The Human Touch: The Key to Capturing Tacit Knowledge

Tacit knowledge – the deep, experience, based expertise that resides in people’s minds, is a powerful yet elusive asset for organizations. As explored in our previous post, this type of knowledge represents a significant competitive advantage, but capturing it is notoriously difficult. While technology plays a crucial role in surfacing and structuring knowledge, the real challenge lies in human behavior... getting people to share what they know.

What is it that makes capturing tacit knowledge so difficult? How can organizations create an environment where employees are willing and able to share their expertise? Let’s take a deeper look.

Why is capturing tacit knowledge so hard?

Unlike explicit knowledge, which is documented in databases, reports, or guidelines, tacit knowledge is often unconscious, highly contextual, and deeply personal. These characteristics create barriers to its capture, including the following:

• Unconsciousness: People don’t always realize they possess valuable knowledge. Their expertise feels second nature, making it difficult to articulate or document.
• Contextual dependence: The effectiveness of tacit knowledge often hinges on specific situations or contexts, relationships, or unspoken nuances that are hard to convey in writing.
• Informality: Tacit knowledge is often shared through casual conversations, mentoring, or hands, on experiences rather than structured documentation.
• Personal ownership: Employees may see their knowledge as part of their professional identity and hesitate to share it, fearing it could diminish their value or job security.

These factors make it clear that simply providing tools to capture knowledge is not enough. Organizations need to address the human and cultural challenges that hinder effective knowledge transfer.

Understanding the friction points of capturing tacit knowledge

Several behavioral factors contribute to the challenge of capturing tacit knowledge:

• “I didn’t think of it”: Employees often assume their insights are obvious or already known. This leads to valuable expertise remaining unshared because people don’t recognize its uniqueness or importance.
• Effort and engagement: If knowledge sharing requires even one extra step to what they are doing today, employees will almost never contribute. The process needs to be seamless and embedded into existing workflows rather than an added burden.
• Job security concerns: Some employees fear that sharing their unique expertise makes them replaceable, reducing their perceived value within the organization.
• Lack of recognition or incentives: Without visible benefits, employees may not see the value in sharing knowledge. If knowledge sharing isn’t encouraged or rewarded, it won’t become a natural part of the company culture.

Shifting mindsets: Encouraging a culture of knowledge sharing

To overcome these challenges, organizations must build a culture that rewards knowledge sharing. This requires a shift in mindset, one where employees view knowledge sharing as a way to strengthen their teams rather than threaten their positions. Leadership plays a crucial role in setting the tone, ensuring that sharing knowledge is seen as a contribution to collective success rather than a personal risk.

Some ways to foster this cultural shift include:

• Demonstrating leadership buy-in: When executives and leaders actively participate in and advocate for knowledge sharing initiatives, employees are more likely to follow suit.
• Creating structured yet informal opportunities: Encourage casual discussions, Ask Me Anything’ (AKA) sessions, or post-project retrospectives to help make sharing feel natural rather than coerced.
• Recognizing and rewarding contributions: Public acknowledgment, career growth opportunities, and small incentives help motivate employees to share their knowledge.

Best practices for capturing tacit knowledge

To overcome barriers to knowledge capture, organizations need to adopt strategies that make knowledge sharing natural, rewarding, and embedded in existing daily workflows. The following sections present some best practices.

Mentoring and Apprenticeships

Pairing experienced employees with newer team members allows knowledge to transfer in a natural, interactive way. Structured mentoring programs encourage seasoned professionals to pass on their expertise while building strong professional relationships. This reduces the unconscious nature of tacit knowledge by encouraging active reflection on experiences.

Communities of Practice (CoPs)

These groups bring together employees with shared interests or expertise to discuss best practices, challenges, and insights. CoPs create an environment where tacit knowledge is exchanged organically through discussions and collaborative problem solving. Encouraging employees to document key takeaways from these discussions can help transition tacit insights into accessible knowledge.

Storytelling sessions

Humans learn best through stories. Encouraging employees to share real-world experiences, lessons learned, and case studies makes tacit knowledge more accessible and memorable. Informal ‘lunch and learn’ sessions or recorded storytelling initiatives can be effective, capturing contextual knowledge that might otherwise be lost in formal documentation.

Exit interviews and knowledge transfer programs

When employees leave an organization, they often take invaluable knowledge and insights with them, potentially leaving gaps that can hinder continuity and performance. To mitigate this risk, organizations must establish robust processes for capturing and transferring critical knowledge during transitions.

• Structured exit interviews: Conducting comprehensive exit interviews provides an opportunity to gather insights from departing employees about their experiences, best practices, and lessons learned. These interviews should be designed to elicit valuable information that might not be documented elsewhere, such as project challenges, stakeholder relationships, and unique problem-solving strategies.
• Transition plans: Implementing formal transition plans is essential for ensuring a smooth handover of responsibilities. These plans should outline key tasks, ongoing projects, and essential contacts, while also incorporating knowledge-sharing activities that facilitate the transfer of expertise to remaining team members.
• Knowledge documentation and repositories: Organizations should leverage existing knowledge repositories, such as Viva Answers, to facilitate the documentation of critical experiences, strategies, and insights from departing employees. Utilizing an informal Q&A format allows for easy future reference, making it a valuable resource for both current and future employees. In addition to exit interviews, organizations should actively encourage retiring employees to capture their knowledge in various formats, including written guides, video recordings, or informal workshops. This comprehensive approach helps transform tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge, ensuring accessibility and continuity within the organization.
• Incentives for legacy recognition: Building incentives, such as 'legacy recognition' programs, can significantly enhance the willingness of retiring employees to share their knowledge. Recognizing their contributions and emphasizing the lasting impact of their expertise can motivate departing individuals to invest time in knowledge transfer, ensuring that their insights continue to benefit the organization long after their departure.

By implementing these strategies, organizations can effectively capture and preserve the valuable knowledge that employees take with them, ultimately enhancing knowledge continuity and fostering a culture of shared learning.

Job shadowing

Allowing employees to observe and learn from experts ‘in action’ helps transfer the subtleties of tacit knowledge that might otherwise go unspoken. Shadowing is particularly valuable in high, expertise roles such as legal, engineering, or customer service, ensuring that valuable hands-on experience is transferred rather than lost.

Gamification and motivational levers

Making knowledge, sharing fun and rewarding increases participation. Leaderboards, recognition programs, and incentives, such as professional development credits or bonuses, can encourage employees to contribute their expertise more readily. Some organizations integrate knowledge, sharing into performance reviews to reinforce its importance.

Bridging to the next step: The role of technology in capturing tacit knowledge

While human behavior is the primary challenge in capturing tacit knowledge, technology can play a crucial enabling role in making the process easier, more seamless, and more structured. In the next post, we’ll explore tools that help capture, categorize, and surface tacit knowledge, ensuring that organizations don’t just collect knowledge, but make it accessible and actionable when needed most.

By blending human centered strategies with the right technology, organizations can create a knowledge sharing culture that benefits both individuals and the broader business. The key is recognizing that knowledge sharing isn’t just about technology, it’s about people, culture, and making it easy for employees to contribute their expertise.