The 3 I’s to Grow Your Company’s Knowledge Capital
Companies face higher turnover rates than ever before. In addition, work decentralization makes it increasingly difficult for these organizations to maintain a level of company-specific knowledge. 3 mechanisms can be used to not only maintain, but cultivate it.
Work decentralization and increased turnover rates have become the HR nightmare. On top of the resources required to find, train, and manage recruits, businesses are also struggling to retain their knowledge capital — especially when it comes to hard to codify tacit knowledge.
Now more than ever, it is crucial for organizations to tackle the question of how to not only maintain, but to increase their intellectual capital in order to sustain a competitive advantage in a highly uncertain market.
Why are companies facing new challenges in knowledge transfer ?
The workplace is evolving fast.
• A shift in demographics
While baby boomers are exiting the job market, Gen X and Millennials are gradually reshaping the workplace with their own mindset.
• Job-hopping
The times when a majority of employees could expect to spend a career growing at one company are over. Contingent workers have radically increased over the last decade, and bouncing from job to job has become the norm. This is especially true among Millennials, whose average tenure in a job is only two years. Businesses now face higher turnover rates than ever before, making it more difficult for them to maintain a level of company-specific knowledge within the organization.
• Work decentralization
As employees are asking for more flexibility at work, telecommuting and hot-desking are becoming increasingly common. Because of this, it is harder for remote workers to get and share knowledge on an informal and regular basis. This is a huge concern, as research indicates that 75% of learning that has a real impact on human performance tends to be informal in nature.
• Fast evolutions of technologies
Technologies keep modifying the workplace and the way work is done. Therefore, employees need constant knowledge updates to keep the company up-to-date and competitive. Now more than ever, being a specialist requires learning on a continuous basis.
Many companies fail to keep up with these changes, or do not know how to initiate innovation in L&D. However, it is important for their survival to support efficient ways to transfer, retain, and optimize company knowledge — especially the kind of knowledge that is hard to codify and share.
The new stakes of tacit knowledge transferability
Tacit knowledge, as opposed to explicit knowledge, is a complex but highly valuable sum of know-how, insights, and experience developed by an individual. It refers to “the things that we know but cannot tell” (Polanyi, “The Tacit Dimension”, 1967).
Most of this knowledge is created within a firm and is firm-specific. But its transfer is not an easy process.
This is a concern, as tacit knowledge is an essential resource whose transferability is a critical determinant of a company’s capacity to provide a sustainable competitive advantage. Therefore, it is key for companies to understand its transfer dynamic among employees in order to support and optimize it.
The 3 “I’s”
Three most efficient knowledge transfer mechanisms can be highlighted.
1. Interactive learning
Almost all reviewed literature agree that social interactions are a major prerequisite to tacit knowledge transfer.
Based on the work of Daft and Lengel on media richness, face-to-face mechanisms are recognized by many authors as the most effective way to transfer knowledge.
2. Internal learning
Internal training allows companies to access a resource they already possess, while encouraging experienced employees not to retire without fully (or to as great an extent as possible) transferring their knowledge.
Although external expertise can bring new insights to the company, training staff internally has certain advantages, including cost and relevance by customizing the learning to fit the company’s exact needs.
3. Informal learning
Most of the learning happens on an informal basis. As Sally Anne Moore of Digital Equipment Corporation perfectly sums up:
“The majority of companies that provide training are currently involved only with the formal side of the continuum.
The net result is that companies spend the most money on the smallest part — 25% — of the learning equation. The other 75% of learning happens as the learner creatively « adopts and adapts » to ever changing circumstances.
The informal piece of the equation is not only larger, it’s crucial to learning how to do anything.”
Why do companies tend to disregard this part of the process? Because it is much easier for training and development professionals to create, deliver, and track the formal learning path.
The new workforce’s mindset requires companies to adapt
Encouraging these dynamics to facilitate learning is now a must-do for organizations.
Companies will have to adapt to a continually evolving workplace and rethink the way they deliver and optimize knowledge within the organization. That happens by understanding the mechanisms at work in the effective transfer and assimilation of knowledge by the workforce.
Allowing workers to access internal learning on an informal, interactive and regular basis will help increase the knowledge retention — not to mention productivity — of employees by tapping into their natural social learning styles.
Among the cheapest internal and interactive training strategies are informal techniques such peer-to-peer, on-the-job training.
Originally published on www.yeslift.com
