keep knowledge

At 5:30 a.m. one morning, a loud bang shook a small town on the Gulf Coast of the United States, waking all the residents from their sleep. What people saw was the blazing fire, and what they smelled was the pungent smell of smoke. It turned out that an ethylene reactor at a nearby chemical plant, one of the largest in the town, had exploded. Fortunately, emergency rescue teams quickly contained the spreading fire and the poisonous gas released by the explosion. A subsequent investigation found that the engineers and workers in the control room at the time of the incident were all novice workers who had worked for less than a year. It is very likely that their lack of experience in accident prevention led to the occurrence of the incident.

This shocking example shows us that the loss of knowledge, often an unintended consequence of downsizing and layoffs, is one of the most costly problems facing businesses today, and it is also The most overlooked issue. This "knowledge loss" phenomenon occurs not only in the private sector, but also in the public sector, involving a variety of industries such as chemical, utilities, oil and gas, medical, automotive, aerospace and defense.

Typically, companies are unaware of the risk of knowledge loss if there is no accident, resulting in losses. For example, when Delta Air Lines expelled many experienced mechanical engineers out of the company in 1995, all one thought was the massive cost savings that companies could make. But then came a litany of problems -- they were replaced by inexperienced crew members who spent more time troubleshooting and repairing the plane, resulting in flight delays or cancellations, passengers complained. Ultimately, the cost per seat per mile skyrockets. "It was an expensive lesson," said Jim Smith, director of people performance and training in its technical operations department.

A credit card company had a similar experience: a new analyst, who had to sort through the company's prospects Unfamiliar sorting tends to send invitations to the groups of customers least likely to respond, while abandoning those most likely prospects.

Research conducted by the Accenture Institute for Strategic Change shows that knowledge loss can have many consequences, including having to adopt compromise development strategies, reducing efficiency and causing serious incidents. Even innovation suffers—although this is a somewhat counterintuitive judgment, but it does. Because generally, when people do things in new and better ways, they often need to rely on the accumulated experience of the old way.

Let's look at this example: A chemical company in the United States has an experienced extrusion systems specialist. This employee has improved productivity by overhauling the manufacturing process, not only saving the company millions of dollars, but also developing many new products and improving the company's bottom line. When he retired, the company realized it would take at least a year to produce someone who could replace him. The only way to keep technological innovation going is to re-hire the veteran as a "consultant."

Focus on speed, variety and scope

Several companies are already at the forefront of preventing knowledge loss. Delta Air Lines has learned the lessons of 1995 and taken a different approach to airline layoffs in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Royal Dutch Shell, NASA, and the Tennessee Valley Authority have all taken different steps to preserve critical knowledge.

When a company faces the threat of knowledge loss, it should mainly consider three aspects:

First, the speed of loss: How fast is the knowledge loss? Years, months, or days? After 9.11, the aviation industry suffered a severe setback, and Delta Air Lines had to lay off staff. However, the company decided not to make the mistakes of 1995 again. As a result, when 11,000 employees across the company agreed to early retirement or separation, it took Delta less than two months to identify which employees had jobs without backup and whose replacements hadn't been trained. , pay particular attention to those who have a large number of internal and external relationships, and retain relevant knowledge before these people walk out of the company's doors.

The company's supervisory board, in conjunction with the training services department, identified experienced personnel who might have contributed to the "loss of key positions" on a list of 11,000 employees. Then, they identify those people on this list who are doing particularly well, and they communicate with those people to further clarify their roles in the company. In this way, Delta Air Lines retains as much key knowledge as possible in a short period of time.

In contrast, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the largest public utility in the United States, has taken a longer time to solve the problem. In 1998, the company's management realized that after several years of downsizing, the median age of the utility's employees was 48. The Tennessee Valley Authority surveyed its employees about their retirement plans, and although participation in the survey was voluntary, 84 percent filled in an expected retirement date.

The company first scores each employee and quantifies the risk of knowledge loss for each employee. Then, the company prepares staffing and succession plans to deal with the knowledge loss caused by the retirement of old employees. Such solutions include periodic retirement and employment as a consultant.

The second is the type of knowledge: is this knowledge clear, regular, or in the mind? Can it be recorded? Does it have to be taught directly? Knowledge can be broadly divided into two categories: those that are easily documented and those that are not. The first is relatively easy to handle, while the second is not. The design of residency knowledge should be based on the type of knowledge transfer.

For example, a metal smelter uses a very hazardous product process to design two storage tanks. One of them was repaired and re-launched with problems, costing the business millions of dollars. In fact, the same accident happened 15 years ago while repairing a storage tank, but no one inside the company remembers that incident. But at the end of the year, the company has to retrofit another storage tank. How can we avoid repeating the same mistakes? This knowledge must be summed up immediately.

The factory manager brings together every employee involved in the maintenance and operation of this sensitive equipment, and uses the reasoning software PHRED to turn the tacit knowledge in the employee's mind into explicit knowledge by asking questions. "I used to think that people intentionally retained some knowledge, but in fact, they lacked a place to share this knowledge." The manager later reflected, "Senior operators have never had the opportunity to sit down and talk to younger operators. workers directly impart knowledge."

The third is scope: Is this kind of problem widespread within the enterprise, or is it localized? Knowledge-in-residence efforts can be implemented broadly or on a small scale, depending on how the business perceives the issue. For example: Siemens has tried to retain important knowledge in a formal form for a long time. Department managers are responsible for identifying which employees in the department have critical and unique knowledge and then retaining that knowledge as much as possible.

Shell emphasizes a community approach, bringing together knowledge by connecting employees around the world through networks. The network can connect geologists, reservoir engineers, petrophysicists and other scientists interested in turbidite. One-to-one relationships have been formed among group members, so the transfer of knowledge becomes a daily activity.

Seven elements to build a comprehensive solution

Whether in the chemical, aerospace or government sectors, knowledge loss is a systemic problem that runs through all stages of the employment lifecycle: recruitment, employee retention and retirement. One-off solutions, such as creating a database, introducing mentoring mechanisms, or rehiring retirees on a contractual basis are only temporary remedies. Comprehensive problems require comprehensive solutions. Successful knowledge retention covers seven key success factors.

1. Identify the importance of knowledge in risk contexts. Businesses must have processes in place to identify which employees possess the most critical knowledge for situations where the business faces the greatest risk. As mentioned earlier, Delta Air Lines, Tennessee Valley Authority and Siemens have all formed such a system.

2. Career development and succession planning. Professionals prepare the required knowledge in their future career development plans. Shell Chemicals has created a technical skills management process that identifies the company's long-term human capital needs and how to help people in various roles acquire the skills they need. Taking the construction of a new factory through networking as an example, the company's global human resources manager is responsible for finding suitable candidates to replace key positions such as process engineer, project engineer and production control engineer when vacancies arise. At the same time, the local skills manager is responsible for the local short-term human resource allocation, meeting with technical employees, assessing their unique current and future career goals, and making reasonable suggestions for their skills development and new job requirements.

"Our ideal would be to have three candidates for every key role," said Cary Wilkins, Shell Chemical's global human resources manager. "If we With three key process engineer vacancies, ideally we would have nine candidates."

3. Knowledge transfer. The strategic core of any knowledge residency process is how knowledge is transferred. Ways to help knowledge retention include: post-event summary and review, group communication, mentor system, event narrative, expert recommendation services, interviews and training, etc.

The choice of practice style is determined by the type of knowledge. Cultural knowledge stored in the mind needs to be transferred through face-to-face communication, such as mentoring or retrospectives. However, explicit applied knowledge, as well as rule-based knowledge, does not require face-to-face interaction and can be imparted through training programs and technical systems.

When choosing a method for transferring valuable knowledge, Siemens asked its managers to identify five questions: How long will this knowledge be valid? What types of knowledge are included? How long can experts with this knowledge stay in the company? What is the motivation and ability of experts to share knowledge, and what is the motivation and ability of successors to learn knowledge? What are the specific methods used to retain knowledge and how much does it cost?

4. Use information technology to capture, share and reuse knowledge. Most experiential knowledge cannot be directly and instantaneously acquired by a computer because this type of knowledge is usually learned through observation rather than through documentation. Different people may describe the same process differently, so even if such knowledge is entered into a computer database, it is possible that the record file cannot be searched because the employee used incorrect keywords. Despite the many obstacles, information technology still plays an important role in many knowledge residency. For example, Quaker Chemical has piloted an Intraspect software system in its research and development laboratory. The system enables experts to collaborate to solve problems raised by consumers, while the software can also look up knowledge types and documents that are discussed in e-mail.

5. Staged retirement plan. As the issue between knowledge residency and recruiting becomes more acute, many companies are finding new ways to extend the tenure of valuable employees. For example, the Tennessee Valley Authority recently introduced a mechanism called the "Conditional Part-Time Employment Program." This system allows qualified employees to work on a part-time basis and receive corresponding salaries, as well as various benefits and corresponding annual leave systems for serving employees. The purpose of this is to attract those outstanding employees who are about to retire to work for the company for a longer period of time, so as to use the residual heat to cultivate successors.

6. Plan for effective use of retirees. More and more companies are relying on those retired employees, who are hired back as contract consultants for the company after retirement. Many companies rely on managers' discretion to decide who to return. But a handful of companies have begun to create more formal processes for judgment, like Monsanto's Retirement Human Resources Federation, which encourages retirees to continue working part-time for the company.

After the company's downsizing in the 1990s, Monsanto's management realized that too many people were walking out of the company's doors. The job of the Retirement Human Resources Federation is to bring the former employees of these companies back to work in the enterprise. They provide retirees with up to 999 hours of work per year, and more than 300 retirees are still in research and development, information technology, engineering Or administrative management projects and other departments. Moreover, the salaries of retirees can be negotiated with the company.

"When retirees come back to work, they don't need training at all, they know how Monsanto works," says the former lab director. When you first enter the workforce, it takes at least six months of training and adaptation before you become familiar with the job."

7. Build a culture of knowledge residency. If businesses are to strive to retain knowledge in order to maintain performance, a culture should be established in which knowledge acquisition, sharing, and repurposing becomes a routine, daily routine. The first step means that management must determine whether current corporate cultural values and norms will negatively impact knowledge-resident behavior.

In exploring the issue, the leaders of NASA's Jet Thrust Laboratory found that "knowledge reuse" was a poor part of their corporate culture. According to Jeanne Holm, the lab's chief engineer, "employees tend to think they've solved problems themselves, and this arrogance is a weakness of our culture, but it's also our strength. So when we talk about When it comes to 'repurposing', we choose a more appropriate term, which we call 'adapting' or 'adapting' an existing process or technology."

The most important value of a culture that supports knowledge residency lies in business and employees Have the same sense of mission, trust and responsibility. If the employee can emotionally take the company's development vision as his own development vision, he will be more willing to share his knowledge. NASA and Tennessee Valley Authority employees are often more willing to share their knowledge because of their emotional investment in the organization's success.

A person's intellectual capital is his primary source of value in an organization, so sharing knowledge requires a great deal of trust. If people feel that the only way they can survive in an organization is to hoard valuable knowledge, they won't share it proactively. If employees believe that organizations are managed in such a way that their interests are closely aligned with those of other stakeholders, then when senior management asks employees to retain their vital knowledge, the answer will undoubtedly be yes.

A knowledge residency program must follow each company's development strategy, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. In fact, even within different divisions of the same company, the severity of the problem can vary. A Shell manager said: "In our factories the average age of workers is going up, in others it's going down. It depends on your situation and it depends Whether the company is growing or laying off staff."

The need for resident knowledge is becoming more and more urgent. Those born in the postwar peak were gradually approaching retirement age. Technologies are becoming more complex and interdependent. Globalization means that work teams will be more widely distributed. Residing intellectual wealth is not just a short-term management issue, it encompasses a complete system of principles.

Therefore, it is not surprising that when companies start to focus on knowledge retention, they will find that corporate culture is the most important area and the most difficult area to change. Changes in perceptions, norms and customs can take a considerable amount of time, which can leave companies under pressure in a dilemma. Managers often feel that they do not have time to change the organizational culture to allow more knowledge to be shared.

However, they simply had no other choice. In the era of knowledge economy, once the most valuable intellectual capital in a company continues to flow out, the company loses its competitiveness. Now that the problem of knowledge loss has threatened many industries, the only way to avoid losing a key resource for competitive advantage is to develop and adopt good workforce planning and targeted knowledge-resident programs.

The original text is reproduced with permission from Outlook Magazine, January 2003, Volume 16, Issue 1, Copyright Accenture 2003. This translation is provided by Accenture.

By David W. De Long, a researcher at the Accenture Institute for Strategic Change, and by Thomas O. Mann, a partner in the Accenture Chemical Industry Group.