Protecting your ‘corporate memory’ when your more experienced employees leave

Corporate memory, often referred to as organisational memory, is the umbrella of information and knowledge accumulated by an individual employee during the course of their employment. This information can be a collection of data relevant to the organisation or specific knowledge pertaining to the overall running and effectiveness of the organisation. More importantly, this wealth of knowledge may have been accumulated through various organisations within the same industry, thus adding to its value. This knowledge allows current and future employees to better understand the context that they are operating in and ensure that history does not repeat itself – all the while increasing your competitive advantage. Every effort should be made to maintain and retain your Corporate Memory as your competitive advantage may be based on it. 

Reasons why it is lost:

• Downsizing
• Retirement
• Poor organisational design
• Unappreciated value of corporate knowledge
• HR performance reviews and job design specialists routinely miss the usefulness of insights gained from experience. 

What could be done to keep it:

• Promote a collective and shared mentality for corporate knowledge
• Try to document knowledge
• When people are leaving the organisation, interview or survey them to identify and record corporate knowledge. - This can effectively be incorporated into your existing exit interviews. 
• Human Resource staff members can implement an annual corporate knowledge process. The aim of this is to collect and then share the insights of corporate knowledge across the workplace.
• A review of procedures by more experienced employees would allow for their experience of what works and what does not work to be brought to the forefront of the business.
• For more senior roles within the business, it is essential that there is a substantial cross-over period where one employee mentors the newer employee. This needs to be executed until enough essential knowledge and information has been passed on to allow the newer employee to effectively meet role requirements.
• Most importantly, information must be found, captured and shared. And, experiences should be shared if they are hard to document.

Web based solutions such as products by HarQuen provide an effective means of collecting, storing and sharing with others in the organisation. It can be as simple as a recorded snippet of conversation with a golden insight, or a short video made by an employee sharing their insights into their role over the years. Insights are then easily shared between employees ensuring individual insights reach the wider organisation and make a difference to the roles of employees across the board. For more information visit the free demo page for VoiceAdvantage, or get in touch with PsychPress on (03) 9670 0590 or email info@psychpress.com.au.