The changing demographics of the state's workforce, marked by an aging labor force and faster turnover among younger employees, cause great concern about the state's ability to sustain acceptable levels of service and performance. Career employees have acquired a tremendous amount of knowledge about how things work, how to get things done and whom to go to when problems arise. Losing their experience and expertise can significantly reduce agency efficiency, resulting in costly mistakes, unexpected quality problems or significant disruptions in services and performance.
The North Carolina Office of State Personnel Knowledge Transfer program offers an integrated process to preserve and transfer organizational knowledge before employees separate, contractors terminate or for any other situation in which intellectual knowledge may be lost. The program offers assistance in identifying, gathering and transferring critical knowledge by the most appropriate method or a combination of transfer options. Tools to help monitor and evaluate the success of the plans are available. The program offers solutions not only for a formal Knowledge Transfer program supported by top management, but also tools and actions that can be taken by supervisors to help take control of the impending problem of knowledge loss within their work units.
The Performance Solutions website provides solution strategies to help diminish the loss of critical organizational knowledge. Models provided on this website include Mentoring, Communities of Practice (CoP), Knowledge Documentation and Job Aids, Training, Job Shadowing and Sharing, After Action Review, and Concept Mapping. Suggestions on how IT can support a robust knowledge management program are also included.
Do you, as a manager, know what percentage of your workforce is eligible for retirement? Do you know how many are less than happy with their current jobs? In short, do you know how many are ready to walk out the door with critical organizational knowledge, leaving you without a ready replacement? This program allows managers to get out in front of the problem and not be over run by it. The Companion Guide is the best place to start when implementing a Knowledge Transfer program. It contains the core process and tools that will help you decide on the best method(s) of knowledge transfer to assist you in the growth and development of your staff.
