Knowledge management, not just another fad, can help global companies realise the value of their mobile employees.

Sharing knowledge can be therapeutic: just make the system 'inviting'

An expat who spent two years working for Company X in Singapore returned to headquarters in Europe, but left Company X within six months of returning. Sounds like an all-too common story so far: the employee leaves, taking valuable knowledge about the marketplace and culture with them.

However, in this case Company X has a system in place for capturing much of that expat's knowledge during and immediately after the assignment.

When another Company X employee travels to Singapore for a business meeting, she will already know how to negotiate with a particular client and will understand the client's importance in opening doors to new clients in the region. Plus, she knows which types of cultural behaviour this client finds most offensive.

With this knowledge, Company X has a higher probability of expanding its business – and eventually its profits – in Singapore.

Essentially, this is the value knowledge management (KM) can bring to a company's international operations.

In the 21st century, where information rules, many business leaders believe that physical assets -  factories, land, even money – do not provide the same value as the brainpower (also called intellectual capital) of a company's employees.

In an article called "The ABCs of knowledge management", CIO magazine offers this definition: "KM is the process through which organisations generate value from their intellectual and knowledge-based assets. Most often, generating value from such assets involves sharing them among employees, departments and even with other companies in an effort to devise best practices. It's important to note that the definition says nothing about technology; while KM is often facilitated by IT, technology by itself is not KM."

Linking KM and expatriate management

Clearly, expatriate management is ripe for better knowledge management, especially when considering how few companies are able to understand the return-on-investment of their internationally mobile employees.

Nannette Ripmeester, founder and managing director of Amsterdam-based Expertise in Labour Mobility (ELM), sees knowledge management as the key to successful expatriation.

Ripmeester observes, "A lot of companies forget about the KM aspect when it comes to expatriation. Repatriates will have particular knowledge about the country they have returned from and if you are able to capture their knowledge, about the local market and culture, you will be able to build a system that will enhance the internationalisation of your company."

More KM resources Knowledge Management Resource Center www.kmresource.com Knowledge Management News www.kmnews.com Knowledge Management articles from ManagementFirst www.managementfirst.com/ knowledge_management/index.htm

KM, as Ripmeester defines it, is about the use and re-use of personal and organisational knowledge. About sharing, developing and building on bits and pieces of information into something that enhances the (management) processes in an organisation.

"A well-functioning KM system is a melting pot of different know-how and experiences that boosts the sharing of knowledge and thus has a positive influence on a company’s human intelligence," she concludes.

But why have most companies not started to think about getting a knowledge management system, or KMS, in place until now? Ripmeester believes this is partly due to human resources not being recognised as one of the production factors around which companies are structured. "It has taken companies a while to see HR as an asset with knowledge as its main value," she says.

If we only knew what we know

Wouter Dobbelaar, who works in the Corporate Quality Bureau at Dutch electronics giant Philips, confirms that it was this realisation, which many large corporations express as 'if we only knew what we know', that was the starting point of Philips' KMS.

"We have a three-step methodology for working with KM, which is based on a people-oriented approach," explains Dobbelaar, "Create visibility and stimulate sharing which leads to a culture of accelerated learning."

How Philips implemented a KM system

Reflecting this approach, Philips has developed Yellow Pages, a KM application that currently holds profiles comprising contact details, skills and experiences of 24,000 members. The application receives 250,000 profile visits per year and continues to grow and develop.

Dobbelaar explains, "You have to make people aware that the application exists and what its purpose is. Crucial in the approach that we took is that the owner of the information has complete control of what is going on in the application.

"To keep such a system going in your organisation and to create real value, the information contained in the system needs to be kept up-to-date. To ensure this you need to create triggers in the functionality to bring people back to the application. For example if somebody moves job within Philips, the extension of the email address changes internally. That can be tracked by the application and it acts as a trigger for the application to ask this person if there is a need to change anything on the profile."

According to Dobbelaar, the key to Philips' success has been involving people from the start. "We carried out quite heavy user research before the application was designed," he says. "We asked questions such as: What do you expect from a system like this? How do you want to work with it? How do you control your data? How do you make it easy to use?"

Motivating employees to use the system

Hauke Heier, lecturer at the European Business School, Leiden University School of Management and the Munich Business School, agrees with this approach.

"If the system is intrinsically motivating to the employees, if they see some benefit in it, that’s how it is supposed to be," says Heier.

"Prior to implementation they don't know what they are going to get out of the application. Change-management and communication interventions become necessary to make the people aware of all the promises that those systems hold. Creating this awareness is the key."

However, research shows that many companies face the same challenge: combining change management tools with information system (IS) implementation strategies.

Heier explains, "KMS' technology is no longer a problem and change management is sufficiently understood. But companies lack guidance for implementing KMS implementation projects. What the people don’t understand is how do deal with the people or human issues surrounding the rollout.

"Companies know about key success factors like top management support, commitment, user involvement and user training but that is not sufficient because, compared to most traditional IS, the use of KMS is not mandatory.

"If you don't want to contribute your knowledge, no one can make you do so. Additional is the linkage to economic benefits or a business purpose – you have to communicate to employees what the system will be used for."

Most of the factors Heier considered beneficial to the success of KMS seemed to be taken into account by Philips. Dobbelaar confirms, "We were supported by a drive from the board of management, which reinforced the Philips values, towards a culture that really supports an application like Yellow Pages.

Ripmeester believes the role of HR managers is to make sure there is a clear structure in place that invites people to add their knowledge and makes them see the value in it for themselves as well as for others. "Also, it can sometimes be 'therapeutic' to share your experiences with others," she adds.

"For most companies it probably works best to build on top of existing technical infrastructure," continues Ripmeester. "If not, you might run the risk of building something that is hugely expensive and doesn't fit in with what you already have in place. The principals remain the same whether it's a mobile workforce or a KMS within your own company about home-based things."

Making the case for investment

 In an effort to reduce costs and exercising caution in relation to investment in IT projects HR, an area traditionally underinvested in by companies, often has difficulty in persuading their companies to fund the development of new things.

Says Ripmeester, "To achieve funding, HR needs to have a very clear case of why they want to build this system and why they think it will enhance their method of working. If you build something from scratch, build something that's very simple. It doesn't have to be costly and it will probably also be easy to maintain.

Ripmeester adds, "We at ELM use a simple web-based system to store our knowledge, which allows us to search for the detailed information we have on a country-by-country basis."

Making the information easily accessible

The hurdle large corporations are facing today is how to consolidate the vast amounts of data being stored in order to use it effectively.

According to a global business survey published in 2005 by the Economist Intelligence Unit, although 67 percent of the managers who took part in the survey agree that Knowledge management and business intelligence systems are what companies need to carry out business effectively, filtered and relevant information is more valuable than huge banks of stored information. 

"It's a question of giving employees the nuggets of information they need," said Gareth Lofthouse, director for Europe, executive services at EIU.

To this end, executives are seeking smarter IT tools such as 'digital dashboards'- user interfaces which help managers consolidate areas of specific interest through specialised functions.

June 2003 (updated October 2005)

Natasha Gunn is the editor of Expatica HR.