Knowledge Retention: How to Capture and Preserve Knowledge at Work
Betsy leads the customer success and implementation teams at Bloomfire and is a Certified Knowledge Manager (CKM) from KM Institute. Passionate about the people side of knowledge engagement and knowledge sharing, she brings real-world experience in tackling the challenges companies face with knowledge management.
Knowledge retention occurs when the collective expertise and intellectual capital of an organization’s workforce are used, safeguarded, and transferred internally to new employees. Organizations retain knowledge through a combination of structured documentation, peer-to-peer mentorship, and centralized digital repositories, ensuring vital information remains accessible even when individual employees depart.
With a clear knowledge retention process, individual experiences transform into a permanent institutional asset. Learn more about what knowledge retention is, why it matters at work, and how to execute it for your organization.
You Need a KMS to Retain Knowledge
Automate your knowledge retention with a trusted KM system like Bloomfire!
Explore Bloomfire
What Is Knowledge Retention?
Knowledge retention refers to the process of absorbing and retaining information. For an individual, this typically involves taking in information and transferring it from short-term to long-term memory. For example, do you remember the state capitals you learned in elementary school? That’s individual knowledge retention.
However, the concept appears different when applied to organizations. Knowledge retention refers to the systematic process of capturing, storing, and managing information within a company. This includes processes, best practices, product details, and other relevant data or information, ensuring they remain accessible and usable over time.
Discover the Power of Knowledge Management
Our guide shows how making knowledge accessible impacts performance and retention.
Download our report
This is why retained knowledge isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s an essential to help companies run efficiently and maintain a competitive advantage. Specifically, here’s why:
1. Knowledge retention makes information transferable
Retaining knowledge means preserving the critical expertise and insights held by individual employees in a readily accessible, company-owned repository, such as a comprehensive knowledge base. Documenting and organizing this intellectual capital ensures vital information remains accessible and mobile across the team.
The necessity of a knowledge retention process is underscored by the high cost of information silos. Fortune 500 companies lose approximately $12 billion annually due to unreliable data and fragmented knowledge. On the other hand, established retention strategies safeguard against the loss or degradation of specialized expertise when employees depart or are unavailable.
2. Critical knowledge stays within the company
When knowledge resides only with specific employees, its potential is limited to their immediate use, which is why 31% of organizations identified mapping and prioritizing critical knowledge as their top strategic priority. A comprehensive retention approach transforms this fragile personal expertise into a shared organizational asset.
Having Enterprise Intelligence in your company accelerates the onboarding of new team members and empowers better-informed decision-making across departments. Plus, it minimizes costly errors stemming from a lack of information and fuels innovation by drawing upon past successes and lessons learned. Essentially, making knowledge a communal resource fortifies the company’s capabilities and adaptability over time.
3. New employees are onboarded more quickly
A well-organized knowledge base serves as the single source of truth for all essential company information and procedures. It reduces the need for existing employees to repeatedly answer common questions from new hires, freeing up valuable time, which is one of the biggest benefits of a knowledge base.
New hires can independently explore topics relevant to their roles and learn at their own pace. Providing consistent, reliable information accelerates their path to becoming fully productive team members, reducing the time and resources traditionally allocated for repetitive training sessions.
4. Current employees access the knowledge they need more efficiently
Knowledge retention enables immediate access to curated information, minimizing interruptions and delays, and freeing employees’ time for productive tasks. Such readily available knowledge promotes process consistency and empowers individuals to solve problems independently, contributing to a more efficient and effective workforce.
Employees get to use a trustworthy source of information. Rather than spending valuable time searching through files and emails, they can go straight to the knowledge hub and find the information they need to perform their jobs at a high level.
Our Value of Enterprise Intelligence report shows that implementing robust knowledge management programs significantly reduces the time employees spend searching for information, decreasing the average from 8.5 hours weekly to 4.6 hours and yielding substantial operational efficiency gains. Effective knowledge retention is key to this reduction, ensuring that vital information is captured, organized, and easily accessible to all.
How to Retain Knowledge at Work
Knowledge, unlike a physical asset, is intangible and easily lost if not intentionally managed. Retaining knowledge primarily involves capturing and preserving it, especially the type that fuels learning, innovation, and the avoidance of repeated mistakes, and ensures continuity. It’s not a single action, but a structured knowledge retention process involving several key steps.
1. Identify the knowledge sources
Pinpointing where expertise lives is the foundational step of the retention process. Organizations must distinguish between explicit knowledge, which is already recorded in manuals or spreadsheets, and tacit knowledge, which exists as the unwritten intuition and know-how of veteran staff. Mapping these sources helps leadership understand which skills are at risk of disappearing.
Risk assessments often highlight single points of failure where only one person understands a legacy system. For example, a senior software engineer might be the only individual who knows the specific logic behind a decade-old codebase. Recognizing this gap allows the team to prioritize that specific area for documentation before the engineer moves to a new role.
2. Select the appropriate capture methods
Choosing the right tool for knowledge extraction ensures that the nuances of the information are preserved. While a simple file upload works for data, complex human experiences require more interactive approaches. Methods like exit interviews, job shadowing, or after-action reviews allow the reason behind a decision to surface rather than just the final result.
Think of a seasoned project manager who might use specific storytelling techniques to de-escalate client conflicts. Capturing this through a video interview or a mentorship session preserves the emotional intelligence required for the task, which a static text file might miss.
3. Document and codify the knowledge
Knowledge codification involves translating personal expertise into a language the rest of the organization can digest. This might involve building a decision tree, writing a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), or creating a visual workflow that guides a novice through a complex task.
Consistency in formatting is vital for this stage to be successful. It involves writing reports, creating diagrams, building models, developing procedures, or populating databases. Codifying means applying standards, templates, and clear language to make knowledge accessible and consistent for future users.
4. Validate and verify
Captured knowledge must be validated and verified. Doing so ensures its accuracy, relevance, and completeness. Experts in the relevant field, peers, or stakeholders review the documented knowledge to confirm that it is accurate and accurately represents the intended information. This step is crucial in preventing the spread of misinformation and maintaining the integrity and trustworthiness of the knowledge base.
Accuracy is the hallmark of a reliable knowledge management system. Knowledge verification involves a peer-review-style check in which subject-matter experts vet newly codified information for errors or outdated practices. This step acts as a filter, ensuring that only high-quality, verified insights enter the permanent organizational memory.
When you use a modern knowledge management system, you can have the advantage of using embedded knowledge verification tools. For instance, Bloomfire has AI-powered checks and automated governance to flag duplicate, outdated, or conflicting information for administrative review. These features ensure that documentation errors are avoided.
5. Store and Organize
Systematic storage turns a pile of data into a functional library. Additionally, an effective organization relies on metadata, taxonomies, and tags to help users find what they need in seconds. The goal is to create a single source of truth so employees know exactly where to find the most current version of a document.
Cloud-based repositories with robust search functions are often the most effective solution for modern teams. Using an AI-powered KM platform like Bloomfire allows a team to tag documents by project name, date, and department. This prevents the common frustration of employees wasting hours searching through nested folders or personal email threads to find a specific client contract.
6. Share and disseminate
Dissemination is the bridge between storage and action, often facilitated through internal newsletters, lunch-and-learn sessions, or automated onboarding sequences. In this step, a culture of openness is required so that employees feel empowered to seek out and use the shared resources.
Pushing information to users at the moment of need is often more effective than passive storage. A company might integrate its knowledge base directly into its messaging channels. When a customer support agent types a keyword related to a common bug, an automated bot could suggest the verified solution article, immediately applying the retained knowledge to a real-world problem.
7. Maintain and update
Because industries evolve and technologies change, a knowledge base that is not kept up to date quickly becomes a liability. This final stage involves setting expiration dates for documents and establishing a feedback loop in which users can report inaccuracies or suggest improvements based on new findings.
Version control serves as a safety net during this maintenance phase. The associated user guides must be revised when a product undergoes a major update. Maintaining a history of changes allows the team to see how the process has evolved over time, ensuring that they do not accidentally revert to an old, inefficient method while trying to innovate.
Bloomfire provides built-in version history for posts and other AI-authoring tools for streamlined content creation. Every published version of a post is tracked, allowing users (with appropriate permissions) to view, compare, and restore previous versions.
What Makes Knowledge Retention So Hard?
Despite its importance, retaining knowledge within an organization is fraught with hurdles. Knowledge retention isn’t always easy, which is why many companies overlook it. Here are a few common knowledge retention challenges that companies face.
1. Most businesses start too late
Too often, companies attempt to capture employees’ knowledge when they’re already halfway out the door. There’s simply no way you can capture the full extent of a tenured worker’s knowledge during a 30-minute exit interview. Companies must initiate knowledge retention efforts well before they’re concerned about employees leaving.
2. Complex knowledge can be challenging to document
Company information can’t always be distilled into quick bullet points or checklists. Knowledge is often complex, requiring a detailed and nuanced understanding. In addition, it’s not always available in a straightforward document format—company knowledge can come in various forms, including email chains, videos, audio recordings, and Q&As.
3. Memory decays over time
The forgetting curve indicates that employees’ memory fades quickly at first but steadily improves over time. Without prompt capture, this fading memory leads to information and data decay, where the nuances and accuracy of critical information diminish.
If you ask someone to document something they learned years ago, the resulting information will likely be incomplete and imperfect. The sooner you document the knowledge, the more accurate and complete it will be.
4. Silo mentality
One of the primary obstacles to effective knowledge retention is the silo mentality, where departments or individuals hoard information, preventing it from being shared across the organization. This lack of communication can lead to duplication of efforts and missed opportunities. The organization cannot fully leverage its collective expertise when crucial knowledge is confined to isolated groups.
Did You Know? Knowledge remains siloed in many organizations, with a significant number of managers navigating multiple tools; specifically, 36% use three or more knowledge management tools, and an additional 12% use two or three. This fractured landscape contributes to confusion, as it tellingly leaves 31% of managers unsure exactly how many such tools they have in use.
5. Change resistance
There is often resistance to change when implementing new knowledge retention systems. Employees may be reluctant to adopt new tools or processes, especially if they perceive them as burdensome or unnecessary. Overcoming this resistance requires effective change management and clear communication about the benefits of knowledge retention. Highlighting how the new system simplifies their work can demonstrate its value and encourage adoption.
The Future of Knowledge Retention in the Workplace
As the workplace continues to evolve, the importance of knowledge retention will only grow. Organizations prioritizing capturing and preserving insights will be better positioned to navigate the challenges of a dynamic business environment and capitalize on emerging opportunities. Embracing these knowledge retention strategies today will pave the way for a more resilient and knowledgeable organization tomorrow.
Retain Expertise Better
Use Bloomfire to seamlessly capture, organize, and share information in your organization.
Explore Bloomfire
Knowledge retention is the strategic process of capturing and preserving a business’s internal expertise, documented data, and tribal knowledge. It ensures that critical information remains accessible and usable by the company even as individual employees move on or retire.
High turnover often leads to brain drain, in which specialized skills and historical project context are lost when a staff member leaves. This loss forces remaining team members to waste time re-inventing the wheel and can lead to a significant decline in operational efficiency.
AI acts as a force multiplier by automatically tagging, organizing, and verifying large volumes of content to ensure it remains accurate and searchable. It can also bridge gaps by identifying which experts hold specific tacit knowledge and summarizing complex discussions for easier future consumption.
The most effective tools are centralized knowledge management systems (KMS) like Bloomfire that offer robust search, version control, and collaborative editing. These platforms are often supplemented by asynchronous communication tools and digital wikis that serve as a single source of truth.
When internal knowledge is fragmented, support agents provide inconsistent or incorrect answers, leading to longer resolution times and customer frustration. Reliable retention ensures that every employee has the information they need to deliver a seamless, high-quality customer experience.
Remote organizations prioritize asynchronous documentation, such as recorded video walkthroughs and searchable chat archives, to replace spontaneous office conversations. They often utilize cloud-based hubs that allow team members in different time zones to access and contribute to the collective intelligence at any time.
Betsy leads the customer success and implementation teams at Bloomfire and is a Certified Knowledge Manager (CKM) from KM Institute. Passionate about the people side of knowledge engagement and knowledge sharing, she brings real-world experience in tackling the challenges companies face with knowledge management.
Conversational AI Vs. Chatbots: What Is the Difference?
GraphRAG: The Evolution of RAG in AI Knowledge Management Systems
Why Most AI-Search Tools Are Stuck in the Past, And Why Synapse Isn’t
Estimate the Value of Your Knowledge Assets
Use this calculator to see how enterprise intelligence can impact your bottom line. Choose areas of focus, and see tailored calculations that will give you a tangible ROI.
Take a self guided Tour
See Bloomfire in action across several potential configurations. Imagine the potential of your team when they stop searching and start finding critical knowledge.