Abstract
The Great Resignation, is a term coined by Anthony Koltz, Professor of Management at Mays Business School at Texas A&M University, in his prediction of a huge wave of people quitting their jobs in the near future.
Though there are differing accounts of when he first said this, his prediction appeared to actually happen starting with 3.8 million Americans quitting their jobs in the month of April 2021.
This sudden movement of knowledge and skills out of an organisation is something we have not really experienced before and its impact on the job market is significant. We are currently experiencing a worker’s job market being driven by a shortage of skills. Record vacancy numbers are being reported, the Office for National Statistics in their report Vacancies and jobs in the UK: April 2022 state that the number of vacancies is at an all-time high with vacancies in the period January to March 2022 reaching almost 1.3 million. An increase of nearly 500,000 from pre pandemic levels.
In some professional services and financial sectors, the competition to find the skills an organisation needs has led to head hunting of individuals resulting in an offer of as much as 20% increase on their current salary effectively for doing the same job elsewhere. Not something to be sniffed at in a time of economic squeeze and uncertainty.
Add to this situation, the drive towards hybrid working taking advantage of the positive productivity increases seen in some industries from working remotely, whilst recognising the need for balance in having some time/presence in the office also complicates matters. Indeed, Professor Koltz has been interviewed since by Morgan Smith at CNBC. Koltz says that 2022 will see a sustained level of employee turnover as people feel encouraged to take charge of their own circumstances and find the right work/life balance. He also sees flexible working to continue and become the norm, not the exception, and remote jobs become more competitive. It is easy to see that this prediction is and will continue to play out in the near future as individuals, to a certain extent are able to dictate their working environment.
But what of the impact on organisational knowledge and knowledge management techniques for the future? Buying in knowledge, skills and expertise is only going to go so far. It is a highly complex situation impacted by loss of knowledge through people leaving an organisation; hybrid working making easy knowledge transfer through chance serendipitous face to face connections more difficult; squeezed budgets; the need to be ever more competitive and innovative and the current economic volatility. Solutions are not going to be straight forward, we have the tools from software to facilitate communication through video, messaging, group/team discussions to artificial intelligence enabling more connections with information. However, as we discovered from lockdowns it is not having the tools that is important but knowing what to do with them and how to use them in the most effective way.
Connecting with our creative sides is going to be key in addressing the challenges that the current environment imposes on knowledge management. Being able to think differently, facilitating that creative process I can see are going to be vital skills going forwards.
June’s issue
We are delighted to announce the BIR best paper prize winner for 2021 is Ann Cullen and Patrick S Noonan whose paper ‘Who owns and cares about the data? A method for identifying and gathering information for business research investigations’ featured in our March 2021 issue. Congratulations to Ann and Patrick.
In our issue this month we have some excellent examples of knowledge management in practice as well as an interesting piece reflecting on the importance and impact of language diversity in global organisations. The theme running through all of our articles relates to good and best practice that can be considered in other organisations and environments to facilitate knowledge and information management.
Arup’s Knowledge and Information Handbook: a case study in KM good practice by Dominique Poole-Avery
In her paper Dominique outlines the process that she went through to achieve the digitisation of the corporate knowledge and information Handbook which is an important resource in the organisation to enable employees to find guidance on tools and resources available to effectively find, share and develop new sources of knowledge and information. Dominique illustrates good practice in the move from a hard copy resource to a digital one.
Managing corporate language diversity by Martin White
In his paper, Martin takes a look at the impact of the use of different languages in global organisations on enterprise search, knowledge transfer and the operation of virtual teams. Corporate language policies and use are increasingly seen as an important topic in international business management. The use of local languages and dialects and how the corporate language is used can have a huge impact on the ability of the organisation to manage information effectively and enable enterprise search that can efficiently connect the right information to the right people as it is needed. Martin reflects on the current situation and its challenges and solutions.
How radical KM is knowledge management: Referencing ISO knowledge management systems—requirements standard 30,401 by Stephanie Barnes
In her second article for Business Information Review Stephanie reflects on the KM ISO standard and how creativity and in particular Radical KM can play a part in effective knowledge management.
Hal Kirkwood – Perspectives Re-visited
In his article this issue Hal looks at the impact of COVID 19 on finance education and the continuing development of smart cities. Education has been particularly impacted by the pandemic as a sector that was very much about face to face communication it had to adapt very quickly and enable the same standards of learning through a completely digital medium. The papers covering smart cities look at the challenges of creating a smart city, the tech used and both the good and bad outcomes of using such tech.