Tennessee Valley Authority
Knowledge Retention
Preventing valuable knowledge from walking out the door
Like many other companies, TVA is facing the imminent retirement of a large percentage of its work force—an estimated 30 to 40 percent of employees will retire over the next five years. These experienced employees possess much unique, undocumented knowledge. Many of them literally built the plants and facilities that they now operate and maintain.
For a general assessment of employee attrition and the challenges facing companies today, please see A Briefing on Knowledge Retention (PDF, 79 kb).
To respond to this challenge, TVA has developed a simple process to capture the undocumented knowledge of employees nearing retirement. This process enables line managers to:
- Assess the risk of losing critical knowledge and skills.
- Determine an approach to capture critical knowledge.
- Implement and evaluate actions for managing this risk (documentation, mentoring, training, reengineering, sharing expertise).
It’s essential to respond to impending knowledge loss. But given the fact that resources may be limited, it’s also important to focus on the most critical positions and types of knowledge. TVA's process allows managers to determine these critical areas and implement specific plans for dealing with them. Read an overview of the TVA process (209 kb, PDF).
For additional information, contact Jerry Landon, grlandon@tva.gov, 865-632-4964.