As with many organizations, your operations are largely dependent on knowledge. That is why it is necessary to keep this knowhow indoors, or realize knowledge retention. Skilled talents who make the switch to a large party, experienced employees who retire; before you know it, the knowledge that you thought you had in-house moves out of your organization. Besides, the training and education policy at many organizations is somewhat unstructured and formulated ad hoc. For example, many training courses do not cross departments and are limited to what is strictly necessary. Afterwards they are hardly, if at all, evaluated and the influence is therefore immediately noticeable on multiple facets of the organization. In short: knowledge is difficult to transfer and retain.

Four factors for knowledge retention in your organization

So, it is important to properly train personnel that directly contribute to the quality of your product (or service in your case). So that these employees can make an optimum contribution to the performance of your services. This involves four steps that can offer guidance. I will gladly go through them with you.

  1. Determine training needs;
  2. Translation to content;
  3. Set the frequency;
  4. Realize knowledge assurance.

 

1. Determine training needs

The first step involves determing the training needs in your organization. First decide which target groups exist within your organization; from strategic to operational level. Then determine the training needs of your organization. When you compare the training requirements with the defined target groups, this results in a training requirement matrix. You can see this below. Based on this matrix you fill in the courses with content, so that you can determine in which form they can be given.

Knowledge retention | Boltrics

2. Translation to content

After you have determined the training requirement, you can give substance to one or more training sessions. In a warehouse environment this could result in a subsequent interpretation. Here you can see that not every employee in your organization has to follow the same training, but at the same time it shows that many functions overlap.

Knowledge retention | Boltrics

Depending on the specific training needs, you can determine to what extent an internal training meets (for example, introduction and process training) or whether external interpretation is necessary, such as HACCP and ADR.

3. Set the frequency

Next, you can look at each course separately. Which course do colleagues need to follow periodically? Is knowledge refreshment necessary? Or is a one-time training sufficient? If you look at the aforementioned courses, you can conclude that a colleague does not have to follow each course multiple times. Simply because this employee is working with the matter on a daily basis. In this case we are talking about the introduction- and process course. However, for other courses it goes that repetition-, refreshment-, or ‘what’s new’-courses are applicable. With a so-called quickscan you can determine the knowledge level relatively fast. Because absent knowledge is one thing, but dated or lost knowledge can cause bigger problems. For this reason, Boltrics offers courses twice a year to keep up the Microsoft Dynamics knowledge of new and existing customers.

4. Realize knowledge assurance

Finally, the last step from this blog: knowledge retention. Because, as stated, knowledge is very important for your organization. This concerns training new employees and keeping your current employees’ knowhow up-to-date. But in the end we are all people and unfortunately we do not all have a photographic memory. Storing knowledge, so colleagues can consult it at any moment, is crucial to realize knowledge retention. With many organizations, knowledge retention is a challenge and many management gurus created knowledge management methods. Luckily, Microsoft Dynamics Business Central can offer assistance. Namely by securing procedures and instructions in your WMS, TMS or Forwarding system.

Secure procedures and instructions in Microsoft Dynamics Business Central

Go to work instructions (1) and choose via import (2) the Word/PDF document in which you wrote the desired procedure or instruction. Business Central will upload the document and you can instantly open it from your solution (3).

Blog: Knowledge retention | Boltrics

Create knowledge, localize it and regularly refresh it

At the beginning of this blog I already mentioned it. Skilled talents or experienced employees walk out of the door before you notice it. They have lots of knowledge, but it is stored in their heads. Limit the risks of losing intellect and assure that the necessary knowledge gets stored. Because repetition is the father of learning, also make sure that you sign in for our Microsoft Dynamics courses in May!