Entrance’s director of consulting, Chad, participated in a panel discussing knowledge management this week at the Houston City Club. The main driver of the conversation was a central issue that most companies are grappling with today: how can organizations capture the valuable mind share housed within their employee base, whether in the situation of an aging workforce, a merger or otherwise?
Most companies are busy just keeping their operations moving, so oftentimes they just forget that all their employees won’t always be there. When an employee moves on, it is very important to capture what is needed to accomplish the job, no matter who is sitting in that desk.
The panelists also discussed the generation gap that has cropped up as baby boomers continue to work while newly educated people enter the company.
An interesting dichotomy then forms: the people who have more recent training vs those who have decades of experience but are less up to date on new techniques. Both of these positions have their benefits, but can we find way to make sure each party mutually benefits from these different kinds of knowledge, rather than competing with each other? In particular, how do we make sure that the foundational knowledge of more experienced employees, which allows them to recognize patterns to a problem and quickly solve it, gets transferred on?
Done effectively, for the coming generation of workers, this can result in what Chad calls, “an old head on young shoulders.”
The question, of course, remains as to how any company can effectively accomplish this goal. One way is with business collaboration through a tool like Share Point. You can store lessons learned and legacy documents, and with Share Point, you can tag every single item so that filed documents can actually be found again!
Don’t let that valuable knowledge get away with your employees! Read more about business collaboration and what it can do for your business here.