“Knowledge Management” is a pretty big buzz word in business today. Between exponentially advancing technology and high turnover rates, it’s no wonder that more companies are worried about capitalizing and protecting the knowledge of their employees. Some companies have even gone so far as to name CKO’s within their organizations. While data and information can easily be filed away in databases, retaining some level of employee knowledge can be a far more difficult task.
The two most effective techniques for converting individual employee knowledge into a retainable, transferable form are mentoring and process management. While both approaches may seem obvious, the degree to which a company culture fosters mentorship and the extent to which a company understands and records its processes are key determinants of that company’s ability to capitalize knowledge over time.
http://www.strategicsourceror.com/2009/10/protecting-organizational-knowledge.html
While mentoring is more of a soft, cultural strategy, understanding and recording business processes is a much more tangible method for retaining knowledge and decreasing costs associated with employee turnover. The problem within many organizations is that internal processes are not clearly mapped out and documented.
