Human Resources plays a significant role in effective Knowledge Management in an organization. Here are some of the ways -

• Developing an open culture in which values & norms highlight the importance of sharing knowledge.

An open culture emphasizes the importance of constructive relationships via mutuality & trust. Long established cultures are difficult to change but HR can encourage the change by developing purpose & value statements which state sharing knowledge & expertise as a core value important to attaining competitive advantage. Thereby being in alignment with the business strategy. Sounds rhetoric but constant supervision with application can allow the change.

• Promoting a climate of mutual trust, solidarity & commitment

A cordial environment is apt for developing & sharing knowledge. HR can contribute to it implementing communication, education and training programmes, reward processes and initiatives to increase involvement & ‘ownership’.  Trust can also be enhanced if knowledge is exchanged via forums, conferences etc

• Organizational Design & Development

HR can contribute to effective knowledge management by advising on the design of horizontal processes that rely on networking and cross functional project teams. Focussing on team building & ‘communities of practice’ as part of a ‘sharing’ culture along with emphasizing knowledge sharing both as an accountabilty (key result area) and a competency.

• Resourcing

HR plays a wholesome role in being almost entirely responsible as to what kind of employees are hired by an organization. Hence, the HR department should advise on resourcing policies and provide resourcing services which ensure that employees who contribute to knowledge sharing & creation are attracted and retained. Assessment centres can also include exercises & tests designed to test the ability to share knowledge.

• Advise on motivating employees to share knowledge & rewarding those who do

Knowledge workers are amply motivated when they realise the opportunity for personal growth along with monetary rewards. Task achievement in lieu of being very beneficial to an organization has also been identified as a highly motivating factor. Hence, to make the most of it two approaches can be used in an organization- the ‘codification model’ involves encouraging employees to write down what they know and get it into electronic format followed by real monetary incentives while the ‘personalization model’ involves some rewards for sharing knowledge which need not be financial but part of the performance review process

• Performance Management

As Knowledge Management has gained importance in giving a competitive edge to an organization over others, it has been made part of various HR processes including performance management. At Ernst & Young, 1 of the 5 criteria for performance review includes an employees utilization & contribution to knowledge. At Bain, employees are also evaluated on the basis if how much direct help they have provided to colleagues. During 360 degree feedback also one area of assesment involves the extent to which an individual shares knowledge.

• Organizational & Individual Learning

The HR department should work in conjunction with the IT department to make sure that simple systems are developed for capturing and distributing knowledge. This can be enhanced by organizing workshops, conferences, seminars etc because as an individual learns & importantly shares, a whole organization learns.

With Knowledge Management there may be certain issues that are encountered during implementation-

• Keeping up with the pace of change of knowledge while correctly identifying what needs to be stored for use in the organization
• Business strategy must drive knowledge management strategy as it is the application of knowledge to an organization’s strategic objectives that creates competitive advantage. If knowledge does not add value, it should not be ‘managed’
• Some organizations spend huge amounts of money to set up an IT infrastructure for storing knowledge & its easy use by employees. While this may be more useful in an organization having a codification approach to knowledge management; it should be well understood that there is a limit to which tacit knowledge can be coded and it is always a person-to-person approach that works best. IT can support the interactive personal approach but not replace it.
• Knowledge is Power. An open culture encourages people to share their views,ideas & opinions while lack of trust inhibits sharing knowledge. Hence it is important to encourage interactions between employees through which knowledge can combine and flow in different ways.  Again leading to dependence on IT only next to personal interactions.
• Knowledge Management also deals with appropriate motivation & management of Knowledge Workers - individuals with high levels of education & specialist skills to identify & solve problems.

There are 4 main approaches to Knowledge Management-

1. Codification Approach
2. Personalization Approach
3. Resource Based Approach
4. Knowledge Creation Approach

The Codification approach is a ‘people-to-document’ approach. Knowledge is explicit. It is made independent of the person from whom is is extracted & stored in databases or found in presentations, reports, policy documents, manuals, libraries etc. It is moved around the organization through Intranet or other traditional means like meetings, courses, publications, videos, tapes,workshops, ‘master classes’ etc.

Ernst & Young is a good example of an organization using the codification approach effectively as it deals with recurring problems via recorded solutions to similiar issues.

Personalization approach is a ‘person-to-person’ approach. Knowledge is tacit. It involves the person who developed it directly via face-to-face communication with an individual or team, brainstorming, workshops or other one-to-one sessions.

McKinsey, Bains & other strategic consulting firms use the personalization approach which requires them to channelise individual expertise for creative & analytical advice. It could involve using senior level officers like directors, COO s  or other experts who can be approached by email/phone/personally.

Either the codification or the personalization approach is used predominantly while the other could support the first.Using both is not considered a successful approach & has high chances of failing.

The Resource  Based approach considers knowledge as a ‘resource’ which is created, passed on & used technically, socially, and economically. Technically, knowledge management involves centralizing the knowledge prevalent across an organization and codifying it aptly for easy use. Socially, knowledge management involves collecting knowledge so that no individual or group has exclusive rights over it. Economically, knowledge management is a means to create & explot knowledge to attain competitive advantage.

Knowledge creation approach involves construction of knowledge by blending together its various forms to produce innovative outcomes. Various ways of blending knowledge are by socialization (tacit to tacit), externalization (tacit to explicit), internalization (explicit to tacit) and combination (explicit to explicit).

There are essentially 3 types of Knowledge that are useful to managers in an organization-

1. Knowledge about customers
2. Knowledge about effective processes & good/best practice
3. Knowledge about the competency level & capabilities of the workforce

Hence systems are designed around utilizing knowledge in these ways, depending on how it is most effective to an organization.

The main types of knowledge management systems are-

1. Creating intranet- an online network within the organization
2. Creating data warehouses and other ways of storing knowledge from various sources
3. Creating communities to share knowledge- online or otherwise
4. Creating decision support systems that compile data analysis and have other different methodologies of  decision making
5. Creating internal expertise mapping by having directories of communities, yellow pages by experts etc
6. Creating Groupware, which is essentially creating notes using mostly email to share knowledge

For years and years craftsmen have taught their trade to apprentices, family business owners have passed on commercial know-how to their children and workers have exchanged ideas and to-dos on jobs. So sharing of knowledge has been prevalent since times before but only recently has this phenomenon gained importance since industrialized economies have shifted from natural resources to intellectual assets. Thus, giving rise to the new concept of Knowledge Management.

Knowledge Management is the process of creating or acquiring, storing and sharing knowledge and expertise to enrich the techniques and operations in an organization and enhance learning and performance.

Knowledge has now become the key resource for competitive advantage and is as much concerned with people as it is with information technology because information systems act like ‘stocks’ of encoded knowledge while people provide the ‘flow’ of knowledge from one another or to a knowledge database. They are important means of acquiring, exchanging and disseminating knowledge.

Hence the role of HR comes into play as the ability to deploy different types of knowledge to issues of organizational design, employment security and career patterns has to be implemented with appropriate people mangement.