Competence shifts and human action qualities in the digitalisation process

The increasing digitalisation of work is nowadays deemed to be one of the main megatrends of socio-economic change processes. Against this background, this article adopts a subject-related approach to look at the correlation between changes to work brought about by digitalisation and employee competencies, and to this end also presents research results from an ongoing project. These show increasing competence requirements and a growing level of complexity across branches in the retail trade as well as revealing de-qualification tendencies in the logistics branch. The article concludes by reflecting upon how continuing education programmes are addressing these developments and also considers how greater emphasis can be placed on the significance of human action qualities, even under the conditions created by digitalised work.