Protecting the corporate memory
Many companies risk losing expertise through job cuts. But by analysing how staff interact, they may be able to minimise the damage.
Many staff have knowledge which is essential to their company. So what can businesses do to avoid losing that expertise when staff leave, and to dissuade employees from keeping their knowledge to themselves in the face of possible job cuts
First, they need to recognise the problem. A downturn in the economy exposes many companies’ lack of commitment to understanding and using their people’s knowledge. When companies feel they’re in a crisis, it is one of the things that goes by the board. Unless, that is, they’ve made it a routine or suffered because of losing knowledge in the past.
Next, any attempt to stop knowledge walking out of the door must be handled sensitively. 1 Employees would be extremely cynical and see it as an attempt to extract their unique knowledge, which they believe gives them job security.
Strong incentives are needed to coax people into divulging their expertise when being dismissed. 2 At first sight, this might seem excessive, but the disadvantages should be weighed against the benefits.
Of course, not all knowledge can be captured by the organisation and turned into a process. 3 To find out who these ’knowledge hotspots’ are, companies need to question their staff and analyse their social networks. Companies shouldn’t ask employees what they know, but who they would ask if they wanted to know about different subjects. 4 And, more importantly, the process reveals the others who always know somebody who knows.
The latter can be high on the list for redundancy because managers are unsure what they do, or because they appear to be weak performers. 5 People like this are often not ambitious but they can hold a company together. The most valuable knowledge is often not possessed by the people who seem to be star performers.
If those at the centre of knowledge networks come to be seen as the most valuable people, those who keep their knowledge to themselves will look vulnerable when downsizing is deemed necessary. 6 In such companies, the incentive to share knowledge should be even greater when jobs are under threat.
For some companies, it may be too late to salvage important knowledge. Building a culture where knowledge is understood, valued and shared can take a long time. Now may be the time to prepare for the next downturn.
A. Organisations that reward people for sharing knowledge will know who falls into each of these two opposing categories.
B. This approach enables them to identify those with a limited number of network relationships.
C. Launching a knowledge-sharing initiative at a time when people are expecting redundancies would not be a good idea.
D. This provides evidence of the risk that such a policy will meet resistance. Because of the difficulty of achieving this, it is far better not to lose the valuable sources of knowledge at all. But a ’knowledge mapping’ exercise might reveal that they play a critical role as mentors to the rest of the team.
G. The price may be an increase in their redundancy package, provision of career counselling, or an agreement to hire them back as consultants.
H. When companies feel they’re in a crisis, it is one of the things that goes by the board.