A major shift is occurring within the workforce. With Baby Boomers retiring while Generation X-ers are moving up the career ladder and Millennials comprising an ever-larger percentage of staff, knowledge must be exchanged across these groups.
In environments with few experts and many potential learners, experts and long-tenured employees need to be able to share their knowledge broadly and efficiently across the workforce. At the same time, less experienced colleagues need ways to ask questions, get information and advice, and solve problems collaboratively.
In 2013, member-based nonprofit APQC surveyed more than 100 organizations to learn what tools and approaches they use to surface experts within the workforce—and which achieve the best results. Some of the participating organizations reported having official expertise location programs managed by HR, knowledge management, or a technical center of excellence, but others rely on more piecemeal approaches with different tools supported by different groups. Regardless of the level of formality applied to expertise location, APQC recommends adhering to the following five guidelines to ensure employees have ready access to experts and knowledgeable people across large, dispersed organizations.
Read more about how to facilitate this flow of information on IndustryWeek.
IndustryWeek is an NED companion site within Penton’s Manufacturing & Supply Chain Group.