Combating knowledge loss

Frederick Goh

General Manager – HR & Administration, Mitsubishi Electric Asia

I believe knowledge loss hits Sales & Marketing (Consumer products) and Technical Service & Solutions (Projects) hardest.

At Mitsubishi Electric Asia, our challenges are:

»        Manpower shortage in the industry

»        Grooming of potential and new employees takes two to three years

»        Young graduates are not able to adapt to the electronics industry.

We overcome each one by:

»        Transferring technology from our parent factory and tapping on talent from
          the region, with effective management of adversity

»        Engaging in proactive partnership with business units to strategise initiatives to managetalent more effecticiently and effortively

»        Managing employee expectations, career aspiration and development and engaging them to foster team bonds and inculcate ownership.

Sumeet Salwan

VP, HR – SEAA, Unilever Asia

A good way to prevent knowledge loss from any department is to ensure that people don’t leave. There must be a religious focus on retention.

Next, a company should have a strong internal pipeline of people so that growth can be sustained from within the organisation, thereby preserving knowledge.

New hires should also be well-integrated into the company within a short time span. HR should ask how fast can a new recruit be fully integrated with the business and become productive. This normally takes about a year so halving that time can do wonders in increasing productivity and boosting knowledge acquisition.

Lastly, businesses must work on knowledge management. Knowledge loss may not necessarily occur if all systems, processes and tools are clearly documented. This makes knowledge transfer to a new hire much easier. The more things are codified, the easier it is for new people to start making meaningful contributions to the company.

Brent Tignor

Regional HR Manager – Asia-Pacific, Stepan Company

In every company, regardless of the sector, each business function is important and necessary to maximise profits. However, for most companies, certain function(s) have a greater impact on the bottom line than the others due to the way the particular business is structured.

HR professionals must recognise which their firm is most driven by department or business function and compensate “A players” in those identified business function(s) in a way that reflects the importance of that particular line of business to the company.

HR professionals must be strategic by not always compensating based only on the value of a certain position to other similar companies, but rather based on the value of that position to their firm.

Succession planning and targeted employee development should be valued part of the company’s culture. This allows companies to minimise disruption caused by unexpected changes and creates an environment where management embraces promotional and cross-functional moves involving key positions because there is confidence that essential knowledge has already been transferred to a suitable replacement.