Read the Sargent & Lundys case provided at the end of this exam paper and answer the following questions.

1. About half of employees of the Sargent & Lundy will retire in five years, which means the company will lose the valuable expert knowledge as they retire. What kind of difficulties does the Sargent & Lundy have in acquiring and transferring expert knowledge of the employees who will retire soon?
2. Summarize the solutions of the Sargent & Lundy to deal with the problems in knowledge transfer. Add your opinion how each solution would help in knowledge transfer.
3. What Management policy or methods can be placed to enforce or encourage the employees to participate in the Communities of Practice (CoP) forums?

Sargent & Lundy Learns to Manage Employee Knowledge

Sargent & Lundy is a 125-year-old firm providing comprehensive engineering, project management, and consulting services for complex power generation and power transmission projects. During its 125-year history, the company has designed 958 power plants all over the world. The headquarters are in Chicago, with global offices in Canada and the United Arab Emirates. Sargent & Lundy is noted for its industry knowledge, engineering expertise, and high-quality work. Approximately 87 percent of its 2,500 employees are engineers and designers.

The company takes pride in the depth of knowledge of its employee experts and their loyalty to the firm. On average, employees stay with the company for 15 yearsoften much longer. Sargent & Lundy tries to cross-utilize its staff in various types of work because it believes they are the best people for the job. Deanna Myers, Sargent & Lundys Senior Manager of Learning and Development, works to ensure that employees have the skills, tools, and resources they need to achieve excellence throughout their careers.

In December 2010, Sargent & Lundys management learned that around half of the companys most experienced employees, including engineers, designers, and power experts, would be eligible to retire by 2015. When they left the company, they would be taking critical business knowledge with them. Although engineers had access to a knowledge database of the firms documented processes and procedures, experts tacit knowledge was more difficult to capture.

The company hired a large group of new recruits very quickly to replace the retirees. However, with a worldwide footprint and ambitious expansion plans, the company needed to find better ways of transfer ring seasoned employees expertiseincluding their tacit knowledgeto the new recruits wherever they were located. Corporate training hand learning facilities needed to be centralized and overhauled to make it easier for experts to share industry experience and skills as well as tacit knowledge.

In the past, Sargent & Lundy had used an untracked schedule of instructor-led courses, which often overlapped with existing training. The moment an instructor-led course had finished, the company might have just hired another two or three people who needed that course. This meant that a portion of the employees who really needed the instruction were not getting it. There was no in-house computer-based training available for new employees.

The company decided to transform its learning model and implemented a new talent management platform based on SAP SuccessFactors Learning Management System. SAP SuccessFactors is a cloud based human capital management (HCM) software suite. It integrates software for orienting and training a new employee, social business and collaboration tools, a learning management system (LMS), performance management, recruiting software, applicant tracking software, succession planning, talent management, and HR analytics to enable companies to manage their employees more strategically and maximize their performance. SAP SuccessFactors provides detailed capabilities for reporting and tracking individual employee development.

Working with company experts, Sargent & Lundys technical training team used SuccessFactors to develop a wide range of training programs and learning plans for specific technologies. Videos and online courses were added to the companys training arsenal, along with personalized learning plans for people working with specific disciplines and technologies. For example, an electrical engineer working on a transmission project would follow a learning plan with courses and objectives that differed from those of another electrical engineer working on a nuclear plant.

Sargent & Lundys new recruits wanted more discussion and feedback on how well they were performing on a day-to-day basis, so the company also implemented SAP Jam, SAPs cloud-based social collaboration program. Using SAP Jam made it even easier for employees to share knowledge, often in real time.

Face-to-face meetings are still the primary way for staff to share knowledge about industry trends, best practices, and innovative solutions. But Sargent & Lundys employees were too geographically scattered to always meet in person. The companys knowledge-sharing model had to change to provide more knowledge sharing and employee conversations online.

Sargent & Lundys new social platform features online discussion forums covering everything from seismic analysis to specific types of valves. New employees with questions are able to connect to experts via SAP Jam with just a few mouse clicks. The in-house experts respond to the questions and share their experiences. Before implementing SAP Jam, only a small percentage of regional staff participated in discussions for communities of practice. Sargent & Lundys Communities of Practice (CoP) program makes it possible for employee experts to collaborate with novice staff around specific topics (see the discussion of CoPs earlier in this chapter).

The main focus of SAP Jam is on discussion groups. When users log in, they are presented with a home feed showing events in the discussion groups to which they subscribe. They can drill down to a specific feed or browse all the CoP groups for topics of interest. There are no restrictions on who can post a question, discussion topic, or article. A designer in the transmission group might look at how designers in other groups solved similar problems by reviewing what these groups discussed in their last CoP meeting, references and visuals, and which experts or solutions might be helpful.

SAP Jam was launched in late 2015, and in the year that followed there was a 125 percent increase in participation. Many CoP groups are now using SAP Jam, including groups for specific technical topics such as thermo hydraulics and non-technical groups such as one for women in leadership. Employees of all levels can use Jam to discuss topics of interest, find answers to questions, and check facts. Besides improving employee learning, the tool has increased employee engagement. Conversations in SAP Jam have identified areas for process improvement and problems that need immediate technical staff attention.