The transfer of skills is an essential lever in order to preserve a company’s knowledge capital and ensure its long-term performance. Discover how to optimize knowledge and skills sharing in order to protect your company’s know-how and culture.
A matter of sustainability: the transfer of skills
A company’s knowledge capital
- values,
- processes,
- learning how to use different tools,
- working habits,
- managerial culture,
- all internally adapted know-how,
- clients’ culture.
Sustaining a company’s knowledge capital is essential: promoting skills sharing (from seniors to juniors, within and between teams, etc.) allows organizations to maintain productivity levels and – for very large companies – to win market shares in new sectors. Being able to rely on a solid skills base is a fundamental lever for successfully gaining market shares. The active management of available skills can also allow companies to improve their transition and streamline their resources (both financial and human):
- by facilitating decision-making (a solid skills capital eliminates long hierarchical chains when making decisions),
- by allowing decisions to be made at the right time,
- by creating environments in which training becomes part of everyday life,
- by stimulating cultural exchanges,
- by decompartmentalizing and breaking down silos,
- by encouraging innovation.
Mitigating the loss of critical skills
The transfer of a seasoned employee’s skills before they leave the company is strategic: developing tutoring and mentoring systems allows companies to turn their experienced staff into trainers, so that they can transfer all their knowledge to new employees. 62% of Fortune 1000 companies believe that forthcoming retirements will lead to a shortage of qualified staff in the next five years. Yet just 19% of employers have implemented measures to avoid a general loss of skills.
Promoting transition
The skills held by experienced employees who are about to leave the company – especially baby boomers – are multiple:
- business skills,
- know-how,
- strategic skills,
- key skills or so-called critical skills: those not held by any other employee.
The transfer of skills: building collective intelligence
A retiring employee will take their skills and knowledge with them when they leave the company. Hence the importance of designing both effective onboarding and offboarding programs. Though it is possible to sustain certain skills through processes or newly recruited graduates, it is essential to promote the transmission of company knowledge, history, records, values and client preferences. Without the transmission of this company culture, there can be no feeling of belonging. And without this “corporate” sentiment, new recruits will not become attached to the company and, as a result, will not stay. Even worse, without a smooth transfer of knowledge there can be disruptions in service and productivity which have a negative impact on the company’s bottom line. It is, in a way, the company’s intangible heritage that acts as the cement.
What is the result of a successful transfer of skills?
The proper management of skills transfer will have direct impact on a company’s productivity – but that’s not all! Inspiration can be taken from the benefits described by Stan Garfield in his article 15 Knowledge Management Benefits (2014). According to Garfield, companies that invest in the transfer of skills can expect a positive impact in five areas:
- #1 Employee performance: more competent employees are more efficient and effective;
- #2 Commercial results: good knowledge management offers the company direct financial benefits (competitive advantage, financial gains, cost reduction, etc.);
- #3 Customer relations: improving the quality of products and services, increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty, and reducing time-to-market;
- #4 Innovation: promoting R&D, developing new products and services and deploying new technologies;
- #5 Internal processes: increasing productivity, reducing errors and duplications, exploiting existing internal knowledge and managing risks.
Want to find out more about the secrets of a successful transfer of skills and the key factors to ensure the effective transmission of know-how within your company?
Continue with the second part of this article:
REFERENCES
Garfield, S, (2014). 15 Knowledge management benefits. LinkedIn Blog