Driven by consultancies working closely with IT departments to identify ways of sharing and storing corporate knowledge, it has become a key way of disseminating information within organisations.
Typically utilising an IT-based system, knowledge management systems enable employees to access, share and capture specialist knowledge and processes unique to a company, and in some cases unique to particular teams or individuals. There have been some well-publicised cases, such as the repository of patent information at Dow Chemical, and the establishment of expertise search systems in companies such as Shell and BP. However, there have been concerns about the effectiveness of knowledge management systems, specifically around the quality and quantity of data put into the systems, as well as access to that data.
An example that illustrates these problems is data warehousing systems (or information repositories) within large companies, which can become increasingly difficult to maintain and operate, owing to the scale and complexity of information generated and stored within them. Yet when companies have started to place less reliance on pure IT solutions and have looked at people or social processes in sharing and exchanging knowledge as a natural part of work, there has been greater success. Such approaches include “communities of practice” – encouraging groups of experts to share their expertise virtually or face-to-face – and “capturing knowledge” from employees who move away from a particular role, or who leave an organisation.
Four reasons are frequently advanced to explain the patchy success of knowledge management initiatives. The first is motivation: unless employees are clear that there is some benefit to using these systems, they will not use them. Second, systems need to be designed in ways that are consistent with normal working practices. Third, implementation needs to be appropriate. Even if the system is appropriate and relevant, there is often much resistance if IT specialists impose it from a corporate centre. Finally, sufficient resources are needed. Limited support for the operation and maintenance of a system sends the message that top management does not really regard it as a priority.
We would argue that many of these issues are well understood by, and fall within, the expertise of the HR function. Therefore greater involvement from HR is likely to benefit the functioning of knowledge management systems, and in turn overall corporate performance.
Widening HR’s contribution
There are three main areas where HR already makes contributions to knowledge management. The first is in employee training, especially induction training. The second is in relation to reward systems. Here the contributions can vary from as little as introducing a couple of questions into the annual performance appraisal system about how employees share information, to full-blown 360-degree feedback. For example, employees with McKinsey have to nominate a number of peers and colleagues whom they have assisted over the past year, and those peers and colleagues then become the primary assessors of that person’s contribution.
A third area is in job design and the management of careers. By encouraging some mobility between departments and functions either through short secondments or career moves, the transfer of more tacit forms of knowledge can be supported. This can also be helped through the introduction of mentoring schemes and apprenticeship programmes, the latter of which do not necessarily apply only to junior technical employees, but can also be relevant to middle and senior managers.
So are there further areas where HR could contribute more? We can learn a lot about how to improve knowledge management through social processes and the role that HR can play by taking a look at examples of how it works in practice.
Case study 1
The communities of practice approach at ABB
Engineering company ABB has made a considerable commitment to developing face-to-face communities among service engineers, who are responsible for maintaining industrial machinery installed in plants such as steelworks and paper mills. These engineers work from home and are responsible for different geographical areas of the UK. Depending on the nature of the contract with the client, they will normally have a regular schedule of maintenance work, but when machinery malfunctions they are expected to operate on a four-hour callout, seven days a week.
The engineers have always had an informal network whereby they telephone each other for advice on technical problems, and this has generally been on a one-to-one basis. However, the company’s senior management decided they wanted the sharing of technical expertise to be more systematic. They also wanted to raise awareness among the engineers of how they could increase their contribution to the business by using their interactions with clients to identify opportunities to add more customer value and report back on these for further action.
Accordingly, they divided the engineers into three groups, covering Scotland, northern England, and southern England, and these groups started meeting for a day every month, chaired by the account manager to whom the engineers officially reported. Half of the time at these meetings was spent listening to ideas from the account manager, and updates about the company, and the other half involved running through a matrix based on reports (on an A4 template) of client visits conducted by the engineers. After 12 months of operation the procedure was reviewed and a number of problems were identified.
First, most of the engineers had stopped filling in the reports on the visits. And second, the dynamic of the meeting had become a one-way process of information transfer from the manager to the engineers. At this point, the engineers made a number of proposals, which were accepted. They minimised the reporting requirements so that a one-line email would be acceptable; they elected the coordinator of each community from their own number; the agenda of meetings was driven much more by the needs and opportunities of the engineers themselves; and the coordinators of the three groups started meeting on a regular basis to share experiences and ideas. As one of the engineers commented: “in the month that it [the new system] has been up and running, the number of bits of information collected is probably twice what the total community collected in the last 12 months in the old system.”
Case study 2
Developing a virtual community of practice to share knowledge at Converteam
Power conversion firm Converteam is responsible for maintaining power generation and propulsion systems in several hundred ships and oil exploration platforms around the world. Although headquartered in the UK, its sub-offices are located in many other countries, including China, India, Brazil, the USA and Norway. Each of these sub-offices is highly dependent on the UK headquarters for technical expertise, particularly because most of the products have been developed in the UK. Local offices, though, also have their own expertise: for example, the Norway office with its knowledge of the oil exploration industry. Moreover, as new markets open up, particularly in Asia, sub-offices develop new forms of expertise both in relation to technical demands and commercial opportunities.
The proposed solution to capturing and sharing that expertise was to develop a virtual community of practice, which would enable engineers in different countries to contact each other and share expertise, without necessarily having to go through headquarters. This virtual community of practice was to be supported by a common portal that contained, among other things, an “organigram” (which summarised the organisational location and contact details of engineers in any country), an expertise inventory and a resources index. But there were a number of problems in implementing this approach. Many engineers were unwilling to put time into entering their expertise details into the inventory, and had to be given encouragement and support from a member of the knowledge management project team; people operating outside the UK experienced major problems gaining access to the central database because of firewalls and software incompatibility; and there was a general reluctance from engineers in one territory to help those in another owing to a lack of clarity about internal procedures.
To rectify the situation, a two-day workshop was held in the UK and attended by senior engineers from most of the countries concerned. It enabled participants to tackle a number of problems to do with rewards and incentives and, more importantly, it enabled the senior engineers in different countries to get to know each other personally. The workshop also led to further visits from UK personnel to other countries, which identified additional incompatibilities between different national systems, and also facilitated initial person-to-person contacts with engineers in different countries. As a result, a good start has been made in getting the community to function on a global scale, but this is a long journey that requires a lot of specialist support.
Case study 3
Capturing knowledge from leavers at Airbus
The essence of competitiveness for a high technology company resides in the knowledge and capabilities of its employees. The departure of highly skilled employees, whether because of retirement or other reasons, can create holes in the capabilities of an organisation, and over time can become a major threat to its survival. The issue, then, is how to transfer technical knowledge and (largely tacit) experience from the leaver to relevant colleagues who can both appreciate and use this knowledge.
Aircraft manufacturer Airbus attempts to address this issue roughly six months before the scheduled departure of an employee. A “transfer cell” is established, comprising the leaver, four or five colleagues who are closely related, and a knowledge management facilitator. The facilitator does not need to be a technical specialist: he or she needs skills to facilitate the transfer of relevant knowledge from the leaver to other members of the transfer cell.
An initial meeting is held to discuss and clarify expectations for the knowledge transfer. This usually leads to a series of one-to-one interviews between the leaver (knowledge-giver) and the facilitator, from which key knowledge transfer topics are identified and mind-mapped, sometimes aided by written diaries and logs. Discussions with all members of the transfer cell then take place to identify what knowledge and information is likely to be useful and should be transferred to the relevant people. A transfer plan is agreed, using methods proposed by the knowledge management facilitator, who then monitors the progress of the transfer, ensuring that the planned actions happen. A final step is a formal closure meeting to review achievements.
What potential is there to increase the contribution of HR?
These case study examples illustrate how important it is not to let technology distract or impede the human element, and they highlight the ways in which HR could play a greater part in knowledge management.
At the moment HR professionals at Airbus are part of the business network that identifies the list of potential levers which triggers the process but do not play an active part in the knowledge transfer process. But HR could play a facilitating role in arranging transfer meetings and identifying key knowledge carriers, or could take the role of the interviewer, collecting and recording the knowledge of those who are leaving the organisation.
With the ABB example, HR’s role could be threefold: first, in advising against a hierarchical design; second, acting as a broker between the community members and management; and third, supporting the idea that the technical data input into meetings should be kept to the absolute minimum.
In the case of Converteam, HR did make a significant contribution to the design and implementation of the international workshop, which undoubtedly produced a reasonable degree of commitment from participants. Nevertheless, problems are evident in that the community is dependent on the correct functioning of complex technical systems.
In the above examples and in other similar initiatives there are several ways in which an HR contribution might be made. First there is an important contribution to the design of knowledge management and transfer processes, in order to ensure that such schemes are not too complex, and are not overly dominated by technical procedures.
Second, there are opportunities for a range of facilitation skills to be applied. These may include actively helping the transfer of knowledge, or intervening within communities of practice where the process seems to be getting stuck or hijacked by different agendas.
Third, there is a potential training role in helping leaders of communities of practice operate most effectively, or in running initial workshops to set the process in motion.
Fourth, there is a role in the evaluation processes. So, for instance, in the case of the knowledge transfer process, there is an opportunity to meet with all members of the transfer cell to confirm that the transfer has been completed and to ask for feedback on the success of the process. Within communities of practice, given the variation in their format and implementation, it is often important for an outsider to review them occasionally, in order to ensure that they are meeting the needs of the immediate participants and of the wider organisation.
Lastly, it is also evident that some of the existing HR practices, such as performance evaluation and appraisal, could benefit from incorporating knowledge management activities in order to enhance corporate performance.
In conclusion, we would emphasise that many of these strategic knowledge needs can be addressed both through taking on new roles that fit with the expertise of HR professionals and through re-focusing traditional HR practices so that they have a more explicit knowledge agenda.
