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The last week of public affairs specialist Bruce Drake's time at DFAS was filled with letting his DFAS clients know who would be on his team, who would be handling their communications projects, briefing his fellow co-workers on taking over his responsibilities, and transferring computer files to accessible folders on the shared drive for anyone to access.
"It was important for me to know that the people I was working with on projects were taken care of," Drake said on his last day of work. "There are always gaps between when someone leaves and the next person is hired, so I wanted to do my part in transferring that knowledge."
It was Drake's way of transferring knowledge to ensure continuity. Drake, who has been at DFAS for about two years, accepted a higher-level position at the Department of Energy in the state of Washington.
The area of Knowledge Management was created for people like Drake and the hundreds of others who arrive or depart DFAS each year.
"Before people leave the agency, we need to capture what they know so that we can pass it on," said Chuck Wright, Knowledge Management specialist, Enterprise Project Solutions, Enterprise Management Services, Strategy and Support.
"For instance, when people retire, all of that knowledge walks out the door with them, if we don't capture it," Wright said. Recently, the "Supervisor's Guide to Knowledge Capture and Transfer" was published and added to the "Manage Knowledge" portal page to help with these efforts.
The guide was developed based on survey results where only 27 percent of DFAS managers (26 managers surveyed; 5 responded) indicated they had a critical knowledge continuity process in place, as part of their routine business process. To address this gap, the Knowledge Management team began an effort to increase manager awareness of the many knowledge transfer tools available to them. One of those tools is the Supervisor's Guide to Knowledge Capture and Transfer. This guide identifies and describes over 40 different knowledge transfer tools. The guide has recommended tools that may be used in performing key supervisory functions.
The Manage Knowledge page, on the Connections Hub, has other continuity-related information to help with personnel turnover:
How your organization's experts can share their knowledge
--Continuity fact sheet
--Personal continuity worksheet
--Continuity resources
--Continuity frequently asked questions
Wright said a good continuity plan ensures any transition from one employee to another guarantees the mission will continue when key players are unexpectedly absent or move to another position.
One way to begin the process is to fill out a personal continuity worksheet. The online sheet systematically guides an employee through how they can prepare for a planned or unplanned transition of their job. For instance, the first question asks, "If you had to leave your position suddenly, and only had one day left to brief your replacement, what would you put at the top of your list to tell them."
Once the sheet is filled out, a continuity book can be built so that anyone looking at your roles and responsibilities can step into your job and continue the work you've been doing.
For Drake, the transfer of knowledge meant that what he did during his relatively short time at DFAS wasn't lost. "Getting this all together as I was leaving was a little melancholy for me, but it helped me tie up loose ends on stuff I worked on for the last year-and-a-half," Drake concluded.
The time to gather the information for a continuity book, either electronic or an actual binder, is while the employees are still actively engaged on the job, Wright said, indicating half-jokingly that no retiree would be eager to answer questions about their old job while they were out on a golf course enjoying their well-earned retirement.
| Date Taken: | 04.07.2020 |
| Date Posted: | 12.31.2020 08:05 |
| Story ID: | 385933 |
| Location: | INDIANAPOLIS , INDIANA, US |
| Web Views: | 46 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
This work, Capture, transfer knowledge of departing workers, by Christopher Allbright, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
