Infused by Andrew Gebavi, Principal Consultant, Knowledge Infusion
There has been much discussion recently in the HCM blogosphere about the wow factor that Web 2.0 is bringing to Talent Management applications. These discussions usually refer to the ���MySpace��� style employee profile pages that some vendors are beginning to offer. While this baseball card approach is a huge step from where Talent Management was just a couple short years ago, it really just scratches the surface of where the real value of employee profiling can go ��� and that is tapping into the ���tacit knowledge��� of individuals and creating true expertise management.
Wikipedia defines tacit knowledge as knowledge that people carry in their minds and is, therefore, difficult to access. Often, people are not aware of the knowledge they possess or how it can be valuable to others. Tacit knowledge is considered more valuable because it provides context for people, places, ideas, and experiences. Effective transfer of tacit knowledge generally requires extensive personal contact and trust.
The ���MySpace��� approach currently offered by application vendors does offer us insight into the knowledge, skills, and abilities that individuals possess. But we all know that the solutions required in the typical fluid business environment usually don���t fit into the neatly predefined categories that these ���baseball cards��� provide. So the question is ���How do we create a profile of people���s tacit knowledge and their social network that could be included in their baseball card as well?���
There���s no easy answer here. I���ve been casually keeping my eye on a Microsoft product called MS Knowledge Network. Knowledge Network trolls through the emails of your organization and classifies the information and relationships it finds by creating a profile for each employee that participates. Yes, sounds like big brother huh? There are privacy concerns. The product allows people to ���opt in��� though, and individuals can identify information they want kept private vs. public. Users can then search a specific topic to see who has the most email communication around that topic. The product also enables social networking by allowing you to view people���s network of contacts from both within and outside your organization, so you can leverage your network of contacts to reach someone who is currently outside of your network. Kind of like a combination of MySpace on steroids and LinkedIn.
The product is still in beta, but think of the possibilities if this approach were used side by side with the ���baseball card��� approach.
Another infusion of knowledge...
