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Canadian Aviation Safety Seminar (CASS 2003)

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Slide 1

Purpose of Presentation

The purpose of this presentation is to inform you about the Knowledge Transfer Pilot Project and other activities that have been taking place in TC. This project has been launched by Regulatory Inspection Community to address the critical nature of knowledge transfer for this group.

My name is Gordon Chapman and I’m the Executive Director of the Regulatory/Inspection Secretariat, and my partner is Annette Dunlop, Manager of Learning Strategies and Policies, Transport Canada.

Slide 2

Objectives

• Background
• Overview of TC Knowledge Transfer (KT) Project
• Implementation of TC’s SME Succession and KT Planning
• Next step – Knowledge sharing as a way of doing business

Slide 3

Background

Rationale - looming workforce crisis

The Raison d’etre for this project is the simple fact that, present company excluded, the Regulatory Inspection Community is getting old. We have one have one of the highest average ages as a group in the public service.

During the la releve exercise, this community was declared to be at-risk. In the period from 1999 – 2008 40% and over will be eligible to retire in the first to 69.2% by 2008 4 years, up to 69.2% by 2008

There were other factors too - a higher than average departure rate (7.4% is PS average) poor labour market availability and competition for skills. Feeder groups are also problematic as new workers have sometimes come from industry and started second careers with government. Industry has the same demographic issues that we do now, and thesee feeder groups are now drying up.

Slide 4

2001

Statistics are just statistics and really are limited for illustration purposes, so lets take a graphic look at what the coming demographic crisis really looks like in an organization and what the effects are.

This is an actual organization, in 2001. We’ll assume that it was fully staffed at that time.

Slide 5

2002

People start to retire in 2002, some are fairly senior people, so the loss is felt but not in an overwhelming way - the organization is still able to function fairly well.

Slide 6

2004

In 2004, the impact is getting pretty severe. The outlook is bleak and senior management recognizes the need to make dramatic action to recover the situation,

Slide 7

2006

But unfortunately…senior management retires in 2006.

The organization is in real trouble at this point, and we’re not even considering that if this organization isn’t an employer of choice, it has trouble attracting and keeping young recruits, and it may lose some existing staff to industry or other agencies. The PS has a turnover rate exclusive of retirements of 7.4% – but we’re just showing the impact of retirements here

Slide 8

2010

Did I mention that this is based on an actual RI organization ?…And we really hope that it doesn’t look like this in 2010 as it will not be able to fulfill its mandate.

This is the situation that organizations can find themselves facing. The first step to recovery that Transport Canada is undertaking is a knowledge transfer program to replace subject matter experts. At this point I’ll turn over to Annette…

Slide 9

Slide 10

Identified 4 Key Strategies

• Identify critical people
• Maximize retention of critical people
• Facilitate transfer of their critical knowledge
• Expose the right people to that critical knowledge

Slide 11

Criteria for Identifying
Critical People

Who….

• do others go to in a crisis ?
• are the Subject Matter Experts?
• has long-term corporate memory?
• is doing a « one-of-a-kind » job?
• has a unique set of skills/knowledge?
• carries the ball on major projects?

Slide 12

Approach

• Structured individual interviews and workshops
• Knowledge/Stakeholder Map
• Task-support system
• Knowledge repository
• Lexicon

Slide 13

Major Findings

• Succession planning, mentoring, and structured-on-job training (SOJT)
• Knowledge sharing as a “way of doing business”
• Integration of piloted tools/approaches
• Resourcing

Slide 14

Recommendations
Urgent

• Identify SMEs whose departure is imminent and evaluate impact, using piloted template developed in Phase 1
• Provide resources and guidelines for
  • double-banking of critical positions
  • coaching/mentoring training to identified SMEs
  • developing key SME KT documents
• Ensure documentation of
  • the « why » of decisions
  • good practices
  • lessons learned

Slide 15

Recommendations
Mid-term

• Develop and implement
  • SME Succession Planning System
  • SME Knowledge Transfer Framework
• Identify
  • software most appropriate for KT tools piloted
  • current internal web-based data warehousing initiatives with a view to integrating them with KT tools piloted and developing,at some future date, an electronic one-stop knowledge shop for SMEs
• Develop baseline set of procedures, practices, and training for inspectors

Slide 16

Recommendations
Long-term

• Develop an integrated TC Knowledge Transfer Strategy, including a business case outlining resources required for implementation

Slide 17

Proposed Integrated TC
Knowledge Transfer &
Organizational Learning Strategy

Slide 18

Implementation

• Conducted SME Succession and K T Planning pilot
• Identified department-wide critical SMEs
• Developed Toolkit
• Developed Succession / KT Plans for all identified critical SMEs
• Developed Tracking System

Slide 19

Slide 20

Slide 21

AWC Knowledge Map

Slide 22

AWC Knowledge Map

Slide 23

Slide 24

Next Steps

PROMOTE…

KNOWLEDGE SHARING AS A WAY OF DOING BUSINESS

Slide 25

Who are we talking about?

Now, knowledge sharing is important, but who’s going to share this knowledge?

We’ve spoken already of the aging of the workforce, and retirement eligibility and who’s leaving. What we also need to think about it who is staying and who might
replace those who leave.

This chart shows an age distribution – the vast majority being over 45 and approaching retirement eligibility, with the next set of senior practitioners being only 31% and a shocking 11.8% under 35. – clearly showing that the supply of new folks doesn’t match the ones who will leave.

The key point to take from this chart is that it simply may not be do-able to to replace the people that we have, and their knowledge.

Slide 26

Static Resources

We’ve also tended to think of our knowledge resources in static terms. We set knowledge and experience requirements for positions, and think when we have all the seats filled, we have the intellectual capital we need. If you could take a snapshot in time you might have something like this – employees in the seats, and the knowledge they bring with them.

Again, this represents a problem if we can’t replace all those folks on the org charts with people with the same level of knowledge and experience

Slide 27

Dynamic Resources

But, in reality, intellectual capital is not a static commodity. I’d like to make an analogy here – probably most of you suffered through an economics 101 course somewhere, and you’ve heard of the money multiplier – that being how one looney is actually several dollars in the economy. That phenomena happens I put my looney in the bank, the bank lends it to someone else who spends it, it goes back to the bank, it get’s lent out again and so on until each looney actually represents a number of dollars in the money supply.

Intellectual capital is much the same. If Annette has an idea, and I have an idea, and we share those two ideas, we double our intellectual capacity. In an organization, the intellectual capital is like an organic entity – depending not only on the employees in the seats and their static knowledge at any one time, but the interaction of the employees and their knowledge – it’s a balloon of knowledge, the size being a function of how well organizations allow knowledge interaction.

Slide 28

The whole is
greater than
the sum of the parts

Where intellectual capital becomes more exciting than money is that, given the right circumstances, it is self procreating – I’m sure you wish money was like that. Dr Nancy Dixon calls this the “AHA Factor” – that you put two pieces of knowledge together, you don’t just increase the intellectual capital through sharing - you create more knowledge.

A few years ago, someone noticed that the leading cause of transportation casualties and deaths in Canada was trespassing on rail lines. Someone else mentioned that they’d recently seen a music video with a band playing while walking down the railway tracks – AHA – maybe a public awareness program could reduce trespassing accidents. Now we have a very successful program directed at reducing these accidents.

So – this really is wonderful magic – people, their knowledge, an environment conducive to knowledge sharing and creativity will generate a big balloon of intellectual capital. Now the bad news.

Slide 29

If you start pulling elements out of the intellectual capital equation – it has the same multiplier effect on the way down as it did on the way up.

Assuming a worst case scenario – where we have massive retirements, not enough replacements, and haven’t implemented a strategy that enhances knowledge sharing – we run the risk of deflating the balloon – in essence having a knowledge collapse.

We have to consider what this means to regulatory organizations – there is a duty of care for these organizations with responsibilities for the health and safety of Canadians – and a legally mandated responsibilty. We simply cannot afford knowledge collapse.

We’d like to say that common sense will prevail and a generalized knowledge collapse won’t happen. But, the risk already exists and this can happen in pockets of organizations with disastrous impact.

I’d point to Walkerton as an example, it can happen here.

Slide 30

What do we need?

• Implement MGMT framework to work with multi-generational environment, diversity and focus on retention
• Provide an environment conducive to « knowledge sharing as a way of doing business » and to transferring knowledge on a grand scale
• Acquire and keep younger workers

So really – here’s what it boils down to if we wish to have knowledge sharing as a way of doing business:

We first have to try to shore up the number of younger workers, and keep them. We need more than 11 percent of our workforce under 35 years old

We need to go beyond the knowledge transfer program for subject matter experts, and start a more broad based strategy.

And – we need a working environment that promotes retention and diversity and makes people want to join us.

Finally, it’s management’s job to put together a framework to make this work

Date modified:

2010-05-03

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