Building a Knowledge Sharing Culture: Bridging a Precipitous Brain Drain

By Carpedia EVP Jacques Gauthier

Businesses across multiple industries have found themselves at the precipice of a new organizational dilemma—a sudden and daunting loss of institutional knowledge. The global workforce reshuffle spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic left a gaping void in the reservoir of industry wisdom that has traditionally been passed down through on-site experiences, informal interactions, collaborative culture, and through pure osmosis.

Workplace wisdom is faltering in the face of an increasingly virtual landscape, and the need to construct a resilient knowledge-sharing ethos has become more than a strategic aspiration of long-term planning. It has become an urgent mandate.

How can business leaders fortify their organizational framework, foster a culture of knowledge transfer, and tackle the challenges faced in the wake of a seismic workforce shift? For many organizations, the answer lies in an area that might feel both incredibly obvious and painfully elusive - company culture.  

How The Rug was Pulled Out  

The business world anticipated that there would be a massive labor shortage when baby boomers retired. Many leaders began to examine what they could do to capture the knowledge and wisdom held by the wave of workers that would be retiring. Questions were posed, such as, “How can we document these things? What kind of SOPs can we put together?” The approach was often technical and systematic – an attempt to distill lifetimes of experience into procedure manuals and knowledge bases. Business leaders anticipated that the cliff was coming.  

But then COVID came, and people went home. For many employees who were on the brink of retirement, this retreat marked an early and abrupt end to their corporate tenure. Some, particularly those who were just a few years away from retirement, simply didn’t return. The runway automatically and unexpectedly got shorter. The cliff was upon us, and too many of those questions remained unanswered. Even those foresighted organizations that had succeeded in developing systematic methods of knowledge sharing were missing the intangible parts that couldn’t be captured in an SOP.

Learning Through Osmosis

The phenomenon of osmotic learning – where knowledge is absorbed through ad hoc conversations and proximity to experience – suffered greatly. The exchanges sparked by serendipity, the learnings gleaned from casual discussion, and the corrective strategies postured after shared missteps, were largely lost in the new remote work setup.

Junior employees were no longer spontaneous participants in challenging dialogues. Those happenstance invitations into a senior colleague's office to offer a fresh perspective were a thing of the past. This organic form of mentorship became collateral damage in the shift to virtual workspaces.

An alarming percent of the employees who had institutional insight into how things work was suddenly gone, and the new workplace structure didn’t provide the means to grasp the remnants that remained.

Forging a New Path

More than five years past the onset of the COVID 19 pandemic, organizations continue to work toward a suitable substitute for the learning that occurs in person through impromptu interactions, nonverbal and nonwritten communication, and the culture absorbed from physical surroundings.

The simple solution of a sweeping return-to-office mandate has proven to be not so simple after all. HR executives implementing such mandates are facing detrimental impact on recruitment and retention efforts, even in industries where remote or hybrid work is only available in certain functional areas.

The need for organizations to adapt to a remote or hybrid environment are not expected to wane. Generation Z, a group that will constitute 30% of businesses staff complements within the next six years, has never known a non-digitally enabled world.

This new generation of workers will be less likely to accept the claim that collaboration and cultural assimilation can’t happen remotely. Many were raised on PC and console games that involve building relationships and collaborating online. Many have virtual friends they have never physically met but consider their bonds and collaboration with them no less influential than those once made in person.

Covid lockdowns cemented these opinions by forcing these individuals to embrace e-learning, online classes, and collaboration tools. They were told that digital working, socializing, and collaborating suffice, and to now be told otherwise may be interpreted as hypocrisy, or simply old-fashioned.

Corporate initiatives to improve management and augment the skill sets of frontline and middle managers are inextricably tied to this debate about remote versus in-person employment. Leaders continue their efforts to assimilate their remote workforce into their company culture while employees continue to weigh the benefits of remote versus on-site employment.

Recent studies show that remote workers are a significantly less likely to receive a promotion or a pay raise compared to those in the office full time, but the same study showed employee happiness and retention to be greater among remote workers. This suggests that career advancement may be juxtaposed with work-life balance. 

Institutionalizing the Learning Process

Employees benefit greatly from the opportunity to understand the inner workings of the business and learn from the senior people how those inner workings interact with their current roles. Organizations are challenged with finding where this knowledge remains and trying to capture it. They must create environments where people take time to teach others and share knowledge.

For many employees, the task of imparting wisdom and experience is often seen as an additional responsibility, one that may not be readily embraced. Individuals close to the point of execution may also lack the broader perspective needed to pass on valuable information or may not see planning and teaching as part of their role. This mindset, where employees view their jobs through a narrow lens—focusing solely on their immediate tasks without considering the long-term impact on the organization—can hinder knowledge transfer.

Some may even withhold information as a form of leverage, not contemplating the detrimental effects such knowledge loss could have on the business's longevity. To counteract this, it is essential to establish a culture where teaching and learning are both desirable and integrated into everyday practices.

How can an organization ensure its people recognize the importance of sharing what they know?

Identifying and analyzing best practices is a crucial first step. This often requires a deliberate effort to understand the unique knowledge each employee holds. Once identified, the focus shifts to ensuring these insights are effectively taught and preserved. This responsibility largely falls on supervisors and managers, who should spearhead the identification of best practices, oversee training based on these practices, and ensure knowledge is adequately documented to create a lasting repository.

To weave knowledge sharing into the fabric of the company culture, managers must integrate it into dynamic management practices. This includes planning, communicating, following up, and problem-solving. By embedding knowledge sharing into these steps, it becomes an intrinsic part of the organizational culture.

Managers play a critical role in facilitating the seamless transfer of knowledge. Effective methods for ensuring this transfer include documentation, mentorship, formal training, and succession planning. Succession planning, in particular, ensures that knowledge is shared more readily, as potential successors are trained for their future roles, thereby preserving institutional knowledge.

By adopting a comprehensive approach that includes these elements, organizations can secure a robust foundation for a knowledge-based culture. This not only safeguards the company's intellectual assets but also nurtures an environment of continuous learning and innovation.

The Secret Ingredient: Humility

Fostering a culture where knowledge sharing thrives requires strategic foresight and effective dynamic management practices, but it also requires humility.

The most successful companies and executives we work for never lose sight of the gap between knowledge and wisdom. Despite their achievements, they remain remarkably humble and continue to discover new ways of doing things. Continual improvement can’t be achieved without a genuine, unassuming willingness to learn.

Maintaining a learner's mindset is critical at all organizational levels. This humility cultivates an environment where individuals are open to growth and recognize that improvement is an ongoing journey.

 One way that organizations can weave humility into their learning culture is through skip-level mentorship programs. These programs, which connect employees with leaders several steps ahead in their career path, can offer insights not just on improving job performance but also on developing the nuanced skills required for effective leadership, such as adopting new perspectives and fostering a culture of inquiry. Leaders who embrace the dual roles of teaching and learning acknowledge by example that the willingness to impart wisdom must be met with an equally strong willingness to absorb new ideas.

By having the courage to think outside traditional talent development frameworks and embrace innovative approaches to knowledge sharing, leaders lay the groundwork for a resilient and growing organization. The preservation and enhancement of institutional knowledge has the potential to leave organizations better prepared to navigate the complexities of an ever-evolving business landscape. 

Jacques Gauthier helps teams to reach their greatest potential and guides companies to surpass their financial expectations.