Preserving and Using Institutional Memory Through Knowledge Management Practices (2007)

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20 STATE TRANSPORTATION AGENCY RESPONSES FOR QUESTION 1 The first question on the survey questionnaire ascertained whether specific efforts are being made by STAs to capture the knowledge of experienced retiring or exiting employees. Thirty-three STAs reported making such efforts. Figure 1 shows the number of respondents who selected one or more of the five choices for Question 1 (see Appen- dix C for detailed results). The most common practice was the exit interview; however, it may not be as effective as desired, because it may not be able to capture years of experience and it may be conducted by HR employees who cannot be expected to have technical depth in the leave-takers’ expertise. Note that seven DOTs reported having a succession plan process in place. Nine reported assigning “knowledge-capturing tasks” to senior staff on an ongoing basis. STA comments to Question 1 revealed some other STA practices: • Retaining the retiree as a consultant after a two-year period or as a “retired” state employee with a salary cap. • Using retired annuitants to transfer information, train new managers, provide ongoing level of expertise. • Overlapping or double-filling positions for up to several months with incumbent mentoring successor. • Providing opportunities for employees to perform “act- ing” roles for vacations or in the course of career man- agement plans. There are no doubt informal practices being carried out in many STAs at some organizational level or even by consci- entious individuals; however, the questionnaire results do not show a focused agency-wide intentionality regarding how to deal with the loss of knowledge as a result of to leave-taking. SYNTHESIS OF PRACTICES TAKEN FROM LITERATURE SURVEY ON LEAVE-TAKING The annotated literature survey in Appendix I documents numerous practices for dealing with leave-taking, some short-term, but most long-term. Many ideas were taken from the literature survey and synthesized into the 42 ideas listed here. 1. Establish mentoring programs. 2. Establish ongoing process to determine which employ- ees have the most critical knowledge. 3. Institute succession and career development planning. 4. Build repositories of knowledge that professionals need as they move through the organization. 5. Master practices of knowledge transfer, such as face- to-face skill training programs. 6. Use technology to supplement person-to-person knowl- edge transfer. 7. Explore phased retirement. 8. Look for new ways to retain key workers. 9. Use retirees’ expertise by implementing formal pro- grams to reemploy recent retirees, especially on contract or part-time basis (i.e., an intentional, focused program, as opposed to ad hoc, on-the-fly hiring in time of crisis or in unplanned manner). 10. Build a knowledge-retention culture and make knowl- edge retention part of the organization’s mission. 11. Understand that voluntary reductions, because the most marketable and knowledge individuals leave first, can harm social networks and undermine trust. 12. Spread pay cuts rather than layoffs to maintain under- lying social networks. 13. Systematically record knowledge of employees on verge of retirement by using video, interviews, and documentation. 14. Pay bonuses to departing employees willing to share their working knowledge with their replacements. 15. Encourage workers to mingle across department bound- aries, etc., to facilitate knowledge transfer. 16. Use social network analysis to map patterns of inter- action and identify key individuals. 17. Use knowledge mapping techniques. 18. Investigate in a purposeful manner why individuals leave the organization. 19. Pay close attention to worker demographics and staff positions requiring extensive experience so as to allow junior employees to grow in experience. 20. Allow succession practices in selected critical spe- cialized positions. CHAPTER THREE SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS OF STATE TRANSPORTATION AGENCY QUESTIONNAIRE RESULTS AND LITERATURE SURVEY REGARDING SPECIFIC EFFORTS TO CAPTURE KNOWLEDGE OF EXPERIENCED RETIRING OR EXITING EMPLOYEES

21 21. Shape the organization to meet future demands by understanding whether the organization itself (or department) is in a growth or stewardship cycle. 22. Encourage employees to transfer between disciplines to increase skill sets. 23. Ensure that attention is paid to less glamorous but crit- ical positions. 24. Include social scientists, cultural anthropologists, trans- portation historians, and other social scientists on con- sulting teams. 25. Use sophisticated software to analyze make-or-break losses in key competencies. 26. Develop extended “supply chains” of people by cre- ating pools of individuals to train and develop so they are ready to move into positions in about three years. 27. Reduce importance of positions and skills of retiring workers by revamping job or outsourcing. 28. Redesign existing processes to focus on knowledge retention needs. 29. Calculate the cost of lost critical knowledge in terms of how much productivity will be lost. 30. Leverage what is already in place, such as by making exit interviews more knowledge oriented or improv- ing existing communities of practice or focus groups. 31. Hire people with strong knowledge-sharing skills and behaviors. 32. Allow employees to “shadow” senior staff and reward senior staff for that. 33. Give employees just-in-time access to retirees as they need them for current work. 34. Understand it is necessary to gather knowledge from the high performers only, regardless of their level in the organization or job slot. 35. Identify core processes in organization that need pro- tection and identify top performers in those processes. 36. Use specialized interviews called a “naïve new per- son” interview, led by a coach, and then polishing that knowledge gleaned into a best practice stored in an electronic library. 37. Update knowledge, especially that which is stored in explicit form, regularly through continuous use and feedback. 38. Seek not to retain workers but to constantly “re-recruit” them by engaging and valuing them. 39. Make sure employees do not have to choose between loyalty to their careers and loyalty to their organization. 40. Engage retired workers on a project-consulting basis. 41. Create a retiree job bank. 42. Hold one-day wisdom transfer workshops. Note that these practices come from a variety of organiza- tions. Some may already be used by STAs and others may not be applicable. Moreover, individual state rules and regu- lations may make an idea impractical or even illegal. These ideas are offered more in the spirit of brainstorming than as recommendations. 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 N o. o f S TA s Se le ct in g Require exit interviews Assign individuals to document expertise Have succession plan process Assign knowledge capturing tasks to senior staff, ongoing basis Other FIGURE 1 Specific efforts to capture knowledge of leave-taking employees (n = 60; multiple selections allowed).