Some of the more common challenges facing today’s HR professional include: sourcing better recruits, streamlining training to decrease lost productivity and the retention of key knowledge workers. 
 
In the current knowledge-driven economy, organizations must know how to develop and implement knowledge-based strategies. This means knowing how to apply knowledge management (KM) concepts to your talent management strategy to drive measurable business results. HR can harness the power of KM to help achieve results.
 
What is Knowledge Management?
What exactly is KM? While there are many definitions out there, simply put, KM allows organizations to maximize their return and generate value from intellectual and knowledge-based assets. Most often, generating value from such assets involves capturing what employees know and sharing that information to drive a competitive advantage. It’s important to note that KM is often seen as a technology project or an IT responsibility. While KM is often facilitated by technology, by itself it is not KM. KM is all about strategy, culture and people. 
 
What are the Drivers of Knowledge Management?
According to wikipedia.org, there are a number of "drivers", or motivations, leading organizations to undertake a knowledge management program. Some common objectives include gaining a sustainable competitive advantage through people, increasing organizational effectiveness, improved or faster learning, new knowledge creation, greater innovation, better customer experiences and knowledge access across global organizations, just to name a few. If HR can apply KM skills to drive the previous results, its role can shift into a new value delivery model and be seen as a more value added, strategic resource. 
 
Some of the most common considerations driving a KM strategy include:

• Reducing the risk associated with knowledge loss (retirement, turnover etc.)
• Facilitating and managing organizational innovation and learning
• Leveraging the expertise of people across the organization
• Increasing collaboration, the sharing of best practices and lessons learned

How Can HR use Knowledge Management?
According to the APQC, HR can use a four-step knowledge management strategy to drive results in their organizations as follows: 

• Identify: Determine what knowledge is critical for the success of the organization.
• Capture: Collect critical knowledge using techniques such as interviews and best practices submissions.
• Retain: Store the captured knowledge in a format where it can be easily retrieved for use at a later time.
• Transfer: Transfer through training, apprenticeships, mentoring, and other opportunities.

Specific Examples
Here are some of the more common and hands on examples of ways HR can use KM to drive value in their organizations:

• Workforce planning: Identify skill/knowledge gaps in the organization and source new external talent pools
• Exit interviews: Identify and capture key knowledge, processes and contacts upon exit of the organization
• Succession planning: Plan to reduce the risk of knowledge loss by grooming internal and external successors
• Mentoring: Implement mentoring programs to transfer hands on experience and knowledge
• Apprenticeship programs: Support formal apprenticeship programs through the ITA and other ITO’s
• Training and development: Conduct training need assessments to identify key knowledge/skill gaps and implement strategies to close the gaps
• Career planning: Give employees the opportunity to learn and grow within the organization to retain knowledge and experience

Final Thoughts