BAGUIO CITY – At least 37 personnel of the Cordillera office of the Department of Agriculture (DA-CAR) were trained in Organizational Knowledge Management (KM) during the Training on August 23-24, 2023 at the DA-CAR New Conference Hall, Baguio City.
Conducted by the DA-CAR through the Regional Agriculture and Fisheries Information Section (RAFIS) and the Training and Advocacy Team (TAT) Committee, the activity aimed for its personnel to gain additional skills and further capacitate them in managing organizational knowledge.
The activity primarily served as a venue to level off understanding in the implementation of the Agency’s Procedure Manual on the Organizational KM which is important to continually improve the implementation of its International Organization Standardization on Quality Management System.
Knowledge Management is defined as the efficient management of people, processes, and structure to consciously acquire, organize, share, and use knowledge in an organization to improve its operation.
Chairperson of Pansigedan Advocacy Cooperative Betty C. Listino profoundly discussed key topics on KM including Fundamentals of KM, Knowledge Capture and Codification Process, and Practical Guide in Capturing Tacit Knowledge through indexing lessons learned and process documentation. She also presented samples of knowledge products including forms that the agency may adopt for its KM initiatives.
She explained that knowledge is being managed through knowledge creation, storage, and utilization, and consciously integrates it into an organization’s operations by strategizing and aligning them together to serve the organization’s objectives.
The two-day training also involved workshops particularly on the elements of the KM process and knowledge loss risk assessment by identifying types of knowledge such as procedural, declarative, tacit, implicit, explicit, individual, and collective knowledge and computing the knowledge loss risk by multiplying attrition risk factor and position risk factor, and adding health/external factors if there are any.
The knowledge loss risk is an overall assessment of attrition risk for knowledge loss, which is very important in determining priorities that need to be addressed as soon as possible.
The computation will also determine the impact of an employee’s attrition risk on the organization’s operations due to retirement, promotion or resignation, especially those who possess knowledge that are critical to a position that is difficult to refill.
In this matter, Listino particularly emphasized the importance of eliciting and externalizing tacit knowledge, especially for those who have higher risk of knowledge loss, including people assuming high positions who intend to retire or leave the organization.
Externalization refers to the codification of tacit knowledge into something tangible like manuals or documents, among others, to make the tacit knowledge explicit. But more than the tangible knowledge products, Listino underlined the importance of mentoring within the organization. This encourages the healthier flow of tacit knowledge and learning in the long run.
During the workshops, Listino pointed out some matters that needed to be addressed in relation to KM and also gave her input on what needed to be considered to improve the DA-CAR’s KM.
She also challenged the participants to become a learning organization and to embrace a learning mindset in which a person will not stop acquiring knowledge and advised them to use it wisely. “Knowledge is truly power. Your attitude towards knowledge of what it can do and how you believe it can do to your services will affect how it will thrive in your organization,” she said. By CEWaytan