Managing for Knowledge: HRs Strategic Role

Overview

Having made the point at the outset of this book that although technology is an important enabler for managing knowledge, it is not the total solution, it may seem a little strange to find a chapter dedicated to the use of technology. My reason for wanting to include this chapter was that I felt that if HR are to be more influential in the knowledge management arena they may need to enhance their own knowledge about where technology can help an organisation move forward on its knowledge management journey.

This chapter does not provide an in-depth discussion of specific technologies, instead it covers an overview of different categories of technologies, specifically those that are available to help locate and connect people with specific ‘know of’ and ‘know how’, as well as to facilitate collaborative working. It is hoped that this will generate some common language to have a meaningful dialogue with IS and IT colleagues.

Rob van der Spek and Jan Kingma (1999) point out that an organisation’s strategy for managing knowledge should address two areas. First, the exploitation and application of existing knowledge and second, the creation of new knowledge, including building the capabilities to create new knowledge faster than in the past. They argue that delivering an effective knowledge management strategy requires:

• Processes and tools to help to connect knowledgeable people, working in different geographical locations and time zones.

• Processes and tools to ensure corporate-wide access to information about best practice, experience and ideas.

• The provision of learning tools for individuals and teams to help them adopt a learning perspective on their work.

One of the dangers in today’s technological world is automatically to look for a technological solution for organisational problems, whereas in practice this is not always feasible, costeffective, or indeed necessary. Linda Emmett, Information

Manager, CIPD Professional Knowledge, shared some thoughts with me about the appropriate use of technology for managing knowledge.

One of the first areas to consider, Linda suggests, is exploring whether an IT solution is needed, not what is needed. This involves asking questions like:

• What do you really want KM to achieve?

• What do you think KM would look like in the organisation – what does your end vision look like? Is it about streamlining to improve workflow? Or do you want to automate a manual process? Would IT provide that framework as the enabler/ facilitator?

• What would be a good ‘organisational fit’? What do the different users – the knowledge creators, knowledge translators and knowledge users – need? Remember that there is a difference between what users say they need, what they want, and what they actually use! There may be a need to observe the different users in action to find out what they actually do and then derive needs from these direct observations.

• What kind of Board support is available, both financially and culturally?

The next area to consider, if it is identified that there is a need for an IT solution, is to consider whether any existing systems can be adapted, or whether there is a need to buy a packaged solution, or build a bespoke system. Some considerations here include:

• What sort of usability/functionality does the organisation want? Accepting that this will depend on what you want the technology to do, the main consideration is to keep things simple and not to get lost in terminology and jargon.

• One option would be to follow generic marketing principles to segment the organisation into different user sectors, so that you can match solutions to needs, recognising that one size does not usually fit all, particularly where different parts of the organisation have different skill levels.

• Another consideration is that of what has been the organisation’s experience of introducing new technology? Has it had positive or negative experiences? Does it have ‘baggage’ that needs to be addressed? How will this be addressed?

Other general areas to consider include:

Accessibility

Is there a common IT platform across departments/locations? Are there existing standards for data entry/input?

How will content be added/updated and removed? How easy is it for content to be added? Who has responsibility? Who will ensure that out-of-date data is removed?

What sort of archiving mechanisms is needed?

Employee Skills And Development

Is there a common level of skill and usage? What are the skills/competencies of employees – is there a need for training and developing?

Technical Issues

Can the existing network cope? Is there enough memory for storage and archiving?

What about response times, especially when remote working? Maintenance and security – who and how?

Cultural Issues

What use is made of networks/shared drives/collaborative emails? Are these part of the ‘How we do things around here’?

Is there a need for interaction – real-time updating? Is our organisational culture ready for the systems that we want to introduce?

Privacy/Security

Will everyone require the same access, or are different levels of access required? What about temporary workers, those on

shortterm contracts, and strategic partners; what restrictions, if any, will they have?

Updating for all? What is the trade-off between the need for gatekeepers versus accessibility?

How will access to sensitive information be managed?