Tata Chemicals shares how it captures tacit knowledge of retiring employees with Tata Steel

Published on February 16, 2022

Tata Steel wanted to understand best practices within the group on capturing tacit knowledge of retiring employees/subject matter experts (SMEs). In this regard, it approached Tata Business Excellence Group (TBExG) to arrange a best practice session with Tata Chemicals, on December 21, 2021.

During the session, Dr. Milind Gajjar, Manager - Quality Systems, Knowledge Management & Unnati at Tata Chemicals shared the company initiatives to capture tacit knowledge, especially of retiring/resigning employees. In his talk. Dr. Gajjar articulated that it is challenging to capture tacit knowledge in a manufacturing company as all segments of the workforce needs to be looked at.

Tata Chemicals has instituted several platforms and initiatives to capture tacit knowledge across all segments of its workforce. Few such initiatives are elaborated below:-

1. Story-telling: Tata Chemicals’ KM system asks people to write about their work experiences in a prescribed format. These write-ups are then evaluated by the KM team or Heads oof Departments. If the story contains innovative content/value addition and approved, it is then brought to the front-end for sharing. There are rewards for knowledge sharing. These awards are categorised as – Gold titli, Silver titli and Bronze titli. Just as a titli (butterfly) co­nnects nectar and cross pollinates, the objective of this story telling is to share knowledge from one employee to the other. Tata Chemicals developed a team of listeners – who listen to an employee and write a story on his behalf. There is cross-functional team who decides the rewards and recognitions. Employees whose stories are rated at a certain level get rewarded.
2. Performance dialogue: These are 15-20 minute meetings where the attendees (managers and workmen) will stand and note down critical issues that happened in the last 24 hours. The moderator will then decide which job has to be done and by whom. All identified issues and solutions are recorded and documented in the record book. Once the job is done, the story of that activity is documented. The best department conducting the performance dialogue, quality-wise are rewarded by the KM team.
3. Knowledge-sharing sessions: These sessions are conducted with not only retiring employees but also line managers, trainees, vendors and suppliers. Presentations are made by groups of two in front of an audience. This information shared is documented in the company’s K-connect portal. The best faculty is then rewarded at the end of the year based on the feedback given by the trainees to the KM team.
4. Knowledge capture from retiring employees: The KM team gets a list of retiring employees from the HR. These retiring people are then interviewed by the KM team and their experiences pertaining to safety, processes and achievements are captured in a memoir. The employee is also rewarded for sharing their experiences with the team and all the information collected is then documented in various platforms for sharing with active employees. 
5. Know more booklets: These are stories written by employees which are formatted by the KM team and published. These booklets are 15-20 pages long – for people to access quick information. They are circulated to the employees. Employee feedback on the portal is also solicited through the K section of the portal. The employees writing the maximum number of know more booklets in a revenue period are rewarded as individual contributors and the department also gets a reward for motivating the individuals to write.
6. Knowledge nuggets: These are one-page documents on all improvements that have happened in the plant – all tangible and intangible benefits are captured are in the form of before and after and shared. The individual and department are recognised for contributing the maximum number of knowledge nuggets.
7. Knowledge fairs: These fairs are organised on themes like innovation, key achievements of employees, etc. The thoughts shared by different departments is collated and shared by the KM team. Teams presenting the best models are rewarded by the KM team.
8. K-Café: In this initiative, critical issues are raised by the plant head and other service functions like finance/HR and circulated to all users. The issues are discussed by team members and the best solution proposed by team gets evaluated by the senior leadership team. The best team is rewarded by the KM team.
9. Autonomous maintenance: Small teams identify abnormalities in the assets and close them in a defined timeline. The teams do a why -why analysis and come up with a solution to the problems. All solutions are collated by the KM team in the form of one point lesson and the best ones are circulated. The best team with the highest savings and solving the maximum number of abnormalities are rewarded.

In the session, Dr. Gajjar also showcased samples of the memoirs and illustrated how the captured information is used in the organisation to drive further improvement.

Tata Steel found the session informative and useful for their purpose and would be exploring the feasibility of leveraging these learnings to improve its existing KM practices.

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