We have all heard for years that the most important asset for an organisation is not the products they sell or services they offer, it’s the people. Talent is the greatest asset for an organisation.
So, it’s true that when a key talent walks out of the door, it hurts at many levels. It hurts organisational productivity, team morale, and the co-workers struggle with the increased workload. The biggest impact is felt on an enormous amount of knowledge which is lost when an employee leaves. And this of course increases by magnitude as more and more employees call it quits.
The effects of Great Resignation
With the ongoing trend of The Great Resignation, a record-breaking number of professionals are voluntarily resigning across the world.
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, in November 2021, 4.5 million persons left their job voluntarily with 3% of the workforce quitting their jobs each month. Things are not looking to slow down in the current year either, with 23% of the workforce expressing an interest in switching jobs in 2022.
The story looks similar in other parts of the world too. One in five Australians changed their jobs last year and a quarter is currently considering quitting, as per National Australia Bank’s research.
Losing an employee is definitely not an easy experience. Thus, having a solid retention strategy is a must. From identifying the root cause to giving them opportunities to grow and providing better benefits and work-life balance, you must take effective retention measures.
All these retention strategies are a must-have. Having said that, equally important is to have an effective knowledge management strategy.
Managing Knowledge During the Great Resignation
While the Great resignation trend may stabilise over time, the chances of returning to long-term employee tenure look rather slim. Hence, it is important for organisations to proactively revisit and rework the strategy related to the retention and transfer of knowledge.
Here are three effective strategies to consider:
- Create a culture of knowledge sharing
Highly collaborative workplaces ensure a seamless exchange of knowledge among team members. This not only enables better productivity but also faster decision-making. A monthly team catch-up is a great platform to make sure that top performers’ insights are spread across the team. What best practices do they follow and what are they doing differently—sharing this information and knowledge will address the issue of knowledge hoarding. Incentivising high performers for sharing their knowledge and learnings with peers is a great way to encourage knowledge sharing. Similarly, employees should be encouraged to seek help. While establishing any kind of culture within the company definitely takes time, opening the channel of communication is a great starting point.
- Make sure information is readily accessible
Oftentimes, employees are clueless about where to look to access important information. Valuable information or knowledge remains with a select few and when they leave that information goes with them. A single source of truth is important to ensure that all the important and historical information is available for employees to access. Employee-created resources also need to be stored in a central place. That said, access controls need to be in place to ensure that information is accessible only to relevant employees.
- Leverage technology for end-to-end business process visibility
Technology, such as Business Process Management (BPM), can be a great enabler in empowering employees to easily access, share and utilise corporate knowledge. Using BPM, you can create process maps to show a multidimensional view of your business processes, which gives you an insight into the tasks that make up the process, who does the task and the documents and systems used. These process maps are stored in the central repository, giving everyone visibility into the task owners, doers and information created. This defined and visible process enables employees to easily understand the knowledge flow.
Choosing a BPM tool, such as PRIME BPM, which has an inbuilt Standard Operating Procedure template, enables you to easily create a step-by-step work instruction with system screenshots. This proves extremely helpful in ensuring that all the knowledge about the process is available centrally and ensures effective information sharing, employee training and knowledge retention.
PRIME BPM also includes proven powerful features to enable collaboration and knowledge documentation, such as the ability to record Business Rules, KPIs, Text descriptions, Roles (using the inbuilt role repository) and Documents (using the inbuilt document repository). Furthermore, it has a built-in RACI chart, which clearly lists out who is Responsible, Accountable and should be Consulted and Informed about the process. This effective structure in place effectively combats knowledge hoarding. To experience the full range of Knowledge Management features included in PRIME BPM, please register here for a free trial.