Technological and social advancements have brought us to the brink of the 4th industrial revolution. With the rapid expanse of automation and intelligent machines, the workplace as we know it is changing. This could lead to greater inequality and massive recruitment challenges as societies are simultaneously facing an increase in unemployment as well as growth of talent shortage. The development of a unified competency management platform is proposed that serves as a communication layer between the stakeholders interested in retraining and upskilling of the workforce in light of these challenges. To provide the basis for companies to employ this platform and implement a competency framework, an instrument for the initial competency gap mapping was created and a case study is presented where the instrument was used to gain insight into stakeholder perceptions about and interactions around competency definition and management in the context of an ICT company.
Applied computing ➝ Education ➝ Learning management systems Industry 4.0; competency management; lifelong learning
At the brink of the 4th industrial revolution, Intelligent machines are
getting smarter and cheaper, enabling the human workforce to
focus on less repetitive and more challenging tasks [
Summarizing from the above, it means that the education system
needs to shift from preparing students for a job to preparing them
for a career [2] and their development should cover the full
lifecycle from professional onboarding until retirement [
In this paper, we would like to make one step into this visionary future. We present a case study of an Estonian ICT company (Proekspert) in which some of the ideas of worker inclusion into workplace development have already been realized. We use the case study to explore, how in such a setting workers can be included into the future planning process. We use the definition of competencies needed in the context of Industry 4.0 as a case to examine how such planning could be conducted. In the long run, experiences gained in this and other case studies should inform the design and development of a unified platform for competency definition and planning around which a fruitful dialogue of all stakeholders can happen.
The paper is structured in the following way. First, the background of the research is provided, including an overview of the social challenges brought about by the new industrial era, previous studies on competencies in Industry 4.0, and existing approaches and technologies for novel competency management methods. Based on the background information, a common platform is proposed for new-age competency management. The second part of the paper gives an overview of a case study carried out in an ICT company with the objective to prototype an instrument to map the perceived competency gap in the context of an organization and thus help companies to initialize a competency framework. Finally, findings from the case study are provided and the limitations of the current study and plans for further studies are discussed.
The corresponding term “technological unemployment” dates back
to the First Industrial Revolution in the 19th century. Regardless of
the fears at the time, economies have adapted to these massive
changes in labor markets. For the current changes, it is near
impossible to predict the long-term impacts but it is clear that policy
makers are facing a race between technology and education. To win
this race, it is important to encourage the necessary retraining and
upskilling of the workforce. [2]
This requires the continuous cooperation of all stakeholders:
individuals, employers, governments, policy makers, education and
training providers, and unions [
The term Industry 4.0 (Industrie 4.0) was initially introduced at the
Hannover Fair in April 2011 and thus the research regarding
Industry 4.0 is at its very early stage, and the scientific resources
rather scarce. Although even scarcer, the existing research on
competencies in Industry 4.0 provides a solid basis for further
development.
[
To establish a common language for ICT competences, skills and
proficiency levels across Europe, the European Commission has
developed the European e-Competence Framework (e-CF)
classifies 40 competences for ICT professionals. The most recent
version, e-CF 3.0 was finalized in 2014 and consists of 40
competencies that are allocated into five ICT areas: plan, build, run,
enable, and manage. [
The current study is based on the competency model by [
Due to rapid changes in the core competencies triggered by recent technological and social advancements, labour market competency gap is growing ever faster. This can only be relieved through the cooperation between all stakeholders. It is critical that academic organizations, training providers and entities responsible for professional standards receive constant and up-to-date input from business organizations. This way the competency development of workers can be supported throughout their careers by multiple stakeholders in an integral manner.
Industry 4.0 is causing a shift from traditional industrial
engineering methods to data-driven functions and cyber-physical
systems [
For example, IntelLEO, an ICT research project was initiated with
the aim of developing intelligent technologies that support learning
and knowledge-building (LKB) activities in Intelligent Learning
Extended Organization (IntelLEO). The main objective of the
project was to enhance motivation of learners by employing
technological tools that utilize the synergy between services for
efficient management of collaborative LKB activities and access to
and supply of shared content, and harmonization of individual and
organizational objectives [
The Learning Layers Project is directed toward developing
technologies that support informal learning in the workplace with
the focus on Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs). Drawing
on a large-scale stakeholder-driven co-design approach [
APOSDLE, Advanced Process-Oriented Self-Directed Learning, is
a project focused on work-integrated learning (WIL) in which case
learning is an intentional or unintentional by-product of the time
spent at the workplace performing work tasks [
To advance a data-driven approach to learning and competencies the existing systems could be integrated through a common communication layer and supplemented with additional functionalities. This would result in an integral and unified competency management platform that would serve as a central service for all the stakeholders involved in competency development processes. The platform would provide a standard human and computer readable list of categorized, grouped and versioned competencies for stakeholders to use in their competency management systems. They would be provided with a toolset to assess whether them or their employees possess certain competencies to help map their competency gaps. Based on this data it would be possible to visualize labor market competency gap. For example, business organizations could have a clear overview of available (existing) competencies mapped against needed or aspired competencies. In addition, the data gathered from recruitment portals would give a clear overview of the needed competencies and trends. Academic and training organizations could supplement this data to visualize future competency availability estimations and trends. Based on their personal competency aspirations, the competency gap of the stakeholders, and the labor market need, stakeholders would be given suggestions on their personal development. All this helps to plan future activities. For example, smaller companies can cooperate when developing niche competencies: order joint trainings, and organize workshops and seminars. Governments can identify which competencies they should support through their initiatives. Therefore, the competency management platform can be considered as a hub connecting through different services various stakeholders and communicating with other relevant information systems as depicted on the following Figure 1. When compared to the examples drawn in the previous chapter, a number of the elements that would constitute the platform have already been conceived. The main challenge, however, will be to conceptualize it as a “central” platform that all stakeholders agree to use, and around which stakeholder dialogues and negotiations can happen. We have conducted a case study in which these stakeholder interactions around competency definition and management have been studied. In this case study, we concentrate on the Workers and the Business Organizations as a first set of stakeholders. In subsequent studies, we will address other stakeholder groups as well.
We carried out the first case study in Proekspert, a software design
and development company. Being founded in 1993, only two years
after the Estonian independence was re-established, Proekspert is
one of the oldest software development companies in Estonia. The
company focuses on multiple areas, one of them being future
manufacturing. The key characteristic of Proekspert is its
hierarchical flat structure – there are no managers or departments
in this company but instead the company is divided into
selfgoverning teams (Figure 2). Each team serves their own customer
and is in many aspects autonomous. In terms of Industry 4.0, such
flat structure increases the employee participation and the speed of
communication, thus contributing into innovation processes and
worker learning [
Proekspert was selected as a suitable case because it is an ICT
company that has prior knowledge about Industry 4.0 and thus the
employees have already formed a partial understanding of the
changes that it will trigger. Another reason for choosing Proekspert
is its innovative attitude towards the workplace. For example, the
company does not have a managerial level. Additionally, the
company has adopted a holistic view on employees’ lives: it is a
common belief at Proekspert that employees perform the best when
their work and personal lives are in balance. In this sense, the
company fits very well our focus on worker inclusion.
We interviewed the workers to get a deeper understanding of how
they perceive the competencies identified by [
The participants of this study were a convenience sample of employees from the company. The group consisted of nine people of different age and professions. While the exact age of participants was not asked, their ages fell in the range of 21-40. From the gender perspective, participants were almost equally balanced with four female participants. When asked for how long the participants had been working in their area of expertise, most of them selected the range of 2-5 years. There were also participants who had been working for 1-2 years and those with experience for 10-20 years. The participants were either developers, designers, analysts or product owners, or engineering excellence specialists. The researcher responsible for data collection is employed at Proekspert.
The data was analyzed using both qualitative and quantitative methods. For qualitative data, content analysis was carried out where keywords were drawn from the free text entered by the participants and notes written down by the researcher. The keywords were collected using Annotations software by Balcony Production. Based on keywords, themes were composed to help interpret quantitative results. Quantitative analysis was done using IBM SPSS Statistics software. While multiple methods were used to gain insight into the data, the findings provided in the current article are based on means comparison through T-tests.
Each Proekspert employee is provided with a training budget that
is mostly used for professional training, but there have been cases
where employees have taken courses not directly related to their
professions. The philosophy of the human resources team regarding
worker development is that promoting competences that the worker
needs in non-professional life will go a long way to improve the
person’s contentment with both her/himself and the employer.
Emotional intelligence development is promoted, to increase a
person’s ability to identify, assess and manage the emotions of
one’s self [
For example, employees are encouraged to participate in long-term strategy planning. When planning the strategy for 2020, a series of workshops was held that focused on the strategic factors that would help towards the next level in company development, and employees were invited to nominate, prioritize and describe these factors. Another example of inclusion is the recruiting culture of Proekspert. When a team finds they need additional resources, they contact the human resources specialist who will find out whether there are any available employees in-house who could join the team. When there are no available resources, the HR specialist finds potential new recruits who are then interviewed with at least one team member present. Although there are many parties included in the process, it is usually the team that makes the final decision. Proekspert has developed several internal tools to create transparency regarding employee competencies and the skill sets needed for existing and potential new projects. For technical competency mapping, Proekspert has developed the internal product Pulse that provides the functionality to enlist oneself for new challenges, and spread information about potential new projects. In a way, the tool acts as an in-house recruitment portal where users can specify their competencies and past experience. Project leads can then filter employees with the required skill-sets and invite them to participate in new projects. At the same time, employees can search through the projects and apply for the team if they find it interesting. The ultimate goal for developing internal HR tools is to provide a better overview of worker competencies, existing projects and resource allocation, which in turn improve the sales process, financial estimations, and provide a better basis for developing organization strategy [21]. If integrated with the proposed platform, Pulse could be used to collect data to visualize the real-time technical competency gap in Proekspert. For “soft” competencies, Proekspert uses another internal tool HappyMe that allows users to assess their own and their team members’ competencies, set goals and give feedback. These data are compared and visualized to users. This tool is also used to gather data about employee satisfaction towards the company and the overall values of the employees. This data is used to align the company strategy to the overall culture of its employees. Similarly to Pulse, HappyMe could be used to gather real-time competency data to the central competency management platform. Statistics of this information may prove valuable for companies who are actively recruiting as it gives a good insight into what workers mostly value in their employers. These are but a few examples of novel internal tools that are used in Proekspert to advance the competencies and overall work life of the organization. Thanks to its openness and interest in continuous improvement, Proekspert makes an engaging case for studying and propagating a new-age organization culture.
An interactive instrument based on Poll Everywhere software was created to map Proekspert’s competency gap. The mapping takes place in a seminar format where participants are asked to bring their own devices: laptops, tablets or mobile phones. The questions are displayed on a large screen together with real-time results. Discussion is encouraged and in case of participant consent, sessions are recorded on audio.
There were 5 types of questions: multiple choice questions, Likert
scale questions, freeform questions, rank order questions, and
clickable image questions. The questions were divided into five
logical categories. The first category of questions was used for
warm-up. As the Poll Everywhere environment was new to all
participants, it was decided to practice different question types. For
example, to practice clickable image questions, the participants
were asked to click the circle that represented their mood in the
following Figure 3.
The second category comprised of personal questions. Participants
were asked about their profession, gender, age and track record in
the field of ICT. The third questions category focused on how
participants perceived competency development. This included
questions about the frequency of having to learn new competencies;
different difficulty levels of developing “soft” and “hard”
competencies; stakeholders of competency development; the
competency gap of the organization and labour market. The
questions from the last two categories were asked alternately: the
first one was a freeform question where participants were asked to
elaborate on what indicates that a person has the respective
competency. Again, discussion was encouraged and in some cases
the corresponding competency description from [
Although there were nine distinct areas mapped onto the image, the location of clicks was tracked in pixels and percentages. This feature in the software was quite useful as the scale of the grid proved to be too small: in some cases, the click was deliberately made in a very extreme corner of the corresponding area to show strong conviction. This was taken into consideration when interpreting data. It is also important to point out that during quantitative analysis the scale of these types of questions was from “low” to “high” (1...3) and that there was no option for the respondents to mark that they lacked the competency entirely. This was due to the belief of the researchers that everyone possesses some low-level proficiency in every competency.
The participants were asked whether they feel that their employer supports the development of their competencies. Out of 9 participants 4 agreed and 5 said that they agree in most part. When asked about the benefits that the employer gets from worker competency development, one of the main keywords was efficiency, but some softer aspects were also considered. For example, it was suggested that through competency development the employer will have a worker who is in a better place with her/his life and through this will be a stronger contributor to the company culture. According to participants, the additional entities that benefit from their competencies include themselves, their families, friends and colleagues, and hopefully the future. On a professional level the beneficiaries include the clients of the employer, the society, local municipalities and the government.
The highest competency priority for the participants was problem solving, which was unanimously evaluated to the highest importance level (3.0). It was also one of the cases where participants clicked in an extreme area of the grid: three participants had placed their markers in the high top border of the area. The interpretations followed four major themes: understanding the problem, finding suitable solutions, creativity and persistence. While perceiving problem solving as the most important competency, the participants also evaluated their own problem solving level as the highest, along with teamwork skills – both competencies were evaluated to an average level of 2,6. Thus, the competency gap of problem solving is 0,5. The reasoning of such high prioritization and self-assessment of problem solving skills may lie in the nature of day-to-day work in ICT domain. The issues that ICT workers tackle on a daily basis are not limited to only coding and computer issues. As the company focuses mainly on client projects, the employees are working to solve problems inherent to the domains of their clients which in itself raises several other issues, for example finding a common language between business and technical people.
The high self-assessment of teamwork skills amongst participants can be explained with the company hierarchy described earlier: self-governing teams as central units of the company. When analysing the interpretations of teamwork skills, it became evident that most participants had their own unique understanding of teamwork, for example cooperation, understanding the objectives, motivating people, honesty, leadership, cooperation, knowledge sharing, taking responsibility, and empathy. These interpretations indicate that for the participants, teamwork skills incorporate several other competencies. The competency gap of teamwork was 0,2 as the average perceived importance was 2,8.
The lowest priority for the participants were intercultural skills with the importance assessment of 1.8. While the interpretations of this competency were unanimous with the themes being awareness and empathy, there are two explanations to this this low assessment. First, the sample only consisted of Estonians who have not met intercultural issues. On the other hand, the working language of the company is English, which helps avoid language and communication barriers. The self-assessed level of intercultural skills was 2.0, making the competency gap -0.2. It was one of the three competencies where the perceived level was higher than importance, the other two being process understanding and efficiency orientation.
The competency with the lowest self-assessed level was networking with an average level of 1.5, while its importance was deemed medium, with a score of 2.2. The highest competency gap between average importance and average level was understanding IT security with a gap of 1.1. Only one participant assessed her/his IT-security understanding skills to be high. The interpretations of understanding IT-security were closely tied to the three fundamental aspects of cyber security: availability, confidentiality of integrity. The average importance levels and self-assessments of competencies can be seen in the following radar chart (Figure 5). As can be seen in the figure, all categories have competencies of different priority levels. The category with the highest average competency priorities is the methodological category that also has the highest cumulative competency gap. This kind of visualization could be beneficial for the organization when planning new trainings or deciding between potential recruits. Coming back to the competency management platform, these visualizations could be used for generic competency gap as was presented in the current study, but also to visualize the gap in very specific competency areas. If enough organizations would provide their data, it would be possible to visualize future trends and plan how to mitigate potential competency shortage issues. It would also give individuals good indications on which competencies to develop to be more valuable in the labor market.
The participants and additional stakeholders from Proekspert were shown the compiled competency importance and self-assessment levels diagram shown in Figure 5. The participants’ feedback revolved mainly around recruiting and composing the teams: based on the competency priorities and levels it would be easier to determine whether a person is suitable for a team or not. It would also provide both the individual and the team with information of what is expected from them – in reality they may possess these competencies but it may very well be that they are not aware that they need to employ them in the new context. Another aspect that was suggested was to draw correlations between the competency priorities and levels, and personality types, for example the MyersBriggs Types.
Participants also suggested integrating the functionality of the instrument with the existing internal tools, Pulse or HappyMe. A concern was brought up in regard to automating the data collection: it is important to ensure that the data is frequently updated, and therefore the data collection process must be as convenient as possible. To fully employ these data, role profiles should be created that reflect, which competencies are important in which context. These requirements may differ across professions and are different, for example, for designers and developers. At the same time, it also depends on the context of the project. For example, it may not be necessary to be very innovative in a maintenance project whereas in an R&D project innovative mindset is crucial.
The board members that were provided with the results focused on the company strategy. They deemed it helpful if it were possible to similarly visualize the competencies derived from strategic objectives and compare them against the importance, self-assessed level, and also the competency aspirations of employees. This would help in several ways. First, employees would have a clear visualization of the company’s competency need concerning existing and potential projects. This is valuable information when planning self-development and aligning one’s interests with the ones of the company. It would also help prepare for future sales and deciding on which leads to follow. Finally, the board would have a better understanding on how the importance of competencies is seen by the board itself, employees specifically working on strategic planning, and all other employees. In order for the company strategy to work, its values must be aligned with those of the employees. Based on this visualization, Proekspert could align its strategy to conform more to the common values of the employees, or recruit new people that already share the values derived from the strategy.
Two concerns were found regarding the instrument. First, the
competency list based on [
While the findings of this study may prove a good basis for developing an instrument to help Proekspert implement a competency framework, many additional aspects still need to be considered. The instrument created for the study will be improved based feedback from participants and other stakeholders, and the study will be repeated on a larger scale with the improved instrument. For the large-scale study, a more detailed Proekspertspecific competency model needs to be developed based on the current study, to describe the competencies on a far more specific level.
Future work will also include similar case studies in other ICT or Industry 4.0 companies. As every company has their own nuances, competency modelling is different in the context of each company. This means that the instruments created for this purpose need to be adaptable to different circumstances. After establishing the foundational base for implementing a competency modelling framework in ICT companies, the research will shift to the design and development of the common competency management platform.
Industry 4.0 is bringing along a shift in the core competencies needed in workers. To prevent a labor force crisis, all stakeholders must participate in the retraining and upskilling of the workforce. To promote cooperation and fast movement of competency-related information, the development of a common, data-driven competency management platform was proposed. The platform would serve as a communication layer between stakeholder competency management systems while including several existing systems that provide functionalities for data-driven competency management.
To conceptualize it as a “central” platform that all stakeholders agree to use, the stakeholders have to be provided with instruments to properly initialize the competency framework in their specific context. A series of studies will be carried out to understand the different nuances of stakeholders’ perception and assessment of the importance of these competencies in their own contexts. As the first study, we have conducted a case study in the context of Proekspert, a software design and development company. The study focused on an instrument to map the perceived competency gap in Proekspert by mapping the major themes that become evident when workers are asked to explain the indicators of a person’s proficiency in a competency. These themes were used to interpret the numerical importance and self-assessed level of the corresponding competencies which in turn were be aggregated into the perceived competency gap in the context of the organization.
Some weaknesses were discovered when testing the instrument developed for Proekspert. For example, the competency list, although chosen for its small size, proved to be too exhausting for one session. Another issue arose when interpreting competencies – while some competencies were understood unanimously, some were seen very differently by participants.
When combined with data collected from internal tools, such as the aforementioned Pulse and HappyMe, the visualized competency gap can be used to plan future trainings across all employees or different profession groups. Integrating the tools with the proposed competency management platform and collecting similar data from other ICT companies would help provide insight into the current state of the labor market. This could be done through visualization of the overall competency gap across profession groups, overview of the existing and aspired competencies of workers, and information about future trends regarding competency needs. To continue implementing a competency framework in Proekspert, a subsequent study using an improved version of the developed instrument needs to be carried out to include more employees. Similar case studies will be carried out in other ICT companies to study how to adapt the developed instruments in different contexts, such as different managerial hierarches. When the base for implementing a competency modelling framework in an ICT company is established, the research will continue towards the design and development of the common competency management platform.