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.

What is Tribal Knowledge?

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.

Why Tribal Knowledge Matters

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.

The Role of Surveys in Capturing Tribal Knowledge

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.

How to Design Effective Surveys for Tribal Knowledge

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:

• “What’s a process you follow differently than others?”
• “What undocumented workaround saves you time?”
• “What’s something you wish someone told you on day one?”
• “What steps do you take to avoid common mistakes in your role?”

Get Context and Methods

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:

• How often do you use undocumented processes in a typical day (1-5)?
• Describe one undocumented process you use daily.

Best Practices for Conducting Tribal Knowledge Surveys

Here are some tips to help you get the best out of tribal knowledge surveys.

• Make it anonymous: Employees are more likely to be honest when they are confident their feedback won’t be weaponized against them. If your surveys aren’t anonymous, employees could simply give you answers they think would be socially acceptable rather than their actual opinions.
• Keep it short: The longer your survey, the more likely people will avoid it. So, ensure the survey is not more than 5-10 minutes max. Anything longer than this and you could just have a one-on-one interview.
• Communicate the why: Be transparent about why you’re conducting the survey; it can help employees relax and provide honest feedback rather than tweaking it to fit what they think the company wants to hear. Telling employees you want to document their legacy processes can also make them feel valued and appreciated, making them more willing to provide insights into their work processes.
• Time it right: Don’t launch your surveys during peak workloads or just before a major deadline. People are most likely not to prioritize it and eventually forget about filling it.
• Use incentives: You can also motivate participation by giving rewards to employees who fill them out (e.g., gift cards, recognition, raffle entry) to dramatically boost the form completion rate.

Storing and Sharing Tribal Knowledge

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: 

• Organize with intent: Create a knowledge base like Confluence, Notion, or Guru and organize the entries according to department, project, or process. You can also record instructional videos or create infographics if the information is complex and a bit difficult to digest.
• Make it searchable: If people can’t find it, how would they use it? Use searchable formats, structured categories, and clear titles.

Overcoming Common Challenges

Here are some common roadblocks with tribal knowledge surveys:

• Low Participation: If you don’t clearly state your incentives or create overly long surveys, people will get tired and abandon them.  fatigue. So, ensure you communicate the “why” behind the survey and how you intend to use the data collected. You can even make it more impact-driven by updating people on what changed because of their feedback.
• Fear of Sharing: Some employees worry about becoming “replaceable.” So, they won’t want to share information that could potentially create competition for them. Combat this with reassurance and recognition by making it clear that sharing knowledge makes them indispensable, not expendable.
• Lack of Structure: If the process feels chaotic, people are most likely to walk away. Standardize survey formats and create a knowledge management process.

Tying it up nicely,

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.