KnowledgeBlog

In a previous post I described the competition an individual faces between the incentives of sharing knowledge and job security. A few strategies I have thought of, heard of, or experienced first hand, that help to align the organisational benefit of sharing knowledge with the individual’s dilemma include:

People and Policy

1. Do your staff recognise the benefits of sharing knowledge? If not a communications strategy may be your first step. Clearly state the benefits of sharing knowledge from both an organisational (sustainability, profit) and an individual perspective (reputation);
2. Modify your performance appraisal apparatus to include incentives that reflect an individual’s contributions to organisational learning and knowledge. Simply put, pay them more for more contributions – the carrot approach;
3. In the overall utilisation of staff members include a percentage of time dedicated to sharing knowledge;
4. Link organisation performance to staff rewards such as shares in the case of a for-profit company;
5. For staff who are retiring offer to re-hire them as contractors in mentoring role. This mostly nullifies their job position security concerns and aligns their performance with their ability to teach other staff;

Knowledge Management Tools (which assist your policies)

1. Change your knowledge management tools to include an ability to:
   1. measure staff contributions;
   2. measure re-use of staff contributions (e.g. “This helped me!” link)

I think it is valuable to delve a little more into that last point and invesetigate sharing from the receiver’s end. Many staff who have built up extensive experience may become hesitant to use knowledge other people have shared. Therefore we then need to look at not just motivating the people that share knowledge but also those who may use it. For example, have a “This helped me!” link on each knowledge item can be used to measure not only the reputation of that item, and therefore it’s author, but also the receiver’s ability to re-use knowledge. If receiver is utilising lot’s of persisted knowledge, ie. clicking the helped me link on may knowledge items then they should also be rewarded. Of course a “This helped me” link is not ultimately the best solution, there are other methods, but this is just example for illustration purposes.