and methodical proficiency:

Vocational knowledge, abilities and skills which are described on the one hand by formal qualifications (school leaving qualifications, certificates) and on the other hand by vocational experiences. These include the abilities to work out structured technical tasks or to exploit new sources of knowledge for solutions of problems. (Questionnaire on technical – methodical competences)

Social and communicative skills:

The ability to take on responsibility in the team and to effectively develop trust and recognition of the personal strengths of partners based on cooperation or to act positively in interpersonal problem situations with supervisors, colleagues and partners.(Questionnaire on social and communicative skills)

Personal competence:

The ability to be self-critical in the sense of self-management/self-learning ability.(Questionnaire on personal competences)

Activity and action competence:

Readiness to use all knowledge and abilities actively and to integrate them with all other competences. (Questionnaire on activity and action competence)

In practice a distinction is made between current and future target profiles:
Target profiles:
Operationalisation of present and future requirements for the fulfilment of activities and functions.
Current profiles:
Employee-related knowledge, abilities and potential.

The development of competences takes place at the following levels:
  • Employee level: Here the personal responsibilities and entrepreneurial competences of the employees play an important role.
  • Team level: Composition of work or project teams nowadays calls for stronger interdisciplinary skills to support learning from each other and joint work.
  • Enterprise level: The management concept of a learning enterprise makes the development of collective knowledge central to company development.
Employee profiles both during recruitment, training and further development of employee potentials play a central role in all 3 levels of the development of competences.

Advantages of the instrument "employee profile"

  • Corporate strategy development under consideration of the main competences and the available knowledge;
  • Increase of competitivity through qualified staff;
  • Clear orientation on personnel deployment and development and resultant improved cost – benefit relations in personnel management;
  • Increased responsibility of the executives for personnel deployment and development and resultant improvement in the leadership qualities, which as a rule positively influence the motivation and performance of the employees;
  • Increased personal responsibility of the employees for profile development, which as a rule also encourages them to invest time and money in their trainings;
  • Clear orientation of the employees on career development;
  • Personnel development targeting needs and potentials, which makes the transfer of new qualification elements into practice easier;
  • Forms of learning which simulate the workplace to close the gaps in the current and future targets comparison and promote higher efficiency in personnel development measures.