People tagging is proposed as an alternative to traditional top-down competence management approaches. It is a participatory and work-integrated method where employees collaboratively tag colleagues and external contacts according to their skills and expertise. This helps identify experts for certain topics. The tags can also provide insights into emerging skills needs and current competencies within the organization to inform human resource planning. The approach borrows from social bookmarking and can evolve organically as tags are revised over time.

1. MATUREContinuous Social Learning in Knowledge Networks The People Tagging Approach to Competence Management Simone BraunChristine KunzmannAndreas Schmidt Professional Training Facts, Stuttgart, November 17, 2009 http://mature-ip.eu

2. Continuouscompetencedevelopment…

3. Competence Management seemstobe a goodidea… Competence Management wantstoenablecompaniestosteercompetencedevelopment Itmakescompetenciesofemployees explicit bydescribingtheirprofileswith a sharedcompetencecatalog… … andformulatesrequirementsandgoals via thissharedcatalog … … andtheappropriatemeasuresandtheireffects MATURE - Continuous Social Learning in Knowledge Networks

4. MATURE - Continuous Social Learning in Knowledge Networks But frequentlyitdoes not evengetintroduced! … gets stuck in themiddleoftheway… … nevergetsupdated … … becomes a useless administrative exercise …

5. Is there an alternative? Problems: Competence managementisperceived as a top-down activity Lack ofacceptance No rapid responsetoemergingtopics Can wemakecompetencemanagementmoreparticipatory? startwithsomethingthatisperceived as useful:findingtherightpersonfor a certaintopic MATURE - Continuous Social Learning in Knowledge Networks

6. MATURE - Continuous Social Learning in Knowledge Networks The People Tagging Approach

7. People Tagging Principles Bottom-up and participatory Lightweight and work-integrated The approach Tagging colleagues and other external contacts collaboratively Sharing knowledge and creating awareness around who knows what Collective ‘review’ of existing skills & competencies  Applying the social bookmarking paradigm to people MATURE - ContinuousSocial Learning in Knowledge Networks LMI specialist plumbing Vacancydata Edinburgh

8. MATURE - Continuous Social Learning in Knowledge Networks

9. Searching for a specialist MATURE - ContinuousSocial Learning in Knowledge Networks Nicola Jones Tagged with: LMI specialistScotlandeducation Show Profile or Contact Martha Douglas Tagged with: LMI specialistEdinburgh and LothiansplumbingVacancy data Show Profile or Contact

10. Gardening Tagging does not rely on a controlled vocabulary Thus we find Synonyms Typos Different levels of abstraction Idea: Work-integrated “gardening” Collaborative & incremental in-situ revision and improvement e.g. I miss entries with sanitary or water installations in the results, so I add the missing links MATURE - Continuous Social Learning in Knowledge Networks LMI = labourmarketinformation = LM info = LM data LM dta vs. LM data plumbing -> sanitaryinstallations plumbing-> waterinstallations

11. MATURE - Continuous Social Learning in Knowledge Networks

12. Improved searching for a specialist MATURE - Continuous Social Learning in Knowledge Networks I understood that your searched for: LMI specialistScotlandplumbing Narrow your query with: Vacancy datawater installationssanitary installations Broaden your query with: gas installationsconstructionSectoral prospects Nicola Jones Tagged with: LMI specialistScotlandeducation Show Profile or Contact Martha Douglas Tagged with: LMI specialistEdinburgh and LothiansplumbingVacancy data Show Profile or Contact Mary Smith Tagged with: LMI reportsanitary installationsLocal area dataVacancy data Show Profile or Contact David Burns Tagged with: LM dataSectoral prospectswater installationssanitary installations Show Profile or Contact

13. Competency Maturing:Gradual Formalization  FZI Research Center for Information Technologies Karlsruhe, Germany | Information Process Engineering | www.fzi.de/ipe

14. Human Resources Development Human resource development needs to have sufficient information about needs and current capacities What are the crucial new developments? Who has the skills needed to respond to these developments? Are there training gaps? Can we re-train existing staff or do we need to recruit? The tags used and the queries for specialists yield indicators about current developments: What kind of expertise is needed? How much do we have inside the organization? MATURE - ContinuousSocial Learning in Knowledge Networks

15. Implementingpeopletagging Implementingpeopletaggingdepends on theorganizationalcontext (includingculture) Engineering a peopletaggingsystemcanbecustomized Who can tag? Who canbetagged? Controlover tags Visibilityoftagging Semanticoftagging Searchstrategy MATURE - Continuous Social Learning in Knowledge Networks

16. MATURE - Continuous Social Learning in Knowledge Networks Summary

17. Summary People tagging is a lightweight alternative to competence management participatory and work-integrated more agile, can take up emergent topics very fast ‘overlay’ over existing social networking / employee directories  internal & external contacts possible Supports several use cases of competence management approaches Finding people or experts Human resource development planning MATURE - Continuous Social Learning in Knowledge Networks

18. Outlook & Contact Open forassociate partners! MATURE IP – http://mature-ip.eu investigates the harvesting of bottom-up approaches to support the maturing of competency models Andreas SchmidtDepartment Manager / Scientific Coordinator MATUREFZI Research Center for Information Technologies, Haid-und-Neu-Str. 10-14 Karlsruhe, GERMANY (http://fzi.de/ipe)andreas.schmidt@fzi.de, http://andreas.schmidt.name Christine KunzmannFZI & Kompetenzorientierte PersonalentwicklungAnkerstr. 47, 75203 Königsbach-Stein, GERMANY, http://kompetenzen-gestalten.decontact@christine-kunzmann.de Simone BraunFZI Research Center for Information TechnologiesHaid-und-Neu-Str. 10-14 Karlsruhe, GERMANY (http://fzi.de/ipe)braun@fzi.de