Resources · Knowledge transfer

How do I preserve knowledge when an employee leaves?

By capturing it while the person is still there: documents, special cases and lessons learned go into a knowledge base that searches by meaning and gives the source passage with every answer. Then the knowledge stays available, even when there is nobody left to ask.

Why knowledge does not get documented

Knowledge is rarely held back on purpose. It simply does not get written down, because day to day it was never needed and because documentation takes time nobody has to spare. That only becomes apparent when someone leaves. Then there is nobody left who can explain it.

The difference between filing and knowledge

Filing sorts files. Knowledge means finding the answer to a question without knowing the file name. That is exactly what a knowledge base does when it searches by meaning instead of by location and gives the source passage with every answer.

What gets captured first

Not everything at once. We start where the loss would be most expensive: with the workflows and exceptions only a few people have mastered. What comes after grows with the collection.

Knowledge that improves over time

The more documents and feedback go in, the more precise the answers become. A model that only knows its training data does not know your company. A knowledge base built on your own documents does.

Follow-up questions

How early should you start?

Before someone is about to leave. The best time to capture knowledge is while the person still has time to answer questions, not in the last two weeks before retirement.

Do employees have to write a lot for this?

Less than you might think. Much of it is already in existing documents, emails and minutes. Additions are made specifically where only one person knows the answer.

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