KM is a journey that starts the very first time we visit the firm’s intranet portal. Many colleagues have participated in contests, published white papers, or taken expert advice and tell us about checking out the KM portal. But the question is how many of us today know we have our very own customized KM page that shows us the last ten enquires we posted, the latest document we searched and related other information that can add value to our daily routing work.

There is a growing need to harness the true potential of KM and explore the different sections.

Some collaborative spaces are more individual in nature, others like War rooms, PDB are specific to group or projects. There is a growing need however for better awareness not just from the KM team to employees but more importantly managers who with proper governance can help resolve some of the challenges highlighted below.

KM as such is only a tool and must be understood effectively by an employee in applying it to improve his productivity. All the challenges have been shared by employees in accessing KM and I have used my experience and speaking to fellow employees to suggest an approach.

10 Top Challenges for Knowledge Managers to tackle

1. Information is available from multiple sources on Google. Today employees who adopt KM spend time finding the right documents but often face challenges with validation. 

This is more to do with a behavioural pattern for adoption. Today most of the information on Google is copyright and the employee would be willing to use a proven framework document uploaded on their KM portal, with the relevant guidelines on how to customize the framework available but what is lacking is who will validate the final document.

There is a need for creation of project champions in teams who can guide employees to use chat forums and publish their questions online to seek the right help to validate information.

2. Project wins need to be supported by the right resources. Today delivery managers are faced with the challenge of depending on resourcing teams to find a fitment as employee resumes are not updated.

During the tenure of an employee, he/she would have updated their resume at least once on a Resume Corner. The challenge is a resourcing team has their owned defined portal and process more importantly is based on the band of an employee. Today, many employees with cross functional skills are not updating their resume completely.

A "Managers corner" where constant reminders are sent should be present and a monthly dashboard sent to the BU Head to ensure employees frequently update their resumes highlighting any significant achievements. 

3. Many teams are doing similar projects as a part of the same domain and some of this work is being recognized but the success factors are not clearly captured completely while building a framework.

Key Wins are highlighted at a BU level and recognition is happening for talented performers who are motivated to build solution frameworks. Today organizations are looking at patenting these frameworks but there is a burning need for identifying trainers who can coach employees working on similar domain projects to identify the tenants of building a framework, more importantly executing it as per the project scope. Webinars are effective but not everyone prefers disclosing his identity in an open forum.

Communities of Practice should be explored more where Discussion Thread links are shared and content can be downloaded for analyses, questions posted, other sections of KM portal accessed such as an Expert Corner and RFP Corner. 

4. Consultants are mostly onsite and are facing a challenge with identifying themselves with the culture of the organization.

Most of the time employees use their time doing certifications, completing administrative work like bills submissions and if nothing just sitting at home.

There is a need for more effective capturing of time sheet data and aligning their time to contribute to knowledge sharing sessions like organizing sessions to new recruits , domain-based case study creations and more such that their tacit knowledge is of broader use and reference to the organization.

5. Not all employees know how to be smart workers using KM, mostly they cite accessibility, access rights permission denied and search not valid as reasons.

It is the responsibility of the manager to educate the employee on updating KM regularly. Most employees today have VPN access and are good workers, but the challenge is there is no proper governance established. If immediate managers see the benefits in the long rung motivating employees to share documents and review the same before uploading on KM can be a winner. Today most of the employee’s upload documents for compliance; they do not see the added benefit and recognition that comes if their document is referenced by another team member.

Contests must be expanded and recognize talent where documents mentioned in a Proposal by another fellow employee are recognized rather than the number of employees who have accessed it. 

6. Project Managers do not want their artifacts to be put on KM as most of the time this involves seeking customer permission. 

This is a challenge as the information must be reviewed and selectively edited by someone from the team. Most of the time project managers do not disclose the set of documents in the WSR document.

It should be made a practice where the WSR is reviewed and the number of documents uploaded tallied with the WSR, if any gaps are found valid reasons should be sort from the delivery teams.

7. An employee mostly reaches out to the KM team at the last moment and finds an answer. Today most organizationa have tools like Slack / Microsoft Teams other collaboration tools handy however these are stand-alone from the KM portal which has the ready templates, proposals of past projects, case studies and other information available. However, there are instances where there is a need for an international case reference, backdated reference documents and other such scenarios. It is important to do an online search, put a query or write to an expert all options worth exploring with KM portal. However, the problem is running against time will we get a response quickly?

The answer lies with the KM Team, as sometimes archived documents are not visible but that does not mean they are not present. It is important to ask your KM Champion and seek his recommendation on the best approach. 

8. Employee before leaving the project uploads all his documents on KM but in a hurried and haphazard manner such that it is useless. 

There must be a manager scorecard showcased at the QIC that merits the use of more frequent KM usage at a BU level. This does not have to be an extensive exercise and involve a lot of data collection and analysis.

Managers can make a choice and decide the type of documents that must be uploaded on a regular basis and drive compliance and quality rather than quantity.

9. When an Employee is on bench, he is spending hours giving interviews for new projects to be billable. Every employee is interested in his QPLC. Their efforts are always invested to tell their immediate managers of their billability and find suitable projects to be aligned to. There have been occurrences where an employee is not updated his manager or vice versa and this has led to billability not being achieved.

To resolve there has to be a BU level skill dashboard visible to all employees for open positions by band, competency and other parameters if an employee’s tenure in the project is nearing the project end term.

10. Customers are seeing better connect from senior management visits than survey feedback as the ownership is better managed.

Today review calls, escalation matrix is some of the ways customers are being given authority to get the right service from a partner. They are seeing value in ownership as many times senior management visits also are planned to resolve a problem in a timely manner. However, many times the customer is failing to acknowledge these initiatives and only remembers the issue at hand which impacts the CSAT.

It is important for clients to recognize that any problem is a time for due diligence and recognizing that a change is managed two ways. There must be a proper signoff and the customer aware that his feedback has been captured in the KM portal and would be used for future reviews to improve the service delivery.

To summarize I have aligned most of the suggestions around the three parameters below.

Employee Productivity

1. It is important employees do not always use KM for a last-minute information search but understand how to navigate KM depending on the kind of requirement.

2. Employees refer the BU dashboard regularly and plan well in advance for their next project. Update their resume with significant achievement that helps delivery managers identify their talent.

3. Managers drive employee to regularly access KM and the same is highlighted during QIC’s to ensure the organization is committed.

Employee Satisfaction

1. It is important employees see value from KM in their work being referenced rather than just the number of times it is accessed.

2. Many employees who do not prefer face to face interactions may be more comfortable using chat forums, WarRooms or even webinars where they type a question to the presenter. 

3. Onsite employees see value in taking knowledge sessions for new project team members, working on case study references, framework design and more for reusable artifacts.

Customer Satisfaction

1. Customers must be made more aware of the knowledge captured in KM portal. It is not just project artifacts but even review meeting minutes , senior management connect sessions and others are important. It is important senior management signoff happens and the feedback is captured on KM portal to ensure quality service delivery.

An effective Knowledge Manager

1. Should be visible to all employees in the BU through his actions rather than reactions. He must reach out informally as well and talk to fellow employees to relate information to them.

2. Learn two ways, spending more time with Project Champions helping employee know the merits of using the virtual KM world.

3. Know the customer’s pulse and drives information to delivery teams supporting them with data to make a winning impression or resolve conflicts. This cannot happen visiting the client place it has to be done informally using the relationship with the delivery or sales teams.

4. Represent the BU as their spokesperson, success stories are not always captured in case studies. An effective KM Manager should sell Knowledge to fellow employees.

5. Acknowledge helping employees in different time zones working on the same domain as many times timings may differ. Helping your BU employee service his customer better should be the motto of all Knowledge Managers, as their success is yours.

Disclaimer : These are purely my own views and experiences as a seasoned KM partitioner in driving employee engagement and operationalizing the KM strategy through helping employees Connect & Collaborate.

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About the Author : Michael Sequeira is an independent consultant who is passionate about helping organizations discover how KM can be a key differentiator for their business, teams, and clients. If you would like to learn more about his background and get-in-touch you can connect with him on LinkedIn.