tpaul
JF-Expert Member
- Feb 3, 2008
- 24,225
- 22,632
Over a period of more than 10 years that I tpaul plied my trade with a private mobile telecommunication company before hanging my career boots and shift to public sector, I happened to gather profound information regarding knowledge sharing between old and young employees and how this knowledge can be transferred between the two classes of employees within the same or across other organizations undertaking similar businesses for the rationale of improving or perpetuating the organization’s productivity.
Knowledge sharing between experienced and upcoming employees in any organization is of paramount importance . Regrettably, in spite of this notion, valuable knowledge in many organizations remains unrecorded, in the retrievable format. The experienced employees who have worked for many years have accumulated valuable knowledge concerning, for example, customers and their preferences, work procedures, the history of the company and the various crises the company has faced and overcome over past years, how to prepare funding proposals quickly and effectively, and the list is endless. Even the service standards and quality acceptable to customers are stored in their minds and often unrecorded anywhere else. Although this knowledge is in the individual or collective mind of the employees, in reality it belongs to the organizations because they created such knowledge as part of their employment engagement.
Each year there are several ways Tanzanian organizations and government ministries lose vast amounts of valuable knowledge. A major way of losing institutions’ knowledge is when employees with valuable knowledge leave through retirement, death, transfers, resignations, or forced retrenchments. When an organization declares that all employees above 55 years old should be retrenched on mass, it is also a decision that may result in a massive loss of experiential knowledge when so many experienced employees leave the organization. Often the value of such knowledge is underestimated and the loss is only realized when the employees have gone and can no longer be recalled to share their ideas and critical knowledge. Tanzanian organizations can use various approaches to register and protect their valuable ideas from being copied or stolen when employees part ways with them, but only a few take advantage of this opportunity to protect themselves from theft of valuable ideas. Sadly, technically, valuable ideas of most Tanzanian organizations are available for free to anyone who wants to steal them and profit from this form of theft if not protected through any copyright registration.
To put this into perspective, each year all over Tanzania, there are thousands of employees who retire or resign from the public service and the private sector. Often those who depart are also the most experienced holders of the critical knowledge the organization needs to continue operations and remain competitive.
One of the critical questions then is why is it so difficult to capture and retain this critical knowledge while the knowledge holders are still employed in the organization? The key reason might be that most organizations lack a culture or policy of sharing knowledge among employees due to the lack of a knowledge management system. Often knowledge is regarded as a tool of power by the knowledge holders and is thus guarded jealously by the holder of such expertise as a guarantee for indispensability, hence the unwillingness to transfer their knowledge and ideas.
Under such a policy vacuum on knowledge management system, even simple steps like knowledge transfer between employees and appropriate retention protocols have never been put in place in the institution. A second reason could be the occupational peculiarities of many Tanzanian organizations where work experience differences are still prevalent and you find the incoming generation of young fresh graduates being received by an older generation of employees who are thus unwilling to transfer their knowledge to this group of young new comers who may be seen as having come to take over jobs of their predecessors. Trust becomes a rare commodity and under such environment knowledge sharing becomes next to impossible.
Certainly, top management commitment to establish a knowledge sharing culture including creating a knowledge management strategy as part of a broader policy to safeguard the intellectual assets of the organization is an essential component for successful knowledge sharing, transfer and retention. But an attitude of trust, comradeship and team spirit among employees is also a vital ingredient. The leadership needs to give a sense of direction and lead by example in trust formation and open sharing of knowledge and ideas among employees. Top government officials in Hon President Mama Samia, Vice president Dr Philip Mpango , Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa, ministers and all stakeholders at large must strive to ensure this happens and becomes implemented effectively in Tanzania.
The tools for knowledge retention are too many to be fully covered in a short article like this one. Most of the tools cost nothing except for the time of employees and a slight adjustment of an organization’s management style to change from a hierarchical top-down management to a more open style of management which is a more collaborative and collegial style and values the knowledge and expertise of employees, including junior employees. With a formal knowledge management system in place, strategies such as knowledge retention would be part of the procedures of any organization. Some of the key tools include but not limited to the following:
Knowledge hubs which are online knowledge repositories which incorporate all the knowledge harvested from employees, customers and competitors and stored in a digital format for example in an intranet which is carefully managed to ensure it is up-to-date and integrated with the organization’s strategic goals so individuals can access relevant knowledge quickly and take informed action to make their organization agile and competitive.
But also add their feedback on what worked and what did not work when they used the captured content in the knowledge hub. Knowledge hubs may not capture all forms of knowledge especially the deep seated implicit knowledge which require ongoing conversation under informal settings to be successfully transferred from the knowledge holders to the knowledge seekers.
It is normal for some institutions to confer emeritus status for retired employees so they can invite them back to share their knowledge and assist new employees to understand the history and culture of their organization by providing critical knowledge and expertise through conversations and storytelling. Universities are well known for this approach but also big companies can start a system of alumni for retired employees to continue to identify with their former companies and act as honorary ambassadors.
The Japanese took this approach one step further of engaging former employees and even building retirement villages for the purpose of keeping retired employees close at hand for regular consultation. The army, police and security forces have also employed this approach, from time to time, and created retirement villages to access their retired employees for consultations when the need arises.
A mentorship system is yet another tool for transferring critical knowledge from experienced knowledge holders to younger employees. Mentorship can also act as a succession training approach but the young staff members can also share their own knowledge with older members of staff especially when it comes to the latest technologies and new concepts they acquired recently at tertiary institutions of education. Hence this exchange may create a vibrant environment of intergenerational knowledge transfer which benefits all employees and builds a strong spirit of team work, intergenerational collaboration and mutual respect.
Yet another technique could be conducting simple employee knowledge audit surveys to establish the type and depth of knowledge which each employee has in order to identify high levels of knowledge concentration which requires to be captured and stored in the knowledge hub but also with the possibility of developing a yellow page register which can help to locate individuals in the organization with a high level of knowledge and thus benefit other employees when they need extra ideas and knowledge quickly.
In conclusion, knowledge has become a valuable resource for modern organizations, including governments. Thus there is need to put in place mechanisms for sharing all the available knowledge resources from both internal and external sources in order to add value to the goals and strategies of the country.
Without clear knowledge retention strategies, there will be a high loss of valuable knowledge each year as experienced employees retire or resign. It is therefore important that Tanzanian organizations recognize this loss and create a knowledge management system which can help them to mitigate the annual loss of unrecorded knowledge as their most experienced knowledge holders depart for greener pastures or go to retirement.
Having realized the critical need for knowledge management in the Tanzanian society, there is an amicable need to establish mechanisms which can make organizational knowledge retention and transfer possible.
Lastly and most importantly, I humbly and enthusiastically beg for your valuable vote.
Knowledge sharing between experienced and upcoming employees in any organization is of paramount importance . Regrettably, in spite of this notion, valuable knowledge in many organizations remains unrecorded, in the retrievable format. The experienced employees who have worked for many years have accumulated valuable knowledge concerning, for example, customers and their preferences, work procedures, the history of the company and the various crises the company has faced and overcome over past years, how to prepare funding proposals quickly and effectively, and the list is endless. Even the service standards and quality acceptable to customers are stored in their minds and often unrecorded anywhere else. Although this knowledge is in the individual or collective mind of the employees, in reality it belongs to the organizations because they created such knowledge as part of their employment engagement.
Each year there are several ways Tanzanian organizations and government ministries lose vast amounts of valuable knowledge. A major way of losing institutions’ knowledge is when employees with valuable knowledge leave through retirement, death, transfers, resignations, or forced retrenchments. When an organization declares that all employees above 55 years old should be retrenched on mass, it is also a decision that may result in a massive loss of experiential knowledge when so many experienced employees leave the organization. Often the value of such knowledge is underestimated and the loss is only realized when the employees have gone and can no longer be recalled to share their ideas and critical knowledge. Tanzanian organizations can use various approaches to register and protect their valuable ideas from being copied or stolen when employees part ways with them, but only a few take advantage of this opportunity to protect themselves from theft of valuable ideas. Sadly, technically, valuable ideas of most Tanzanian organizations are available for free to anyone who wants to steal them and profit from this form of theft if not protected through any copyright registration.
To put this into perspective, each year all over Tanzania, there are thousands of employees who retire or resign from the public service and the private sector. Often those who depart are also the most experienced holders of the critical knowledge the organization needs to continue operations and remain competitive.
One of the critical questions then is why is it so difficult to capture and retain this critical knowledge while the knowledge holders are still employed in the organization? The key reason might be that most organizations lack a culture or policy of sharing knowledge among employees due to the lack of a knowledge management system. Often knowledge is regarded as a tool of power by the knowledge holders and is thus guarded jealously by the holder of such expertise as a guarantee for indispensability, hence the unwillingness to transfer their knowledge and ideas.
Under such a policy vacuum on knowledge management system, even simple steps like knowledge transfer between employees and appropriate retention protocols have never been put in place in the institution. A second reason could be the occupational peculiarities of many Tanzanian organizations where work experience differences are still prevalent and you find the incoming generation of young fresh graduates being received by an older generation of employees who are thus unwilling to transfer their knowledge to this group of young new comers who may be seen as having come to take over jobs of their predecessors. Trust becomes a rare commodity and under such environment knowledge sharing becomes next to impossible.
Certainly, top management commitment to establish a knowledge sharing culture including creating a knowledge management strategy as part of a broader policy to safeguard the intellectual assets of the organization is an essential component for successful knowledge sharing, transfer and retention. But an attitude of trust, comradeship and team spirit among employees is also a vital ingredient. The leadership needs to give a sense of direction and lead by example in trust formation and open sharing of knowledge and ideas among employees. Top government officials in Hon President Mama Samia, Vice president Dr Philip Mpango , Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa, ministers and all stakeholders at large must strive to ensure this happens and becomes implemented effectively in Tanzania.
The tools for knowledge retention are too many to be fully covered in a short article like this one. Most of the tools cost nothing except for the time of employees and a slight adjustment of an organization’s management style to change from a hierarchical top-down management to a more open style of management which is a more collaborative and collegial style and values the knowledge and expertise of employees, including junior employees. With a formal knowledge management system in place, strategies such as knowledge retention would be part of the procedures of any organization. Some of the key tools include but not limited to the following:
Knowledge hubs which are online knowledge repositories which incorporate all the knowledge harvested from employees, customers and competitors and stored in a digital format for example in an intranet which is carefully managed to ensure it is up-to-date and integrated with the organization’s strategic goals so individuals can access relevant knowledge quickly and take informed action to make their organization agile and competitive.
But also add their feedback on what worked and what did not work when they used the captured content in the knowledge hub. Knowledge hubs may not capture all forms of knowledge especially the deep seated implicit knowledge which require ongoing conversation under informal settings to be successfully transferred from the knowledge holders to the knowledge seekers.
It is normal for some institutions to confer emeritus status for retired employees so they can invite them back to share their knowledge and assist new employees to understand the history and culture of their organization by providing critical knowledge and expertise through conversations and storytelling. Universities are well known for this approach but also big companies can start a system of alumni for retired employees to continue to identify with their former companies and act as honorary ambassadors.
The Japanese took this approach one step further of engaging former employees and even building retirement villages for the purpose of keeping retired employees close at hand for regular consultation. The army, police and security forces have also employed this approach, from time to time, and created retirement villages to access their retired employees for consultations when the need arises.
A mentorship system is yet another tool for transferring critical knowledge from experienced knowledge holders to younger employees. Mentorship can also act as a succession training approach but the young staff members can also share their own knowledge with older members of staff especially when it comes to the latest technologies and new concepts they acquired recently at tertiary institutions of education. Hence this exchange may create a vibrant environment of intergenerational knowledge transfer which benefits all employees and builds a strong spirit of team work, intergenerational collaboration and mutual respect.
Yet another technique could be conducting simple employee knowledge audit surveys to establish the type and depth of knowledge which each employee has in order to identify high levels of knowledge concentration which requires to be captured and stored in the knowledge hub but also with the possibility of developing a yellow page register which can help to locate individuals in the organization with a high level of knowledge and thus benefit other employees when they need extra ideas and knowledge quickly.
In conclusion, knowledge has become a valuable resource for modern organizations, including governments. Thus there is need to put in place mechanisms for sharing all the available knowledge resources from both internal and external sources in order to add value to the goals and strategies of the country.
Without clear knowledge retention strategies, there will be a high loss of valuable knowledge each year as experienced employees retire or resign. It is therefore important that Tanzanian organizations recognize this loss and create a knowledge management system which can help them to mitigate the annual loss of unrecorded knowledge as their most experienced knowledge holders depart for greener pastures or go to retirement.
Having realized the critical need for knowledge management in the Tanzanian society, there is an amicable need to establish mechanisms which can make organizational knowledge retention and transfer possible.
Lastly and most importantly, I humbly and enthusiastically beg for your valuable vote.
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