Continuity Management: Preserving Corporate Knowledge and Productivity When Employees Leave

Citation

(2003), "Continuity Management: Preserving Corporate Knowledge and Productivity When Employees Leave", Work Study, Vol. 52 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/ws.2003.07952cae.003

Continuity Management: Preserving Corporate Knowledge and Productivity When Employees Leave

Continuity Management: Preserving Corporate Knowledge and Productivity When Employees Leave

Hamilton Beazley, Jeremiah Boenisch, David HardenWiley£20.95ISBN: 0-471-21906-1

The departure of key employees – and the knowledge and experience they have built up – can be a traumatic time for an organisation. Knowledge has never been more critical to organisational success, yet the number of occasions when such knowledge is at risk seems to increase. Knowledge loss occurs when organisations downsize, when there is any significant demographic change (such as the widespread retirement of a key age group such as the imminent "baby-boomer" retirement), and where there is market-induced high job turnover. Without planning and preparation, such events and situations can create a knowledge continuity crisis that itself can pose a genuine threat to organisational productivity and profits.

This book builds on extensive research to describe the concept and process of continuity management – the establishment of an effective strategy for preserving knowledge continuity between employee generations.

This book is concerned with what the authors describe as operational knowledge. This is built of seven components:

1. 1.

   "cognitive knowledge";

2. 2.

   knowledge comprised of various skills;

3. 3.

   knowledge of corporate systems;

4. 4.

   knowledge of the corporate social fabric;

5. 5.

   knowledge of processes and procedures;

6. 6.

   knowledge of shortcuts to accomplish tasks, and the new and efficient procedures replacing old but still official procedures; and finally

7. 7.

   knowledge of the corporate culture of standards, values and roles.

The book is in three parts. The second part recounts the confessions of a continuity manager the authors call BRETT. These confessions are presented in the form of a personal diary and are allegedly based on true incidents in real organisations. Part III offers advice on realigning the organisational culture to continuity management and describes several existing policies for preserving corporate knowledge in the private and public sectors in Canada and the USA.