Knowledge harvesting

A structured approach to help an organisation understand and record the knowledge and experience of people, often before they leave or move roles

A facilitator interviews the leaver and then organises and packages the resulting knowledge into a knowledge asset. This is to be then published for the use of others taking over the role.

Knowledge harvesting resources

• knowledge harvesting postcard 
• maintaining quality during the transition
• organisational Transition PowerPoint – retaining and sharing knowledge within organisational transition
• enabling business continuity in a time of transition PowerPoint – effective transfer of knowledge to successors

Contact the Knowledge for Healthcare team on [email protected] for any of the documents in an accessible format.

Tools

Rachel Cooke at Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust has developed a Leavers toolkit which aims to “reduce the time and expense lost through the lack of continuity in critical, team, departmental, and corporate knowledge, i.e. prevent the loss of knowledge that occurs when someone moves to a new role or leaves the organisation altogether”.

This toolkit for leavers provides more information.

Department of Health Self-Harvest - a checklist approach to performing a self-harvest.