There was a Grey’s Anatomy episode where Christina and Teddy were performing an appendectomy and did not know how to finish the procedure; the person who was able to tell them how to finish it was a surgical nurse. This is a good example of tribal knowledge.
Tribal knowledge is held by someone who has worked in an organization and acquired experience for so many years that they know the ins and outs of the business and how the organization operates. These are employees who have acquired so many years of experience, right from when your company was a startup, to when it was in the growth stage, and now that it’s finally an enterprise.
One of the easiest ways to get this knowledge is an underused way, which is surveys and feedback forms. Creating surveys and feedback forms, especially with open-ended questions, allows you to interview these people and find out the different key insights they have, the things they contributed, and what they know about the job that can provide insights for you to be able to use to run the company.
Employees who have stayed with your company for years are familiar with how the business started and evolved. When these employees leave, you need to be able to get this information. Because if you say, “Oh, I’ll figure it out by myself,” you risk losing what we call tribal knowledge.
These employees have the undocumented insights of how the company runs smoothly, how the company was able to scale, and how your organization was able to generate revenue. It’s how the receptionist knows the best cafe for bagels and how the 10-year sales rep knows not to make calls after 3 p.m. because no deals ever get closed after 2:30 p.m. They are insights we often ignore because they don’t reflect in the big metrics. But summing them together is what helps drive processes and relationships that make your business successful.
When tribal knowledge walks out the door, productivity, consistency, and even safety can suffer. According to a Panopto Workplace Knowledge Study, U.S. businesses lose up to $47 million annually per 1,000 employees due to inefficient knowledge sharing. Improper knowledge sharing can lead to more than one person repeating processes, errors, and safety risks, slower onboarding, and lost opportunities.
Surveys help you collect information in a structured format. You can then use the information to create operating procedures, manuals, and other materials to instruct your team at scale. Aside from capturing insights from employees exiting, you can also use surveys to identify knowledge gaps from current employees and use the information to design your survey to collect key information.
Another advantage of surveys is that they don’t take as much time as interviews, and you make them anonymous so that everyone can share their opinion without fear of judgment or retaliation.
Your tribal knowledge needs structure that doesn’t just ask cliche questions like “how was your work experience at our company?” How do you even answer a question like this, especially when you’ve spent considerable years working at this company? You need to structure your questions to properly unlock insights that the employee themselves don’t even recognize as important because it’s just something they do.
Here are some good questions to ask:
Another important thing to note is that you have to tailor your survey to fit the employee’s role. Different teams use different tactics to get their job done and contribute to the company’s growth. So, ask them both qualitative and quantitative questions to understand their impact and the context around it. For example:
Here are some tips to help you get the best out of tribal knowledge surveys.
After distributing your tribal knowledge survey, the next step is to organize and create structured documents you can share for other employees’ education. Here’s a breakdown:
Here are some common roadblocks with tribal knowledge surveys:
Tribal knowledge surveys help you understand and preserve the information that drives your business growth. Identifying and documenting this information helps you ensure that all skills and knowledge are transferable in your company and you’re never stranded.
It also helps you recognize the important work employees do and reward them for it. Try our free HR templates to create engaging tribal knowledge surveys.
We hope this guide helps you better document and preserve knowledge in your organization. You can also check our Employee Life Cycle in HR: Definition, Stages & Optimization to update your recruitment and people experience practices.
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