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How to Handle Knowledge Transfer Effectively:An Ultimate Guide
Knowledge transfer is a way of sharing information or ideas within your organization. It’s a formal process that helps keep skills in your company. Part of the process involves a demonstration of learning—more specifically, applying something you’ve learned in a different context.
How to Create a KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER PLAN IN YOUR ORGANIZATION
Here’s a step-by-step guide to designing a knowledge transfer plan in your organization.
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Identify Needs
- Online Courses
- Simulations
- Video lectures
- Interactions
- E-books
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Prioritize knowledge
The transfer of knowledge in a workplace setting refers to the method used to pass along critical skills and information from experienced employees to another part of the organization such as new hires or those who will replace retiring employees. Knowledge transfer is mainly used to train employees and keep information within the organization, such as succession planning.
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Why is knowledge transfer important?
All employees leave your company at some point.
Whether they move on to other opportunities or they retire, you will have some level of turnover. When that happens, they will take their wisdom and knowledge with them, and your organization will lose it unless you’ve been purposeful about knowledge transfer.
Without a plan for knowledge transfer, employees who take over for those departing will need to relearn everything.
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How to create a knowledge transfer plan
No one wants to lose valuable knowledge and insight. Creating knowledge transfer systems can help you retain the information in your organization. Here are three steps you can take to develop your own knowledge transfer plan.
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Pinpoint what knowledge your organization needs to keep
Start by discerning what knowledge is key for your organization.
- What gives you a competitive edge?
- Do you have specific intellectual property or a complex process that only a few employees understand?
- Is it insight into customers’ pain points?
- A certain process that makes your teams more efficient?
At this stage, you want to distinguish between tacit and explicit knowledge.
- Tacit knowledge includes shortcuts or things you learn on the job that helps you perform better.
- Explicit knowledge is what would be listed in the job description.
You can identify these skills by talking to the employee who’s leaving. Get them to list out all the skills they’re taking with them out of the organization. Then review that list and divide it into tacit and explicit knowledge.
Keep in mind that the valuable information you want to transfer to a replacement is tacit. These can be key to helping other employees perform the job to the same level it is currently being done. The next step in an effective knowledge transfer plan is to implant that critical information into a new employee.
Build a strategy to upskill the team member taking on that role
This is the step where you delve into what knowledge the replacing employee brings to the job and what skills they need to acquire. The outcome is that you can upskill or reskill the replacement with the skills the employee is leaving with.
Document the tacit and explicit knowledge
When the new employee is up to speed, make sure to document what they learned to pass on to future employees. This can be done by creating extra procedure documents that guide other employees through the steps of job tasks.
Working with subject matter experts to document what they know is a critical best practice of an organizational culture that values in-house training. It’s much more convenient and affordable if employees can teach one another instead of having to bring in consultants or trainers.
Doing this will make you more resilient to future turnover or personnel changes.