Why Performing Knowledge Sharing is Important for Your Career

A good knowledge capturing strategy is knowledge sharing (KS), where personnel who work at a particular job train others on what they do. KS is a cost-effective way to develop staff, and it also alleviates the growing pains encountered during temporary staff shortages (illness, vacation, short-term disability, FMLA) and long-term staff attrition (retirement, voluntary or involuntary termination, contract changes that affect staff). Many corporations and government agencies that have a high amount of employees retiring in the next five years are currently working on plans to make sure that the existing and new employees have the information that has been obtained by the retiring staff so there is little to no disruption in processes and services. In most cases, KS is difficult to implement because personnel are naturally reluctant to share information. The mantra is, “if someone knows how to do my job, then I can be replaced.” It’s a natural fear, especially in this economy and especially in certain fields such as IT. This article intends to explain how the outcome of knowledge hoarding can backfire on the person.