A hidden source of wasted money in an organization
Jack had worked in a tech company for 3 years. He started at an early stage of the company’s growth and witnessed a lot of changes. One day he received an offer from another agency and after a few meetings, he agreed to join them. He gave notice to his current employer and he moved to the new company and started his new role.
His manager started to search for a replacement for him and employed a recruitment agency to assist. A new employee was chosen and started to work, his name was Nick.
Nick started his job, but there was a problem. Because the company had gone through big changes in the last 3 years and Jack was a big part of those, only he knew how things were set up. It would take ages for Nick to get his head around them.
The manager contacted Jack and asked for help and Jack agreed to allocate some time over the phone to explain where things were at. He could not get a day off as he had just started in his new role.
The phone conversation helped Nick a little bit, but the project was complicated. He still needed to do more research to find out more information before he could start improving.
It was a hard time for both Nick and his manager. They both felt dissatisfied as they could not make any real progress.
How could this have been prevented?
The example above is not limited to the tech industry, it can be applicable to any industry.
The organization should have had a knowledge management system in place. Knowledge management systems store meeting notes of staff, decisions that have been made with their reasons, plans that have been made and actions that have been taken for each phase of implementation.
Let’s see what the dynamic would have been if the organization had had an active and up to date knowledge management system in place.
After Jack notified his manager, he could have been assigned to update all the documents in the organization’s knowledge management system before he moved. He would go through all the documents and ensure all of them were current. He would also start a document to assist the next employee to become familiar with the structure of the work. He could even put together a document with links to critical meeting notes to paint a good picture for the new staff member.
Nick would start his job by reading Jack’s documents and reviewing the meeting notes. Within a few days, he would have the big picture of where things are at. Now he would have a much better chance to accomplish his first assignment on time.
Conclusion:
Everyone loves to shine in an organization and demonstrate how great and capable they are. They want to get recognized for the great work they do and become psychologically satisfied and proud of their work.
In both scenarios, we had the same human resources, a manager, Jack and Nick. They all wanted to do their best, the only difference was an active knowledge management system.
It’s a managerial duty to ensure everyone has the tools and systems to enable them to work efficiently and feel satisfied at work.
