5 Ways to Capture Institutional Knowledge in Local Government
Employee retention is an ongoing challenge in local government. From retirement to competition from private companies, many local government agencies are experiencing difficulties in retaining and hiring staff – and with it, struggles in capturing and passing along institutional knowledge.
Institutional knowledge refers to the collective wisdom, experience, and information that employees possess about their agency’s operations, policies, procedures, and history. Often this knowledge lives only in the minds of employees and does not have any formal documentation – meaning when employees leave their agency, that valuable information is walking out the door with them.
Preventing the loss of institutional knowledge in local government agencies is crucial for maintaining continuity, efficiency, and effectiveness in serving the community. Here’s a look at some ways to protect against the loss of institutional knowledge in local government agencies and ensure the transfer of valuable information to the next generation of employees.
1. Documentation
Encourage all employees to document their processes, procedures, and best practices. Make sure that important files are saved in a centralized location accessible to all. In some cases, it can also be helpful to save correspondence with key stakeholders or citizens to ensure continuity of knowledge.
Create standardized templates and guidelines for documenting critical information, such as standard operating procedures (SOPs), project reports, and knowledge-sharing documents.
Documentation can be easy to push off as it may never seem an urgent task, so encourage your leadership to intentionally set time aside for this important task.
2. Knowledge Sharing
While retirements may be planned, often there is no warning that an employee will be leaving, making it critical to create a culture of knowledge sharing within the organization so that when faced with a departure, it’s easy for the rest of the organization to move on without any disruption to the work.
Often when we ask employees to document how they do their job, it creates a sense of fear for their job security. Creating an agency-wide culture of knowledge sharing can help alleviate these fears by demonstrating to employees that the documentation process is a standard procedure.
Encourage employees to share their expertise and experiences with their colleagues. Implement regular knowledge-sharing sessions, workshops, or brown bag lunches where employees can discuss their projects, lessons learned, and challenges they've overcome.
3. Mentorship
Another way to capture institutional knowledge is to develop mentorship programs where experienced employees mentor newer staff. Direct mentorship allows for additional knowledge to be passed on that may not otherwise be captured through formal documentation. It also allows for newer employees to ask questions about elements that the older employee may not consider essential knowledge and forgot to include during documentation.
The benefit of mentorship programs is also two-fold. Not only does this help transfer knowledge and skills from one generation of employees to the next, but can create the opportunity for an exchange of ideas and gives new employees a chance to offer a fresh perspective that can positively impact an agency’s operations.
4. Succession Planning
By the year 2030, almost one in five workers will be of retirement age. With a wave of retirements on the horizon, now is the time to start succession planning.
Succession planning starts by identifying when those employees in key roles will retire and assessing the skills, quality, and training needed to fill the role eventually. Next, assess current employees and their potential for filling the necessary roles – keeping in mind not all positions can be filled from within – and determine what training is needed to ensure those employees’ success in a potential future role.
For more on succession planning, see the blog post Succession Planning in Local Government and the Impact on Organizational Commitment from ICMA.
5. Technology and Automation
Don’t underestimate the importance of technology in helping to capture institutional knowledge. Software programs have the ability to create a repository of valuable information easily accessible to all, whether it’s a database of citizens with whom your agency has interacted or case notes and communications about an ongoing issue in the community. Often these types of information are buried in email inboxes – or live solely in the mind of the person working the issue – and become inaccessible once the employee has left.
With automations, much of the information can be captured and recorded automatically, reducing manual data entry, improving data retention, and providing an important backup and recovery option to protect against data loss.
Capture Institutional Knowledge with Comcate Technology
Comcate’s software for local government agencies helps to protect against the loss of institutional knowledge. Whether a citizen request management solution or animal control or code enforcement software, a software solution, by its nature, gathers data, processes, and workflows, ensuring these valuable pieces of information are not lost when someone leaves or retires. When cases and contacts are entered into a software solution, it saves local agencies time and money by not having to duplicate or track down previous work, creating a continuous flow of work and a continuity for citizen services.
Schedule a Meeting with Comcate Today!
Learn how Comcate can help make government delivery simple, and offer a modern digital experience to help you increase transparency, efficiency, and performance across your departments. If you have any questions about implementing our software, please fill out the form below or call us directly at (415) 632-1248.
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