Knowledge Management

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine began her first full-time job after graduation. Her skill-set had matched perfectly with the job description, and she was confident that she would do her job very well. However, having joined this multinational organisation, she realised that there was a knowledge gap between her existing skill-set and what the job required. After talking to her boss, they agreed that extra training was needed, but the organisation did not have an in-house training scheme, so she would have to attend a training course and seminars in order to bridge the gap.

 

When we discussed this issue, we realised that her organisation was lacking a knowledge management scheme, which is something more than simple training. The purpose of such a scheme is to preserve the collective know-how of the organisation and to make it a resource to be shared amongst present and future employees. This is achieved by capturing and preserving knowledge of senior employees in order to be used to train new employees with these refined examples of know-how.

The knowledge management scheme provides a company with long-term sustainable advantages, because its competitors will need more time to accumulate a similar amount of knowledge. It also allows the company to extract value of an employee’s knowledge, even after they have left the company. 

A knowledge management scheme reminds me of what we have at my university, where all the lectures and educational material exist online. It is available to the students 24/7, and it is constantly updated and improved.

The recent trend in higher education is that a large number of universities, mainly in the USA, are providing online classes to an internet platform called Coursera, an innovative application that makes interactive college classes available to the public, free on the web. 

Going back to the business world and its knowledge management needs, I believe that, the steps that an organisation has to take in order to develop a knowledge management system, are very simple, but require resources to be allocated to these tasks. For example, in my friend’s case, they could do the following:

• Identify the knowledge gap – i.e. what an experienced employee can do and what the learner needs to know, in order to reach that level.

• Define the objectives of the training programme – i.e. what you expect the learner to know as a result of the training.

• Create a training syllabus which lists the topics to be covered and the way they will be delivered to the trainee.

• Schedule and provide the training programme internally, using the information contained in the syllabus.

• Preserve the training material for future use.

After talking to some friends regarding the training received from their employer, it seemed to me that they all had similar experiences. Their employers would gladly pay for their training by sending them to external courses and seminars, but they themselves felt that the training should have been done in-house.  

Finally, as Confucius once said: “Learn as though you would never be able to master it; Hold it as though you would be in fear of losing it”.

Ellie Fanis
BPP University College

This post first appeared in The Accountant (August 2012)