These include sectors such as oil and energy, engineering, pharmaceuticals, where speed to market based on innovation is at the core of their competitive strategy. These specialists not only have the knowledge, but they also have the accumulated wisdom of how the knowledge was developed and applied, including risks and reward, lessons learned from success and failure.
That accumulated wisdom, by its very nature, often goes with longevity in the organisation and as these people approach retirement or look for new challenges outside of the organisation, there are risks about the asset that they represent being diminished. Without an intentional strategy for knowledge transfer, there are commercial risks to an organisation – no matter how large, global and successful it may be.
This is different from customer knowledge. An effective customer relationship management system helps to manage transition and risk for key customer relationships and indeed, the systems and processes for managing customers are generally developed in mature organisations. However, in our experience, it is those same mature organisations, which seem to be less upstream and developed in how they manage the assets of highly specialised experts.
The role HR can play
This raises an interesting question about who owns this issue and whether HR can play a key and strategic role in helping to manage risk. In the same way that IT professionals are fanatical about backing up data, HR teams can systematically 'back up' the organisational knowledge that's hard to replicate and take a future-focused approach to asset management.
HR is in a unique position to oversee the location of high-end expertise in the organisation. This should be part of the pipeline, talent and high-potential strategy, but in certain sectors, is worthy of a designated strategy approach to management of the 'strategic expertise assets'. By giving this a specific focus, it means that HR can create a cross organisational, cross functional and cross geography view of the state of the 'assets', with assessment of risk and the plan for knowledge transfer in a timely and efficient manner.
The next stage is to have a reliable process for structuring and capturing knowledge and expertise. In many cases, such experts are not natural coaches or mentors and often, by the very nature of their work, they have not 'scaled' what they do and know. The interfacing role is that of an expert facilitator and someone who can bridge the fields of learning design and knowledge management. Such people are skilled at capturing and classifying knowledge and at the same time, are abreast with all the methods by which knowledge can be transferred. Clearly, the disciplines of learning architectures and technology-enhanced learning are centrally important.
An integral part of the design for transfer of high value, expert knowledge is understanding how the next generation of learners will engage with it. The general trend of shorter bursts of learning closely integrated with the pattern of work and geared towards immediate application hold true in this field of design as they do in others. Additionally, understanding where the next generation of learners find their inspiration and who they see as sources of authority are central considerations but there are some creative opportunities here to capture the role model of the 'senior' expert and incorporate their voice and their legacy into the learning design.
This is appealing to the expert themselves: what is the 'footprint' they wish to leave and the footsteps they would like others to follow? It is attractive for the organisation because of the obvious benefits of no loss of value or momentum in critical areas and it can be translated into a highly engaging and unique learning experience for the privileged cadre of next generation experts.
HR can play a pivotal and strategic role in the organisation by:
Having an intentional strategy to ensure that the long term knowledge assets of the business are preserved and protected.
Being proactive and systematic in identifying the life cycle value of the knowledge experts, including understating the point at which to intervene with a transfer strategy.
Having a future-focused view of the next generation of experts and using this as a retention and motivation mechanism.
Working with creative, strategic learning designers, who can transform the speed, efficiency and reliability of knowledge transfer.
Is this the territory that HR should occupy? Or should this issue sit with the leadership of business? Our view is that it is an opportunity for HR to be in exactly the space it should be - namely, being a key player in creating the capability and capacity of people to deliver on the strategic priorities of the business.
Wendy Brooks (pictured) is a director of Hemsley Fraser, a learning and development specialist that provides bespoke consultancy and programmes on knowledge transfer.
