"As a valuable asset, employee have very important role in the growth and development of organization. This is parallel to Todaro (1997: 5) that human resources of a nation is the most determining factor for character, social development speed and economy of a nation. Only with certain characteristic of human resources can fulfill the organizational aim. The assumed characteristic to be possessed by each human resource in order to the best performance for the organization is competence.
Various definition of competence developed with the progress of science, in particular the human resources management. But the main theme of these various definition of competence lead to two point of views, the first view focused on examinable behavior and the second one is the fundamental individual characteristic which determined the behavior. In this research, competence is behavioral, attitude and certain characteristic dimensions possessed by employees in conducting various works to produce effective, outstanding or superior output or performance. In order to determine employees' competence, one of the methods used is questioners with questions on competence dimensions. Employees are asked for self-appraisal based on proficient or competence degree in conducting a task as mentioned in the questions.
From this point of view, the writer is interested to conduct a research on employees' competence in supporting effective performance for organization. Competence variable in used refer to Loma's framework variable. Dimensions in this variable assumed can describe employees' competence, comprised of seven dimensions and developed into sixteen indicators. These dimensions are interaction skill, work orientation, self management skill, and openness to new experience, cognitive abilities, perceptual abilities and business knowledge.
To gain a more concrete picture of employees' competence, descriptive analysis is used based on quantitative data acquired from respondents. Instrument in use to collect data from respondents is questioners on competence variable dimensions comprised of 42 questions. After going through validity test using Product Moment Pearson test, only 40 questions are valid to standard with correlation score 0.3. While through reliability test of Alpha Cronbach a reliability coefficient of 0.939 is reached which fulfill the reliability requirement of minimum 0.70.
The score distribution of respondents show the existence of unequal distribution of scoring given by respondents to questions of competence which given stratified choices. This also describe there is different varied position of respondents (staffs and officers) and there is difference in knowledge, skill and work experience level. Generally, respondents give quite important, important and very important scoring to competence dimensions. However, there are still respondents giving score of unimportant or less than important to certain items in competence dimensions. This grading shows the mapping of employees competence position which rated to be in a quite high level as the mean score show >3.17 to 4.36.
From these seven competence dimensions, 108 respondents grade orientation dimension to work as important dimension and very important in supporting effective performance or about 71% or total respondents. The business knowledge dimension was graded to be important by the lowest percentage of respondents, about 46%.
Through factor analysis, the item stated to have loading factor score >0.5 formed ten factors which can explain 75.056% variation out of 40 competence questions. While the items with loading factor score <0.5 cannot be classified to any factor formed, these items are questions numbered 2, 12. 13, 14, 16 and 22. The rest are included in 10 factors formed."
