Sustaining Knowledge Management: What HR Can Do

In an earlier post I had written about Knowledge Management and how it is relevant today and can't be ignored in the context of today's business.  Read Here.

In this post I will try to explore how HR can play a role in facilitating knowledge management.  While the context may be more specific to services industries it can be extended to any other industry.

As companies have diversified and spread their operations across geographical and state boundaries and as technology has provide ample ways to stay connected and share work seamlessly, it is very common to find teams working across multiple locations requires remote teams to come together and deliver solutions and it is here that knowledge management processes play a key role in the collaborative effort.   In such an environment the willingness of team members (employees in general)  the aspect of give and take needs to be forthcoming.   The willingness is addressed by driving the culture of sharing and caring.  Explained below, are seven areas of influence whereby  the HR function can play an important role in enabling learning and sharing knowledge through a collaborative effort.

Creating a Culture for Knowledge Sharing

Espoused Value of Learning & Sharing: HR Should Influence That

As highlighted earlier, culture plays a significant part in ensuring sustenance of the knowledge management effort.   The effort to create a culture of learning and sharing starts right from the directional strategy of the company. The organization should design and deploy experiential and cognitive learning programs are deployed throughout the year to sharpen the understanding of the core values of the organization understand how learning and sharing as a value is manifest in resultant behaviors and to  percolate the values into day to day working.  Through these programs employees can be made ready to deal with situations when there is a defocus or a deviation from the very values you want to promote and instill among your teams.  The knowledge management efforts get a key boost through the value of  Learning & Sharing.   Apart from a pivotal role of being custodians of the processes to ensure value adherence  HR can play a key role in embedding the knowledge sharing culture by reinforcing this in induction and hiring process.  

Create a Knowledge Sharing Platform

HR can influence knowledge sharing through appropriate reward and recognition programs that Communities of Expertise (CoE’s) can aspire for and thereby bring together people working on related areas of functional and technical expertise.  These can be areas for e.g. Engine Optimization and tuning in an automobile company,  or infection prevention post surgery in a hospital ICU, or process throughput design in a process plant. 

Apart from sharing explicit and tacit knowledge the CoE’s also help in creation of knowledge assets and artifacts like case studies,  white papers, Points of view etc.  Some companies have even gone to the extent of aggregating these expertise platforms and created learning universities or knowledge universities that drive creation and sustenance of knowledge within the organizations.  

HR needs to implement a structure to sustain these knowledge platforms by designing appropriate governance structures and putting right kind of metrics in place to drive effective implementation and roll out.  These kind of processes and structures are not easy to copy and duplicate.  It is culture specific and driven by the fact that the substance is more important than the form that these systems take. 

Capability Building

In a diversified multilocation organization dispersed organization learning will be effective only if it reaches the audience irrespective of time, space and distances.   HR Technology enablement  focus should ensure the deployment of learning through e-Learning modules accessible seamlessly across the globe.  Technology today can ensure right access to learning modules, libraries and other learning platforms that are accessible across the globe and available real time to employees.  

Compliance and Intellectual Property

Another important role for HR is by being an integral part of addressing any issues on violations of  knowledge copy rights and intellectual property. Any transgression or violations are addressed and necessary action is taken by the company's Ethics Redressal Committee of which HR is usually a key governance stakeholder.   The HR team should ensure  that principles of natural justice are followed during any such scrutiny in alignment with the corporate guidelines on value and ethics.

Staffing & Resourcing Intelligence

One of the key areas by which HR can influence knowledge management is by ensuring  visibility on availability of right competencies across businesses and ensure staffing on a real time basis.   HR can also play a pivotal role in creating this internal system that provides various resourcing and staffing managers and business leaders with information on the availability of right resources and capabilities that are required for the delivery of customers’ business requirements.

Facilitator & User

While HR plays a role in enabling knowledge sharing, the HR function is also a significant user of  the knowledge management framework and infrastructure.  All HR communication to the associates on various organizational policies, processes,  procedures,  change initiatives etc, are communicated through multiple collaboration mechanisms such as Email,  Bulletin Boards on the intranet, web chat tools,  the Knowledge Management portal etc.  There is a significant use of collaborative tools such as Pod Cast and Webcast Sessions for sharing and communicating information on real time basis with participants across the globe and these are extensively used by the HR teams.   By being an early adopter and consistent user of the KM tools HR has the onus to lead by example in driving the culture of  knowledge sharing.

Conclusion

As highlighted in previous sections HR does play a key role in driving an organization’s knowledge management efforts. HR can set an example by being both a proponent and user of the knowledge management processes.   HR can play an active part as a custodian of key processes that facilitate knowledge sharing as well as facilitate the creation of a culture for knowledge management.   Operationally organizations face a challenge of lack of time or less  band width of managers.  It is here that a robust communication effort and creating awareness by sharing and highlighting success stories, case studies, informal sharing etc., are vital.  HR can also influence the adoption of knowledge processes by including relevant component in the performance appraisal thereby driving adoption and usage in the early stages of adoption.  Thereafter it is the constant reinforcement of practices, recognizing and rewarding adoption of knowledge management processes that would play a key facilitation role.   In the coming years with more and more emphasis on knowledge and management of knowledge for competitive advantage HR will play a vital role in enabling a key and vital strategic lever. 

Knowledge Management & HR

In the last two decades the views and writings of thinkers on strategic management shifted the understanding of the sources of sustained competitive advantage for organizations from an “Outside Driven Perspective” to an “Inside Driven Perspective”.  It was no longer markets, competition or technology that created sustained competitive advantage for your organization rather, competitiveness was driven from hard to implement, rare, inimitable sources like high performance work systems,  well defined internal processes, robust organizational structures, strategic customer acquisition and servicing etc., that get created within the boundaries of the firm. (Barney, 1991,  Jackson & Schuler, 1995).

Although sustained competitive advantage may seem to be an oxymoron - since what you have today will be eventually copied by others and therefore, your competitive advantage would no longer exist as it was intended to be,  the fact is that organizations do gain what is called a ‘fast mover’ or a ‘first mover advantage’.  

Knowledge assets [read as people, their skills and knowledge] as sources of competitive advantage are more difficult to imitate and remain your organizations sources of advantage for a longer time than other physical,  technological assets or financial assets. Weave this into a processes for acquiring,  developing, disseminating and utilizing the knowledge and this becomes all the more difficult to imitate, as it is the substance behind the form that these systems and processes take that is difficult to copy.  It implies that it is easy to get finances, buy technology, systems or other infrastructure to manage knowledge creation and sharing,  and hope you have arrived at achieving the advantage however, it is not easy to exploit some of the other facets like - getting the willing participation, the proactive contribution, the sustained commitment of stakeholders etc.

These above facets are an outcome of creating what we can call as a culture of learning and sharing, whereby knowledge is created, shared and leveraged without inhibitions and barriers in order to drive the business pursuits of the organization.  This blog attempts to show how HR plays an important role in creating and sustaining an environment for collaborative learning & knowledge sharing which is an important element of managing knowledge in an organization.

Knowledge Management: What is It?

There are various views when it comes to defining Knowledge Management.  In literature one can find several ways to define knowledge management.   One way to look at this term is - “ability to create sustaining mechanisms including procedures, processes and systems to acquire, create, capture, share and access knowledge that we can leverage to provide best in class services and solutions to customers.”  A simple framework for knowledge management implementation will have four distinct elements -  People, Technology, Process & Culture.   The first three are a triangulation elements of design and are embedded in the fourth element which we call as the culture, the sustenance element.   Pictorially one can visualize it as given in Fig 1 below. 

Fig 1:  Knowledge Management Framework

From an organizational design point of view organizations find it easy to work on the first three elements but without the crucial element of culture built into the design the other three elements would be set up for failure.

In my next blog I will share seven ways in which human resource function can help shaping and establishing knowledge management practices and adopting the same for organizations.

References

Barney, J. (1991). Firm Resources and Sustained Competitive Advantage. Journal of Management, 17 (1), 99-120.

Jackson, S. E., & Schuler, R. S. (1995). Understanding Human Resource Management in the context of Organizations and their environment. Annual Review of Psychology, 46, 237-264.

The Good The Bad & The Ugly: Role of HR in Enabling Knowledge Management

Ever wondered why knowledge management initiatives also fail many a times.   Why would anyone want to avoid pursuit of knowledge. It is all about cause and effect.  What does that knowledge being captured yield at the end of the day.  Are we enabling some capability that we use?  Are we ensuring people overcome fears,  develop a strong perspective how the KM pursuit fits the larger picture about where the organization is headed.

HR plays a vital role in enabling knowledge management.  Read about it below.

XLRI Synapse 2012 Article on Pages 13-15

More Here