After 30 years with your firm, Jana has decided to retire so that she can travel.  You are excited for her.  She will have a wonderful time.  She gave the company her all and now it is time for her to reap the rewards of a job well done.

Then… it hits you.  You think, “What am I going to do?  How can I capture her experiences?  We are going to be lost without her.”

Current State

In many organizations, the only option is to ask employees in Jana’s situation to write down everything they do and to ensure that all their files are updated.  This helps one understand the processes.

The employee may not consciously know why he or she took the action, at least not consciously.

When organizations are extremely lucky, they engages the retiring employee to train his or her replacement for a couple of months. 

In rare instances, organizations may be able to bring the retiring employee back as a consultant when issues arise.

When employees leave an organization, the organization loses the employee’s knowledge.  More than that, the organization loses the employee’s gut instincts. 

Impact

Today, organizations are in a catch 22 situation.  They can’t let their employees be promoted or transfer because they need the employees’ knowledge in place.  Yet, by denying the promotions and transfers, they risk losing the employee entirely. 

Questions

How can organization’s capture this knowledge?  What knowledge should be captured?  When should it be captured? How should it be disseminated?  In short, how do organizations transfer knowledge from one employee to the next?

Application

Have you asked yourself these questions? 

Whether we have one employee, five hundred employees, five thousand employees, or more, these questions are ones that we should answer. 

We need to have a plan for transfering knowledge in our organizations.  We need to be capturing this information as part of our routine business operations. 

Some ask if we can afford to do this.  Can we afford to do anything else? 

Filed by Coleen Davis at 8:32 am under New Ideas, Planning Tips, Solving Problems