Knowledge Retention in an Information Society

I was doing some spring cleaning lately and ran across an old card. It was a congratulations card from a period when I was transferred from one location to another. One of the employees I worked with wrote the following note: “I was here when you got here. I’m here when you’re leaving. And, I’ll be here when you come back.” I always thought it was a somewhat odd remark. Later, I realized how important it was to have employees like this one who others could rely upon for company history (aka knowledge).

I was reminded of the card again while reading i4cp’s executive report on The Critical Human Capital Issues of 2011. It slices and dices the top talent related challenges by both organizational size as well as market performance. It also provides a year over year comparison of the issues.

In reading the report, one issue that’s fairly consistent among all size companies and in all market segments is knowledge retention. And when we talk about knowledge retention, I have a tendency to think of it from two angles.

First is from the standpoint of information overload, which is really not a surprise. We are constantly hearing about information overload and the need to develop curation skills.

As a training professional, this is something I work with every day. It’s always a challenge to find the best way to design workshops so that participants retain the information, even with all the smart phones buzzing during a session. While many people will tell you that a certain amount of multi-tasking must be done, it only seems logical that individuals limited to processing a certain amount of data at one time.

The second aspect of knowledge retention I tend to ponder on relates to retaining an organizations institutional knowledge. Every time you turn around there’s another survey claiming a mass exodus is going to happen in the workplace. Even if a small percentage of the turnover predicted actually happens, it will be significant. Organizations need to consider how much of their company history, corporate culture and organizational knowledge will be walking out the door.

Although we tell ourselves when a person announces their resignation or retirement that we’ll train someone new, there are always small tidbits that don’t get passed along. There are precedents that were never written down or behind the scenes agreements that have been forgotten by everyone except those who were impacted. I know from experience that every time I changed jobs there was something I forgot to tell my successor. Not because I was withholding information, but just because I forgot.

The hardest part is that we don’t know what knowledge we’re missing until it’s too late. You know that moment when a whole bunch of people are sitting in a conference room talking about a critical problem and one person says, “We need to find out what happened during XYZ project. That will help us with this situation. Who was the project manager?” And to the sound of crickets chirping you all come to the realization that the project manager doesn’t work for the company anymore.

Clearly the answer is having a knowledge retention strategy; something that identifies who has access to critical data and how it’s disseminated within the organization. It’s not only a good talent management move, but a business development necessity as well. For example, think about all the company and client knowledge your sales team possess. How would you ensure that the critical aspects of that information were passed along?

If you’re looking for something to get you started, i4cp does have a Knowledge Retention Playbook that they were kind enough to give me a copy of. It’s filled with practical ideas and case studies to help organizations develop a system for retaining critical organizational knowledge.

It’s likely that your organization has already experienced some knowledge retention issues. The trimming of payrolls over the past few years has made both aspects discussed above more common. But whether the issue was triggered by a key staff member whose position was eliminated or by the deluge of information that the current staff is managing, it’s important to remember that just because it’s happened before doesn’t mean it has to happen again.

Sharlyn Lauby, SPHR, CPLP is the HR Bartender, whose blog is a friendly place to discuss workplace issues. When she’s not bartending, Sharlyn is president of ITM Group Inc., which specializes in training and human resources consulting. Her off-hours are spent searching for the best hamburger on the planet, fabulous wine that cost less than $10 a bottle and unusual iPhone and iPad apps.