Each company I recruit for recognizes that knowledge is the key element in hiring a new employee. Knowledge about the company, how to perform their role, how to attract and please their customers, how to deal with staf issues - all part of what they look for in a new hire and a successful long-term employee.
It is precisely knowledge that companies pay for in valued employees, whether it be in paying top salary for someone who knows what their doing, knows the industry, knows the community and market, or in paying to train them to know the company's culture, policies, procedures that set them apart from the competition. It's all about knowledge and we entrust that knowledge in our employees - but how does the increasing mobility of the work force and impending baby boomer retirements drain your company of its most tangible asset?
"We are facing a severe and pervasive problem and almost no one seems to be doing anything about it," said Beazley, a former professor at George Washington University and now chairman of the Strategic Leadership Group in Arlington, Va.
Beazley cautions that the Information Age relies on the transfer of knowledge, which now is being done haphazardly.
"`How do I keep knowledge in my business?' should be the question every manager asks today," he said. "It's never been as important."
In the Information Age, knowledge is power. And transferring that knowledge from worker to worker is the key to success. This is an argument he spells out in his new book "Continuity Management," written with co-authors Jeremiah Boenisch and David Harden.
"You have to remember that we have switched very rapidly from the Industrial Age to the Information Age," Beazley says. "The knowledge of the company is not in its database, but in the heads of its employees. It is loaned to the company and goes home with the employees. We are just starting to grapple with that. It is not something we needed to worry about 30 years ago."
In the Industrial Age, you replaced a body with a body. The Information Age requires the hiring of one mind to replace another. The task is simply not as easy.
"Everything has shifted," he said. "It is no longer a badge of honor to stay with a company. In fact, it is held against you. These forces are occurring, but we haven't done anything to assure that knowledge is retained within our companies when people leave."
The intensity of these forces has stunned executives, Beazley said.
"I think it is so shocking that they are in denial," he said. "They want to put off dealing with it because they can't quite believe it is really happening. But it is."
If there is an alarm buzzer, executives seem to be hitting the snooze button.
"The point is that if you let employees leave today or you terminate them, it's not a cost savings," Beazley said. "It is a disposal of assets. If you can't retain knowledge, you can't be a learning organization.
"The phrase we keep hearing today is to `work smarter.' How do you work smarter? You do it with knowledge. You can't allow knowledge to escape from your organization."
Downsizing and the increasing use of temporary and contract employees should be enough to guarantee that a mobile work force is certain in the future. At the same time, flattened organizational structures mean each company has more decision-makers working for it.
The question becomes: What will executives do to ensure that what those employees know is transferred to others before the learning curve has to be repeated?
Beazley is the first to admit that his concerns should be self-evident.
"It's so obvious that we expect people to be doing it. When people hear about this, they look at me like everyone already knows this. But when I ask them what their company is doing about it, the answer is always, `Nothing.'"
That's the wrong answer.
[Source:Michael Kinsman. "Career: When employees hit exits, knowledge leaves." The Sun - Plainfield (IL). 2002.]
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