Intro
Knowledge transfer makes or breaks an organization today. Considering the fast-paced business environment, companies need to constantly learn, unlearn, and re-learn new knowledge to stay relevant.
What was crucial information two years ago is outdated today and businesses need to be aware of that.
However, to ensure that your organization stays up-to-date and relevant in the market, you need to create an informational system that quickly, accurately, and predictably transfers knowledge from one branch of the organization to another.
With that in mind, let’s look at what knowledge transfer specifically is and how you can best utilize it in the workplace.
What is knowledge transfer?
Knowledge transfer is a process where an employee, employer, or organization transfers knowledge, skills, and experience from one department, individual, or business branch to another.
It can include different methods, such as coaching, mentoring, training, personal development, info sharing, presentations, (keynote) speeches, transition, and more.
The objective of knowledge transfer is to:
- Retain company-critical knowledge inside the organization. You don’t want to lose out on critical knowledge just because your employee retired or left the company.
- Build a knowledge pipeline. Ensure that the knowledge your organization has is easily transferable to all departments of your business so that it can be upgraded by other employees (“stand on the shoulder of giants”). You don’t want to reinvent the wheel, but iterate, improve, and add on what was already created.
How can you best utilize knowledge transfer in the workplace?
Knowledge transfer seems quite easy in theory; you know something and have a set of skills that you want others in the organization also to have. However, theory and practice are the same in theory, but in practice. Because of that, let’s take a look at the (successful) use cases for knowledge transfer to see how you can use it in your workplace.
5 use cases for knowledge transfer
- Onboarding of new employees. The average time to productivity is 8-12 months, which means that it takes that long for a new employee to become fully accustomed to the internal processes to be 100% productive in their role. When you use an intranet, you can shorten that time by allowing information to flow without any obstacles in the organization.
- Succession planning. You need to prepare the next generation of leaders in your organization. And the best way to do so is by doing succession planning. Effective succession planning doesn’t exist without knowledge transfer. You want your new generation to stand on the shoulders of giants (the previous generation) and you’ll ensure that happens by successfully transferring knowledge.
- Breaking down silos. Teams in today’s market need to constantly collaborate with one another. Knowledge transfer forces teams to share ideas and information between departments, effectively shutting down silos in a company.
- Continuous learning and improvement. Each company learns and evolves and you want to capture all of this experience. With knowledge transfer, you ensure that this information doesn’t get lost in the ether and that it gets transferred to (new) employees, successfully building upon the previous knowledge.
- Mergers and acquisitions. When companies merge together or when you acquire a new organization, there’s a lot of turbulence happening. This is where knowledge transfer can really help you out because you can teach the employees from the merged company how your processes function and get them up-to-speed effectively.
3 effective ways to knowledge transfer
- Document everything. If you don’t write it down, it doesn’t exist. Documenting your procedures enables you to create a workflow from it and teach people how it functions.
- Create a centralized knowledge repository. When you document stuff, you don’t want to have that information spread around 25 different places. You want to have a central repository of knowledge that you can easily access and retrieve the information when you need to.
- Use an intranet. An intranet is a great tool for knowledge because it allows you to document all of your processes and procedures, creates a central knowledge repository, and enables employee communication. When you implement an intranet in your organization, you can be at ease because you made a big step in ensuring a successful knowledge transfer for years to come.
Conclusion
Knowledge transfer is mission-critical for your business and if you invest resources in it, it will pay dividends. The foundational step is to have a central repository of information that can easily be accessed by employees and ensure new hires can review resources as they please. Check out webinar “Personal Touch, Powered by Tech:leveraging Technology to Create Personalized Onboarding at Scale” here
