Institutional knowledge loss erodes an organization’s effectiveness by neglecting critical collective wisdom and work previously produced by others. It is a challenge that is cumulative in its effect. The more time that goes by where an organization fails to protect its institutional knowledge, the more diminished it becomes. If a company ignores this problem long enough, they risk losing the building blocks that led to their success in the first place. Because employee makeup constantly changes—new employees join while existing employees exit or move to new roles and teams—companies must find ways to successfully sustain and share institutional knowledge during these routine employee development processes. 

Employee learning and development, like onboarding and upskilling, present ideal opportunities to intentionally and programmatically transfer institutional knowledge during key moments of the employee lifecycle. Quantifying the effects of employee learning on workers and organizations has been a hot topic over the years, as experts consider the impact to employee experience, retention, and productivity. A 2022 study of new employees confirms how pivotal the onboarding process is, with 70% of respondents indicating that onboarding “can make or break a new hire’s experience.” Fifty-two percent felt their onboarding left them undertrained for their role, with the vast majority of those respondents (80%) planning to leave their company soon. Additionally, a global 2024 study found that employees with upskilling opportunities describe themselves as 3.3 times more productive and are nearly six times more likely to endorse their employer as a great place to work when speaking with others. For a manufacturing client, EK is applying knowledge management practices to reduce the average time it takes to upskill employees from three years to one year. The impact of this achievement could also produce substantial cost savings, increased efficiency in employee time, and contribute to improved employee retention and satisfaction. When employees positively perceive their learning and development experiences and the transfer of knowledge meant to empower them, organizations help to enhance employee learning while taking steps to preserve institutional knowledge at the same time. 

When institutional knowledge—previously built and validated by others—is scarce or is ineffectively leveraged during employee development opportunities like onboarding and upskilling, it can produce negative effects on both the company and its workers. These risks and outcomes can compound over time, making it essential for organizations to address these knowledge transfer challenges. Before developing solutions to better nurture and harness their institutional knowledge to enhance learning, however, companies should pinpoint the unique combination of factors perpetuating the loss in the first place.

 

A Case Study in Employee Learning

The Learning and Development Group within the National Park Service (NPS) sought EK’s help to address growing challenges around employee learning events and training resources. As a geographically dispersed network of 22,000 professionals across 400 parks and National Monuments, the NPS was a difficult place for newcomers to naturally connect with the deep experience of established employees. Training resources were siloed on disparate department websites, and this lack of visibility resulted in duplicated training materials and poor discoverability of related content across departments. The NPS also relied heavily on volunteers during peak seasons to support their work, adding complexity to their need. EK helped them improve knowledge management practices and strengthen institutional knowledge, targeting two major root causes: inaccessible, siloed departmental trainings and insufficient support connecting professionals across the organization.

In collaboration with the NPS, EK designed, developed, and implemented the Common Learning Portal (CLP) to support both formal and social knowledge transfer. The portal provided the entire network access to newly aggregated training resources with improved discoverability of relevant topics (powered by a new enterprise taxonomy) and enhanced user experience (via faceted search). Additionally, social networking features built into the portal created space for Communities of Practice (CoPs) around common interests to emerge, which made it easier for colleagues to discuss issues and share advice and resources in dedicated forums. NPS staff then helped curate and formalize training that arose from CoP discussions, creating a new method to identify gaps in their learning resources. By improving access to learning materials and enabling meaningful connections across its network, the NPS diminished institutional knowledge loss and improved onboarding and expertise development for employees.

 

Additional Solutions for Employee Learning

Organizations can leverage institutional knowledge to enrich (and often accelerate) employee learning in a variety of ways, so long as the interventions and improvements address the root causes of initial learning barriers. From traditional knowledge management programs to advanced technology approaches, EK develops relevant and customized solutions for clients, such as:

• Job shadowing and mentoring programs to drive learning through experiential and observational methods, providing alternatives to static learning materials and practices. Employees build relationships with more tenured colleagues that possess specific skills, insights, and organizational knowledge, while advancing their own understanding in those same areas.
• Expert finders to provide employees of any tenure visibility into the expertise of their colleagues. This mechanism empowers employees through self-service searching to make connections or seek guidance regarding specific skills, tasks, or topics. Employees waste less time and experience fewer obstacles when a tool exists to find expertise at their point of need.
• Semantic technologies to provide training and knowledge discovery recommendations tailored to employees. For a learner, Artificial Intelligence (AI) can provide a skills gap analysis, recommending training and resources to fill desired gaps, as well as automated learning path assembly, crafting personalized training paths from learner profiles. Similarly, recommendation engines can help surface content curated specifically for the employee executing the search. These technologies provide resources and answers more quickly by identifying the unique needs of users.

Regardless of the solutions investigated and piloted to elevate employee learning, establishing clear success metrics and feedback mechanisms is essential. This helps to not only measure program impact, but also identify opportunities where improvements can be made to the employee learning experience. For example, assessing efficiency gains in knowledge acquisition and employee satisfaction against set goals are common success metrics for employee learning efforts. Whereas targeted surveys and check-ins are common mechanisms to extract input and suggestions from employees for continuous improvement. 

 

Closing

Onboarding, upskilling, and developing expertise among employees are fundamental, recurring business functions. Organizations that effectively introduce institutional knowledge into these transitions help improve outcomes for individual learning, reduce company costs, and also preserve institutional knowledge by its very use. 

Enterprise Knowledge customizes knowledge management strategies for clients around the globe to capture institutional knowledge to improve learning and business outcomes. If your organization needs a knowledge management strategy for your learning content or employee development processes, you can reach out to us at info@enterprise-knowledge.com.

 

Institutional knowledge is the sum of experiences, skills, and knowledge resources available to an organization’s employees. It includes the insights, best practices, know-how, know-why, and know-who that enable teams to perform. This knowledge is the life blood of work happening in modern organizations. However, not all organizations are capable of preserving, maintaining, and mobilizing their institutional knowledge—much to their detriment. This blog is one in a series of articles exploring the costs of lost institutional knowledge and different approaches to overcoming challenges faced by organizations in being able to mobilize their knowledge resources.