Keep the Data

Once a company identifies key knowledge, it must develop the data-collection tools so that others can use it. In Illinois, where almost 10,000 out of nearly 60,000 state government workers have taken early retirement since 2003, a KM group has developed a database to capture the experience of buying government goods and services for the lowest prices. In the past, employees left without passing on the money-saving know-how. In one instance, the person responsible for buying cars and trucks for the state retired without leaving any information about vendors, prices or negotiating techniques. "When she retired, the new buyers had to start from scratch," says Paul Campbell, acting director of the Illinois Department of Central Management Services (CMS).

Illinois’ central purchasing department, which spends close to $8 billion a year, is facing heavy retirement in the coming decade. And it is not alone among government agencies—both state and federal. At NASA’s Langley Research Center, for example, the first national civil aeronautics laboratory, 55 percent of the workforce is eligible for retirement. In an attempt to prevent a further loss of knowledge as the baby boomers depart, the state created a procurement database that brings together information from past purchases and includes vendor and product comparisons. With less than a $20,000 initial investment, the department built the system as an add-on to its Lotus Notes e-mail system, easing the training for workers already familiar with that program. Purchasers can now search the database before they start negotiations with a vendor. "Before we had this, our buyers were at the mercy of the vendors," Campbell says. Illinois is now working with Microsoft to create a Web-based state procurement system that will eventually include information from other states.

KM experts caution that databases, portals and other electronic repositories are often ignored by workers who would rather get information from colleagues. "There are plenty of databases out there that are graveyards," says DeLong. But in some cases, he adds, lessons-learned databases and other technical tools are the only means of keeping information at hand for future use. While mentoring, shadowing and communities of practice can help train newer employees and encourage more experienced workers to pass on their know-how, cataloging key information as a reference can help cushion the blow of retirements. Common search tools and storage databases can then help retain such explicit knowledge.

At Bruce Power, a private nuclear power operator in Ontario, Canada, management saw the need for such tools several years ago when it became clear that 40 percent of its 3,200 employees were nearing retirement age. Christophe Michel, Bruce’s manager of technology solutions, started working on a project to create repositories of technical and HR information that employees can access from the Web. Using Kana IQ software, Michel and his colleagues have put together a dozen such repositories. One of the most successful in terms of usage, he says, focuses on technical questions related to welding, crucial for maintenance and safe operation of the plants.