Talk:Competence (human resources)

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I had to double-check that I wasn't on Encyclopedia Dramatica. Someone needs to brush up on Wikipedia's "neutral point of view" policy. "The R136 road in Dublin. Newly opened dual-carriageway with inner lane reserved for buses but none provided so the authorities erect roadblocks in the bus lane rather than allow cars to use it! Classic combination of Irish political correctness and gross incompetence." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.113.126.253 (talk) 22:34, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Merge with Aptitude

 * Oppose . This entry is entirely off beam. I am preparing a new entry.
 * Oppose . Competence is far more than aptitude.   It is a clear demonstration of skill supported on a strong base of knowledge of which attitude is a part, with the whole being quality controlled by Generic Competencies.

Merge with Four stages of competence

 * Oppose There is a world outside of HR folks (!) - assessing aptitude is useful for helping unskilled or underemployed people find out what they "could do" - competence refers more to what you "can do" - very different. I vote that someone take this Merge with Competence reference off of this page.-Reevasso
 * Oppose The psychology stages might not be worth expanding (?); but the HR meaning has a big set of implications to be developed, including links to remuneration and careers (eg modernisation changes in UK public sector including Agenda for Change) --Mereda 08:17, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Oppose Too different a focus. -Quiddity 02:28, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Oppose aptitude makes it easier to gain competence -Bevort 10 Aug 2006

Merge with expert
Oppose. Expert's field of reference is wider than this article.LukeSurl 16:04, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Oppose. The topics are not very well related. EEG biofeedback is a substantial field which requires its own scholarly article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by George von Hilsheimer (talk • contribs)

Oppose. The topics of ADR and human rights are distinct from one another. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Catherine Morris (talk • contribs)


 * "EEG biofeedback"? "ADR and human rights"? Excuse my confusion, but what page/pages are you guys coming from? Ewlyahoocom 18:25, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Oppose. Different on various levels. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ninja Joey (talk • contribs)

Oppose. Merging 'expert' and 'competence' will lead to no further clarification of either term. Further, the usefulness of the term 'competence' is entirely lost if merged with expertise, as a 'competence' is basic, underlying skill, NOT a highly specialist knowledge per se. J.Reeve (England) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.130.208.107 (talk • contribs)

I regard this as a consensus and will remove the tags. LukeSurl 12:40, 24 April 2006 (UTC)


 * If you want to remove the tags, please do so. But don't use this bizarre assortment of comments as justification. Ewlyahoocom 08:39, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Deleted text
Someone has replaced the entire text of this article. Maybe rightly, maybe not. Anyway, here is the deleted text:
 * Competence is a standardized requirement for an individual to properly perform a specific job. It encompasses a combination of knowledge, skills and behavior utilised to improve performance. More generally, competence is the state or quality of being adequately or well qualified, having the ability to perform a specific role.
 * For instance, management competency includes the traits of systems thinking and emotional intelligence, and skills in influence and negotiation. A person possesses a competence as long as the skills, abilities, and knowledge that constitute that competence are a part of him, enabling the person to perform effective action within a certain workplace environment. Therefore, one might not lose knowledge, a skill, or an ability, but still lose a competence if what is needed to do a job well changes.

Sorry, but this is not my area and I don't feel competent enough to judge what should be in this article :-) – gpvos (talk) 17:40, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Ha. Yeah, that shouldn't have been deleted. Wikipedia is sadly very deficient in organisational studies material, and it doesn't help when people try to push their own theories ahead of the standard understanding of concepts. 193.128.127.33 09:28, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
 * The latter is very true, unfortunately. This article is seriously defective in two ways: first, it says almost nothing about Boyatzis who really invented the modern fashion for competence/competency, and second it does not engage with either of two important debates about it - (i) whether (as Boyatzis argued) competencies are only or primarily behavioural, or encompass skills and knowledge as well, and whether (as Boyatzis argued) there is a single general set of competencies or whether it is appropriate to have a different list for every role or job. Deipnosophista (talk) 15:55, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Merge from Competency model
I'm not an expert in this area but it appears to be a very similar topic. --Comaze 06:05, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Definition of Competency
Definition of competence as "It encompasses a combination of knowledge, skills and behavior utilized to improve performance." shoud be "a combination of knowledge, skills and attitude" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.231.216.123 (talk) 14:41, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

"Competence/Competences" vs "Competency/Competencies"
Can the experts give us a view on "Competence/Competences" vs "Competency/Competencies"? This article jumps back and forward between the two. To me, there is no added meaning in the term "Competency" beyond the meaning of "Competence", so we should keep it simple and stick with "Competence" and "Competences". Unless I hear any objections, I will edit this article to reflect this.


 * I'm fine with the consistency you are proposing, with either term. For what it's worth, in the U.S., "competency" is by far the more commonly used term, in the context of human resources. Libcub (talk) 13:22, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Competence and competency
Some in the human resources and management literature distinguish the two terms: e.g.. Though personally I think this is spurious, it might warrant mentioning. – Kaihsu (talk) 14:02, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

There could at least be a section on terminology, or a reference to some discussion of terminology that covers this distinction (or not). In my own recent experience, competence is taken to refer to the attribute of a person (or occasionally a team or organisation), while competency is any component of competence, including knowledge, skill, etc. Simon Grant (talk) 05:02, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

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Underwater diving
Why the template about underwater diving? — Preceding unsigned comment added by GS-216.1993 (talk • contribs) 14:23, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Mish mash of utter nonsense
For an article this long, there is almost no useful information in it. The intro states some dubious definition and then goes on to say there is no agreed definition, and then goes on to give a whole bunch. And then there is an overview with similar problems. The body is full of jargon and esoteric terms designed to make the subject matter seem complex when it is actually very simple. An idiotic article of no value whatsoever.--Cuthbert Bargepole (talk) 04:48, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

Requested move 12 July 2023

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved/withdrawn, per the discussion below. Dekimasu よ! 03:17, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Competence (human resources) → Competency – Competences are an aspect of competency in general. Renaming this page will make it easier to establish a sustainable connection with other topics like research, communication, skills, knowledge and more. Furthermore, the use of the term competency is not restricted to human resources only. Infogiraffic (talk) 11:17, 12 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Oppose. The current sources in this article are all related to a HR / organization -centric usage, though.  A "sustainable connection with other topics" sounds like "blur the single clear topic with other usages of the word" to me - it's not clear that "competency in research" (?) has anything to do with "employee X has a competency in MySQL in our database".  It's possible (although unlikely IMO) that a new BROADCONCEPT article could be made, for all that such a hypothetical article sounds like a formula for terrible "play Mad Libs by searching for random usages of a word in Google Books" frankenstein article, but if it was made, it shouldn't be chained to just the HR meaning and should be its own thing. SnowFire (talk) 14:26, 13 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Oppose. It's way worse than I initially thought. Because of all the different and conflicting definitions, competence and competency seem to have literally become synonymous. Infogiraffic (talk) 08:01, 14 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Consensus has not been reached. Is it possible for this proposal to be retracted, so that we can move our attention to a more urgent discussion on Talk:Competence? Instead of moving this page, 'Competence (human resources)', I suggest we turn the 'Competence' page into a primary topic and let the 'Competence (disambiguation)' page become a functional disambiguation page. To participate in this discussion, see Talk:Competence.
 * Infogiraffic (talk) 15:06, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.