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Capturing Employee Tribal Knowledge

Before it’s too late

Steven Brand
Thu, 04/19/2018 - 12:02
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By 2025, nearly 25 percent of the U.S. population is expected to be 60 years of age or older. With this demographic preparing to exit the workforce and enter retirement, what can be done to retain their knowledge and pass it down to the next generation of employees? After all, a good portion of the knowledge that our “employee elders” possess is not written down or stored within a computer—it’s stored in their heads. And this is especially true within the manufacturing sector.

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A term first coined within the Six Sigma community, tribal knowledge is described as knowledge that is known, yet undocumented. It can consist of decades worth of valuable information and hands-on experiences, and losing this knowledge can be damaging to any organization.

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Comments

Submitted by Alan Metzel on Thu, 04/19/2018 - 11:49

Knowledge can be an elusive prey

Gathering “tribal knowledge” is hampered by another issue. Consider the four classes of knowledge:

  • the things that you know that you know
  • the things that you know that you don’t know
  • the things that you don’t know that you know
  • the things that you don’t know that you don’t know.

The first two make for an easy collection and transfer of knowledge. But how do you seek knowledge, when you are unaware of the gap, from a source that is unaware of possessing it?

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