Chapter 16, Meeting other HR Goals

I think one of the most challenging tasks, not to mention the one which is severely suffering in implementation, is transfer of knowledge. According to the chapter, only 4 percent of companies are recording the knowledge of retiring employees. I think this is a shame, but how do you record what's in someone's brain? Perhaps having a daily journal throughout their career would help, or saving their emails. One way we did it a little at my previous company was to have a database or spreadsheet of notes about each customer we worked with. That way, when someone else went to call them, they were always aware of their situation.
Aren't there a few things about knowledge sharing that can make people feel nervous? For example, if you are a little insecure about your job, or another person at your job seems to shine more than you do, then sharing your information and knowledge is not going to be very tempting to you. Furthermore, are you even going to get credit for it? I think in the workplace, we need to first make people feel secure, which is hard to do these days, and then encourage them to share things with each other. If we show them that they sharing things with each other actually benefits everyone, then maybe they'll be more likely to participate thoroughly.