Learn how your HR function can work smarter by more formally managing HR knowledge.

I’ve been writing a lot lately about the shortage of technical skills plaguing organizations in the aerospace, energy, engineering, and many other industries. But, there is another skills shortage that I want to call attention to: an HR skills shortage.

In its latest survey of Chief Human Resource Officers (CHROs), Cornell University’s Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies (CAHRS) found:

“The HR function has its own talent challenges that need to be addressed. CHROs see the level of functional competence as an obstacle, suggesting that greater effort must be invested in finding new and innovative ways to build HR functional capability.”
–The 2011 CHRO Challenge: Building Organizational, Functional, and Personal Talent

Knowledge management (KM) for the HR function is one innovation that can build HR competence. In APQC’s July Human Capital Management Community Call, Laurence de Talance, Schlumberger’s human resources quality systems champion, described Schlumberger’s HR Knowledge Management (KM) system known as HR InTouch.

In this complimentary Webinar, Laurence shared Schlumberger’s reasons for using a KM system, how the efforts began, and scenarios and processes that illustrate how Schlumberger’s human resource community makes use of the knowledge and information stored in HR InTouch.

Making HR smarter through KM is about more than the HR function adopting KM technologies, however. It is also about how HR professionals use the KM technologies to do their individual and collective jobs more efficiently and effectively.

Learn about the people side of KM in APQC’s Knowledge Management Overviews Collection. Free to nonmembers, the articles in this collection present KM concepts and methods that will be useful for HR professionals who want to learn more about what KM might do for the HR function.

How does your organization manage HR function knowledge? Respond to this blog post to share.