KM in Talent Management

Talent Management is often referred to Human Capital Management. Many organizations are faced with the problem of retaining talent as well as capturing the knowledge of the talent as it moves in and out of the organization. Knowledge Management (KM) plays an important role in converting individual knowledge into corporate knowledge making it available to be cataloged and shared throughout the organization.

As part of a comprehensive KM strategy applied to Human Capital Management it is vital to establish a program that is executed when staff enters your organization and continues until the time that staff member leaves the organization. How is this accomplished? Initially through employee orientation, establishing a mentor protégé relationship, mapping their roles, responsibilities and their work products to the specific duties that are being performed and executing a comprehensive exit interview. These are all aspects of a KM strategy aimed at moving your human capital to corporate capital.

This strategy does not begin and end here! As staff members evolve in their roles the sharing, and cataloging of knowledge continues through the use of Communities of Practice (Cops), the creation of knowledge repositories, capturing lesson learned, and instituting a culture that values life-long learning and sharing of knowledge. Getting started with a KM strategy entails a collective visioning as to how sharing knowledge can enhance organizational performance, and the reaching of a consensus among the senior management of the organization that the course of action involved in sharing knowledge will in fact be pursued. Implicit in such a process is a set of decisions about the particular variety of knowledge management activities that the organization intends to pursue, including how the knowledge assets of the organization will be leveraged and the execution of the process and tools that will enable sharing and innovation to occur.

Here are a couple of links to additional information to kick start the process of effectively managing your human capital: Human Capital Management – Capturing Worker Knowledge, The Case for Human Capital Management, Human Capital Institute, The Benefits of Effective Human Capital Management.

I look forward to your comments and understanding how your organization is tackling this Human Capital Management Challenge!

Leveraging KM for M&A Transactions - Part 3: Human Capital Management

People are at the core of Knowledge Management (KM). Mergers and Acquisitions thrive and survive on the strength of how corporate cultures and its people can be meshed together. A sound Human Capital Management strategy will be an integral part of an overall KM strategy to be leveraged in an M&A transaction. Understanding who are the critical knowledge holders and there relationships through Knowledge Mapping is the beginning of understanding roles, responsibilities and work products that the various employees perform throhghout the organization.

This understanding will lead to determining which positions and personnel perform duplicate functions, which will lead to knowing the employees that should be terminated (better yet receive a package and convinced to leave!). Not only do you have to determine which personnel perform duplicate functions, but also who is more valuable through his/her experience, education, and importance to the organization going forward. The Human Capital Management Strategy is also an investment in employee selection and development. This contributes to the organization meeting its goals and objectives of not only the merger but for the organization on an on going basis.
Another aspect to Human Capital Management that we must keep in mind is that it can be the catalyst to increased adaptability, enhanced worker performance and with the current economic climate, having the ability to do more with your existing personnel resources.

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.