Sydney Water deploys collaboration to address knowledge management

Sydney Water has moved to address risks associated with an ageing workforce though the deployment of a new knowledge-based collaboration system.

Speaking to CIO Australia, Sydney Water’s manager of organisational capability, Maria Steel, said the organisation looked to collaboration to preserve employee knowledge.

“We have an ageing workforce and [we saw] the need to engage in knowledge transfer processes,” she said. “Collaboration allows us to capture, track and transfer that knowledge culture that we’re trying to get across.”

Sydney Water partnered with Saba Software and used Saba Live for the deployment in a project run by Steel and her human resources department.

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Steel said Sydney Water has deployed a number of different modules in its collaboration software, all of which are aimed at transferring knowledge among its staff members.

“We have a suite of products around learning, talent management and obviously collaboration that together allow us to capture and measure the competency and skill levels that we need our staff to have both now and in the future,” she said. “The collaboration module lets us capture our staff know-how and then transfer that to younger generations.”

Sydney Water included a portal for its graduates in the deployment, as well as an online community for new employees.

“One of our communities is about contract management so they talk to best practices about content and its kind of a personal development thing,” Steel said. “Others [we have] are a portal for managers who are new to roles [which are based] around what they can expect, and online tools.”

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Steel said Sydney Water is in the early stage of the project, with adoption on the rise amongst the organisations’ team members.

“They’re starting to use it and to get more into using it,” she said. “We’ve gone from having a zero technology base in terms of people processes around having electronic performance systems, and we transferred this part of the process [so that]…the whole concept of learning live on the system [is more accepted].”

See more: Read about how Salmat’s CIO addressed the challenge of knowledge management.