Professional Services Journal Blog July 5, 2007

Previous Dilemma

Maintaining knowledge to better serve customers

Our biggest challenge as a service provider is having enough knowledgeable staff to adequately answer questions and troubleshoot. We have a large staff with young employees who constantly come and go. How do other companies deal with this problem? What incentives help retain these young employees?

— Dror, IT Executive

Summary of Best Advice Received

How Companies Can Retain Knowledge
by Meryl K. Evans, Editor, PSJ

These days, not too many of us ask this question: "How long have you worked for X company?"

But in the rare case that you do, if you get an answer of "18 years," your mouth is sure to drop open in shock.

Why? Gone are the days of being a one-company employee. Someone with a career spanning 10 years most likely has at least three companies under his or her belt. This type of employee may struggle building up vacation time but gets higher salaries every time the person jumps ship.

Companies pay for the cost it takes to find and hire new employees in terms of time spent searching and interviewing — as well as time orienting new hires. When an employee leaves, the company must rearrange current staff, add to its already full workload and start the approval process for filling the position. Somehow, through it all, the company has to ensure customers get the help they need. Customers won’t wait until the company fills an employee gap. What can companies do? Two things:

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Change the company culture.
Document, document, document.

Change the company culture

Kevin Schuck recommends starting with an assessment of the employees’ needs. "Ask people on the outside of the organization, who are not part of the culture, how to resolve this issue — to get an indication of how your organizational culture functions. A high turnover rate costs big dollars. Put those dollars into retaining staff and satisfying customers, not ongoing recruiting, training and losing customer satisfaction, both internally and externally," Schuck says.

Schuck and other readers advise chucking reward programs. Instead, invest in benefits and change the corporate culture to one employees want. Schuck recommends the 14 points of Dr. W. Edwards Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge.

Document, document, document

When people hear "process" and "documentation," they groan. But both do make a difference. Yes, it takes time to document processes, procedures and knowledge, but it saves time in the end, as the records come in handy. Companies can try a variety of approaches to make this happen. They can rely on a wiki; collaboration software like Google Docs & Spreadsheets (formerly known as Writely); a drawing application like Visio, Smartdraw or PowerPoint to visually map a process; or a database that tracks all questions and answers.

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The key thing to remember is to continuously improve the process rather than just rely on documentation as the rule. Empower employees to find a better or faster way to do a task or answer a question. Empowered employees enjoy their jobs more; they appreciate the ownership and trust.

Retain knowledge by focusing on benefits to keep employees satisfied. Also, keep the documentation process simple enough that both new and current employees in a new position know what to do with as little help as possible.

Meryl K. Evans is the content maven behind this newsletter. She has written for The Dallas Morning News, PC Today, InformIT and others. Stop by her site or check out her blog.