Engineering Commons^™

Study Of Organizational Knowledge Retention Practices In The Utilities, Eric G. Barnfather Jr., Kelly A. Mcfall, Anne M. Lucietto

School of Engineering Education Faculty Publications

One key to the successful and long-term survival of an organization involves knowledge capture and retention. The knowledge may include company secrets, lessons learned, and hard-earned best-practices that are lost, forgotten, or disorganized in the event of staff loss or early retirement. In the United States, the aging workforce poses a specific difficulty vis a vie utility workers. Many are quickly approaching retirement and operations staff are heavily impacted by this movement. Properly capturing and retaining employee’s tacit knowledge is a labor-intensive task as it is usually transferred through personal observation with demonstration, mentors, apprenticeships, or on-the-job training. Consequently, articulating …