Knowledge Retention: Keep Key Players Connected

Knowledge retention is a fundamental issue, which cannot be ignored. The number of people we lose as they leave an organisation or move into retirement and the amount of information and learning that have on board but that doesn’t get transferred is vast.  This is a waste and can be managed much more effectively.

Older workers hold a lot of knowledge, insight and expertise that they have built up whilst working for the organisation.  As they move into retirement, it is possible to support them through this transition and to help transfer some of this knowledge to other members of their team or elsewhere across the organisation. 

The business will have moved on since they joined and the organisation will continue to move on but this does not mean that all of the experience someone has built up so far is useless. A lot of intricate and in depth know-how about the organisation, about how it functions, who does what, how – may all be inside one key person’s head.  If that one person leaves the organisation, that’s a lot of information lost and which will take many years for another to gain. 

Finding innovative ways to keep key individuals connected to the organisation and also perhaps mentoring others, will be beneficial in keeping the knowledge circulating within the organisation.

Author: Simon North, co-founder of Position Ignition