Knoco Ltd.
Knowledge Harvesting from Individuals, also known as Knowledge retention
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Knowledge Harvesting from Individuals, also known as Knowledge retentionThe need for knowledge retention and harvesting is a global issue. All around the world, wise and knowledgeable people are retiring or leaving, and their knowledge, often crucial to the success of the organisation, is leaving with them. Case StudyChuck (name changed for confidentiality) was a factory manager, and a company expert in a specialised production process. He had joined the factory as an apprentice, and worked his way up to his current position over the years. Now, at last, retirement was beckoning. His dream was to retire to a little cottage by the sea, and enjoy some peace. The company were very worried about the loss of expertise when Chuck retired, and hired Knoco to help with Knowledge retention. we canvassed Chuck's community to identify knowledge topics, then spent two days deep in conversation, swapping ideas, stories, sketches and pictures. We left Chuck's office with several hours of recorded stories, which transcribed to close on 30,000 words. Over the next week we distilled these down into a story-based FAQ which will be loaded onto the company wiki. In traditional manufacturing and engineering it is driven by an aging workforce and a lack of supply of new engineering graduates. It is such an issue that some industries have given it a name, such as "The Great Crew Change"; the euphemism used in the oil industry. In China, the single child policy means that the rate of replacement doesn't match the rate of retirement, resulting in an ageing worker demographic. In South African, the employment equity legislation means that many old and knowledgeable people are retiring to make room for a workforce that matches the country demographics. However this knowledge need not be lost. We are helping many companies put in place a Knowledge Retention process, to cover the risk of crucial knowledge loss. This process contains the following elements;
We have been involved in dozens of retention exercises over the years, and have trained others in the skills and disciplines of knowledge retention. Quote from an Interviewee "It's actually surprisingly cathartic. I was worried about doing this because you don't always know what you know. You don't always realise what you know. And things that you do in your day-to-day work aren't always written down, they're not going to be written down. And I thought this was going to be a really painful experience; it hasn't been. It's actually been a bit of fun. I'm not certain that I've answered all the questions at the level of detail that the questioner would really like to know. So this is probably an overview of what I know and there may be more work for me to do to get that knowledge harvested or as I prefer to say, dredged out of my brain for it to be available to others. But it's been quite interesting to have to sit and think about these questions and answer them. Because frankly I normally just do it rather than think about how it's done. And I've actually surprised myself on some of the things I've realised I know." |
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Last updated Dec 2009. Contents Copyright Knoco Ltd.