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!

What’s Hot in KM for 2012!

As we close out the year and start to look forward to the new challenges of 2012 I want to take a look at what will be Hot in Knowledge Management (KM). In other words what will be the trends in KM as we enter into and progress through the year 2012? Here are a few trends in what I believe will be relevant in KM through the next year:

-          KM in the Cloud: Leveraging and continuing to evolve cloud environments and mobile devices to capture, collaborate, and share knowledge

-         KM in HR: As the baby boomers retire and the workforce becomes more transitional human resource departments and organizations will leverage knowledge management to capture relevant worker knowledge before it leaves; understand who are the key knowledge holders and where new knowledge for innovation will come from

-          KM in Customer Relationship Management and Service: Customer facing organizations across all industries (Financial, Retail, Insurance, Healthcare, etc.) will look to knowledge management in order to get knowledge to the customer service rep or directly to the consumer in a timely (close to real-time) manner in order to make better decisions, improve the customer experience and increase revenue

If you know of other KM trends for 2012 and/or want to comment on the ones I have posted, feel free.

I look forward to hearing from you.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!