B2E Relationships, Intranets, and Competency Management

Abstract

Achieving success in today’s uncertain environment is a complex and dynamic task. Companies are forced to make keen decisions for survival, anticipating and even provoking the changes of the environment. In this context, the role played by the employees is the key to achieve such a goal. They are required to develop the adequate skills, attitudes, and behaviors for reaching excellent results in their daily tasks, in order to comply with the adaptation needs of the firm. For an efficient management of the staff, human resources (HR) managers may use several means. Two of most outstanding are the development of competency management practices and the implementation of information and communication technologies (ICT) to support business to employee (B2E) relationships. Regarding the former, current and trendy HR management approaches such as knowledge management or coaching are based in competency models (Fernández, 2005). As for the latter, the use of Web technologies has changed the way in which data and computational resources are brought to the desktop of the employees. Since Web based solutions are easy to establish (Power & Kaparthi, 2002), a plenty and quickly increasing number of resources can be made available in the intranet (Güntzer, Müller, Müller, & Schinmkat, 2007). The intranet’s main advantages are the increase in decision making efficiency and the decrease in the required time for internal and external communication. Both of these result in cutting down on coordination and communication costs, removing bottlenecks in the decision making system, and eliminating duplicated and routine administrative tasks. These positive effects could also be transferred onto human resource management (HRM) policies to lessen their subjectivity, with the help of a rigorous competency management system. This article presents a review and foundation for the design of an intranet for the development of B2E relationships, based in competency management theory as a means for transforming the firm’s HR into sources of competitive success. This proposal is the result of the authors’ research in competency-based HRM, after the HR models used in Spanish, American, or British companies. A stepwise methodology is outlined consisting of six stages: definition of objectives, data collection, intranet implementation, competency map analysis, competencies and job inventory preparation, and control of performance. Suggestions are provided for each stage on ways to leverage the strengths of the intranet application for enhancing the performance of human resources.