Gronau 2004 Gronau, N.; Uslar, M.: Integrating Knowledge Management and Human Resources via Skill Management. In

Knowledge is more and more a key factor within companies [HP90]. Nearly 40 percent of all employees are so called “knowledge workers“. Distribution and inquest of knowledge within companies are supported by skill management systems. Although not all aspects and potentials of this instrument are yet utilized skill management systems have spread widely within business organizations. This paper summarizes the requirements, scopes and problems for skill management system within the company. 1 Main fields of application Skill management as a knowledge management instrument deals with the knowledge of the company’s employees on different levels [Boe01]. Main issues of skill management are the qualifications and skills that are important for production and surplus within the company. To track those skills the company uses business information systems to keep the latest profiles with the rated skills in hand. Though skill management is no IT-based approach, it is more based on cultural and organizational changes within the company. The main areas of application are expert finding, personnel recruitment, personnel development and project management. Expert finding is the functionality easiest to implement and use of a skill management system. Expert finding makes it possible to find and search for employees with certain and needed skills. Recruiting personnel is strongly supported by skill management systems. The human resources department can look for certain skills and compare the skills of an employee with the needs of certain job opportunities . Those inquiries create the possibility to start internal promotion [KRK00]. The company is able to save costs that otherwise apply to placing adverts for job opportunities in journals and magazines, sighting the application of all candidates and losing working time because of long application audits. The personnel development department can also benefit from skill management [Bla03]. The system makes the qualifications and skills of each employee transparent. Gaps and needs for development become more and more clear. The lack of important skills will become visible. Within a project-oriented organization employees can be scheduled like any other resources for projects [DLW99]. Comparing job description and skill documents of an employee creates the possibility to find the most appropriate employee for a certain vacancy. But the fact that a successful team is much more than just adding the best skills should not be omitted.