Human Capital Management Strategies - Part 3

This is the final post in this Human Capital Management Strategy series addressing the topic of capturing worker knowledge. Traditionally the mission of capturing worker knowledge was done through the use of an Expert or knowledge base system. Expert systems showed great promise in capturing procedural and rule-based (if-then-else) knowledge in the fields of medicine in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases as well as in predicting credit risk, and financial forecasting. Over the last couple of years I have researched knowledge modeling techniques, specifically expanding the use of the Unified Modeling Language (UML) to model knowledge of workers in a specific domain and/or expertise in a specific role or function. UML is a commonly used notation in information technology for analyst, architects, designers and developers to design and model the behavior of software systems. This notation can be successfully leveraged to capture knowledge that will lead to the development of an expert systems and/or become a part of a knowledge management system to capture and deliver specific domain knowledge through out the organization. A resource to understand how UML can be leveraged to capture worker knowledge is my latest publication "UML for Developing Knowledge Management Systems". Other resources that address knowledge modeling can be accessed by the following links: http://www.ihmc.us/users/acanas/Publications/IKS2002/IKS.htm, http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=/iel5/10065/32280/01506442.pdf?arnumber=1506442 and http://www.tarrani.net/kate/docs/KnowledgeModeling.pdf. I am interested in obtaining your comments and feedback.

Human Capital Management Strategies - Part 2

In order to properly manage your organizations human capital assets it is important to identify who are the knowledge holders within the organization. Creating a knowledge map is an excellent tool to facilitate the identification of the key knowledge holders, knowledge gaps and identifies areas to leverage existing knowledge and where knowledge is eroding. However, performing a knowledge mapping exercise should focus on a particular department, functional area, or specific organization domain and gradually built upon until an entire knowledge map of your organization exist.

Knowledge mapping is an essential component of conducting a knowledge audit. The knowledge map serves as a navigation aid to explicit (codified) and tacit knowledge. This mapping directly leads to identifying candidates for tacit knowledge capture within the organization. The knowledge map should be an interactive knowledge map with accessibility through the organizations intranet. For more information on knowledge maps and/or knowledge audits access the following link: http://kmwiki.wikispaces.com/knowledge+mapping

Above is an example of a Knowledge Map of A.J. Rhem & Associates, Inc. (http://www.ajrhem.com/)

I welcome your comments, questions, and insights on using knowledge maps and in particular knowledge maps for human capital management and capturing worker knowledge.

Discover What You Know

The following link on Knowledge Management is made possible by Eric Weidner at the KM Institute and YouTube.

Check it out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_x78XLBBVM

Human Capital Management Strategies - Part 1

As part of a comprehensive Human Capital Management Strategy an understanding of the roles, work products (artifacts), and tasks (activities) are key for persons on-boarding and/or gaining understanding of what is required for a particular job. It is important for any organization to not only identify the corporate roles, tasks and work products but to also provide the necessary guidance around this aspect of the corporate structure. In doing so creating an environment in which all employees can go to for the specific role knowledge is essential. One way I found to accomplish this is to utilize the Eclipse Process Framework (http://www.eclipse.org/epf/). This framework provided by the Eclipse Foundation will enable your organization to build a knowledge base of corporate roles, the tasks that each role performs, the work products that are produced along with the guidance (i.e., whitepapers, templates, FAQ's, key contacts, PowerPoint presentations, video, audio, etc.).

For a moment consider the value of having such an environment and its many uses. Some that immediately come to mind is being able to quickly have a new person filling a role to come up to speed and create assigned deliverables. Or, perhaps having a repository of "knowledge nuggets" supplied by the experience people in that role that can serve as repository to capture worker knowledge, which will lead to performing that role more effectively and efficiently. This will undoubtedly lead to increased performance within the workforce.

Let me know what you think, more strategy “tid bits” to come.

Human Capital Management Strategies

If your organization is either loosing valuable knowledge due to staff retirement, staff moving to another department or leaving the company altogether then your organization has a strong case for Knowledge Management (KM). Specifically I want to address leveraging KM to manage your Human Capital. This is a continuation of thought around capturing worker knowledge. Managing your human capital when staff enter your organization through employee orientation, mapping their roles, responsibilities and their work products as they perform their duties and executing a comprehensive exit interview are all aspects of a KM strategy aimed at moving your human capital to corporate capital.

During the next several days I will post more aspects of this strategy and what I believe has to occur to be successful in Human Capital Management. I welcome your thoughts, comments concerns and examples of what works for your organization.

Capture Worker Knowledge

Over the past year I have heard many experts talk about capturing the knowledge of the workforce before it leaves an organization. While there are many techniques for capturing knowledge (mentor/Protegee, Video, Expert (Knowledge Based) Systems, Wiki's, and Blogs) no one method can be used alone. Although you cannot capture a person's intuitive nature (wisdom), these methods have been proven useful in capturing mostly procedural knowledge. I have however been working on methods for knowledge capture around utilizing knowledge modeling concepts. If anyone would like to comment on methods for capturing knowledge I would like to hear from you. Also, my latest book UML for Developing Knowledge Management Systems is a good source to start this conversation. Here is the link to the book on amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/UML-Developing-Knowledge-Management-Systems/dp/0849327237/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220390826&sr=8-1

I welcome your comments....