How to Make Your Knowledge Transfer Plan a Success

When a key employee walks out the door, so does a staggering amount of hard‑earned expertise, client history, and process knowledge that rarely lives in formal documentation. Without a deliberate approach to capture and transfer that knowledge, organizations face longer ramp times, preventable errors, and stalled initiatives whenever a role changes.

Fortunately, a successful knowledge transfer (KT) plan treats knowledge as a strategic asset, not a last‑minute checklist to run through when someone resigns or transitions roles. It clearly defines what must be preserved, who holds it, who needs it next, and how it will be shared so work can continue without disruption or costly relearning.

Continue reading to explore a practical, five‑step approach to designing and executing a successful KT plan that actually works in the real world, from mapping critical knowledge to embedding it in daily workflows. Use it as a blueprint to tighten your processes, select the right knowledge management platform, and put the roles and feedback loops in place so every KT plan strengthens your organization’s long‑term performance.

What is a Knowledge Transfer Plan?

A knowledge transfer plan is a roadmap that outlines how knowledge, skills, and best practices will be transferred from one person to another, to prevent any disruptions during the process. Transfer plans specifically lay out who needs the knowledge, how it is stored (preferably in a knowledge base), and when it will be transferred. Effective knowledge transfer typically includes three types of knowledge:

• Explicit knowledge: Knowledge that is easy to articulate and write down (e.g., step-by-step instructions to complete a process).

• Implicit knowledge: The application of explicit knowledge (e.g., best practices an employee has learned from completing a process).

• Tacit knowledge: Knowledge gained from personal experience that is more difficult to express (e.g., skills an employee developed while completing a process.

Knowledge transfer plans are designed to prevent knowledge loss during role changes, employee turnover, and onboarding—events that commonly lead to knowledge silos. Building a template for knowledge transfer ensures a clear understanding of who shares what, with whom, and how. An effective knowledge transfer plan supports employee continuity, consistency, and performance even when key people move on or get promoted.

5 Important Steps to a Successful Knowledge Transfer

When transferring knowledge, it’s important to outline a step-by-step strategy to ensure the entire process goes smoothly, quickly, and without any errors. Without direction or instruction on how to transfer knowledge, information can be hoarded, lost, or even sent to the wrong person. To prevent any mistakes, here is a strategy for a successful knowledge transfer that can be done in 5 easy steps:

1. Define the Knowledge You Need to Keep

The person in charge of deploying a knowledge transfer should first clearly specify what knowledge, insights, and skills should be transferred, kept, or pruned. Best practices, documentation and data, tacit knowledge, and core work responsibilities are common areas among employees. By defining the knowledge you need to keep, you can prioritize what information truly matters, avoid drowning people in low‑value information, and make every KT activity more efficient and targeted.

Start by identifying the knowledge critical to your company, focusing on key roles, processes, and projects that would seriously impact the business if executed incorrectly. Then, create a knowledge map outlining the required knowledge, who has it, and when it is needed to ensure a streamlined KT process.

2. Create a Process for Transferring Knowledge

It’s very important to standardize how information moves from experts to recipients so it is consistent, repeatable, and auditable across teams. This process should define who owns the knowledge, how it is captured, and when and how it is handed off in relation to role changes or projects. It should also include feedback loops and regular reviews so that transferred knowledge remains current, accurate, and aligned with evolving business priorities.

You will need a process for preserving both simple (explicit) knowledge and complex (implicit and tacit) knowledge.

Transferring simple knowledge

Simple knowledge, such as straightforward procedures, FAQs, step-by-step checklists, or basic how‑tos, is best transferred through concise documentation and self‑service resources. Standard operating procedures, quick‑reference guides, and short screen‑recording videos make it easy for employees to consume and apply information without needing intensive support.​

Transferring complex knowledge

Complex knowledge built from experience, judgment, and context requires interactive, relationship-based transfer methods rather than documentation alone. Techniques such as mentoring, shadowing, and guided practices help uncover how experts actually make decisions, handle cases, and adapt processes in real situations. Complex transfers should follow a structured plan that combines live sessions, recorded artifacts, and staged responsibility handoffs, ensuring the recipient can demonstrate proficiency and apply the knowledge independently over time.

3. Choose a Knowledge Management Platform

Once you have a clear idea of what information you want to retain and transfer, look for technology that will support your goals without putting an unnecessary burden on your employees. There are many powerful and successful knowledge management (KM) platforms, but one platform may be more tailored to your goals than another. A good knowledge management platform will enable you to standardize and automate how knowledge is captured while also making it as easy as possible for people to share their knowledge.

For example, Bloomfire facilitates knowledge transfer by providing a centralized knowledge base where users can capture, store, and share information effectively. It integrates with tools like Salesforce, Slack, and Microsoft Teams to seamlessly share knowledge, no matter where the application it is originally located. Features like AI-powered search, content curation, and collaboration tools enable teams to access and transfer relevant knowledge seamlessly, fostering a culture of knowledge sharing and improving organizational efficiency.

4. Assign Knowledge Admins

A knowledge management platform helps with a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to knowledge transfer documentation, but it’s still essential to assign knowledge admins who can help streamline the KT process. Knowledge admins should be tasked with:

1. Ensuring employees are documenting their knowledge.
2. Updating content that goes out of date, or identifying someone who can do so.
3. Encouraging team members to regularly use their knowledge management platform to find and share information. 

Knowledge admins can be team leaders, training leaders, or subject matter experts (SME) responsible for a specific knowledge topic. Because knowledge admins oversee how information is captured and maintained, the information transferred is more accurate, consistent, and easier to find later. Over time, a knowledge admin can standardize templates so that every transfer follows a consistent pattern, reducing the need to start from scratch and making each KT more efficient.

5. Utilize Shared Knowledge to Promote Further Knowledge Transfer

Accessing and applying the insights gained from knowledge transfer turns information and knowledge into a living, reusable asset rather than a one-time knowledge share. As employees apply shared knowledge in their own contexts, they generate new insights that can be captured and shared. This creates a continuous feedback loop that expands and improves the organization’s collective intelligence over time. 

Embedding shared knowledge into established workflows and performance metrics ensures that knowledge transfer becomes an organizational habit rather than an isolated effort. Leaders should set clear expectations for knowledge application, recognize employees who contribute to or build upon shared insights, and align these practices with strategic priorities. By institutionalizing knowledge reuse and rewarding knowledge-sharing behaviors, organizations reinforce a culture where every transfer leads to innovation and continuous improvement.

Solutions to Assess in Knowledge Management Systems

When evaluating a knowledge management platform, it’s essential to assess the core KM solutions that enable effective knowledge transfer and long‑term organizational learning. The strongest platforms don’t just store information; they operationalize the flow of knowledge across every stage of the employee experience. Each capability plays a distinct role in capturing, sharing, and applying institutional expertise to drive continuous improvement and achieve Enterprise Intelligence.

Onboarding and Continuous Learning

Successful onboarding programs operationalize knowledge transfer from the moment an employee joins and sustain it throughout the employee lifecycle. Continuous learning fosters ongoing skill development and keeps employees up to date on the latest information, which is particularly important in industries with evolving regulations or complex processes. These capabilities ensure that critical know-how flows to the right people at the right time, in digestible formats that can be immediately applied to real work.

Your KM platform should allow you to organize onboarding documentation, ongoing training materials, and other professional development resources in an easily digestible format so employees can revisit the materials whenever they want or need to.​

Mentoring

Mentoring enables the transfer of tacit knowledge that is difficult or impossible to capture fully in documents or databases. By pairing experts with less-experienced employees and connecting those relationships to shared content and spaces in the system, organizations ensure that critical context and insights are preserved rather than lost when people change roles or leave.

A knowledge management system acts as the backbone for matching mentors and mentees. They can document goals and session notes, and link discussions directly to relevant articles, playbooks, and project assets so that tacit insights are anchored in concrete organizational knowledge.

Social Engagement

Utilizing social engagement transforms static content into a living, continuously evolving body of knowledge that people actually use. Interactive capabilities like comments, Q&A, and discussion threads make it easy for employees to ask questions in context. They can contribute their expertise and validate or correct information in real time, improving both the quality and freshness of the knowledge base.

Search and AI Capabilities

Enterprise search ensures employees can quickly find answers across large volumes of content using natural language, filters, and relevance ranking rather than rigid keyword matching. Plus, AI capabilities such as auto‑tagging, recommendations, and summarization are must‑haves because they reduce manual curation effort and surface the right knowledge in the moment of need.

Analytics and Governance

Role‑based permissions, workflows, and review cycles are critical to control who can view, create, edit, and approve content, especially in regulated or customer‑facing environments. Analytics on searches, views, gaps, and content performance are equally important so teams can identify what is working, where people are getting stuck, and which knowledge needs to be created, promoted, or retired.

Tools to Achieve Enterprise Intelligence

Achieving Enterprise Intelligence turns scattered information across teams into a shared, decision-ready asset that leaders and front-line employees can act on every day. By consolidating operational knowledge, customer insights, and market signals in a single environment, KM platforms like Bloomfire make it easier to identify patterns across departments. Its tools align with what is really happening in the business, and close the loop between strategy and execution. 

Its approach to the five principles of Enterprise Intelligence emphasizes connecting people to timely insights in the flow of their work and tying knowledge use to concrete business objectives. That way, knowledge stops functioning as a and starts acting as a measurable performance driver.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Why should organizations need a knowledge transfer plan?

Organizations need a knowledge transfer plan to systematically capture and retain critical information, so it is not lost when people change roles or turnover. It also improves the continuity, productivity, and innovation of the company by making insights and analytics accessible across teams instead of siloed with individuals. A formal KT plan protects the value of your investments in training and experience by turning individual expertise into reusable organizational assets.

How long does it typically take to implement a knowledge transfer plan?

Implementing a successful knowledge transfer template often takes several weeks to a few months, depending on complexity and the urgency of the transition. Enterprise‑level programs that define the standards, tools, and culture for ongoing knowledge transfer typically require several months to a year to fully embed. The most effective organizations treat the initial rollout as a phased effort with clear milestones, then refine the plan continuously as they learn what works.​

How can teams measure the success of their knowledge transfer plan?

The success of KT plans is commonly measured using metrics such as knowledge acquisition (e.g., assessment results and session participation) and knowledge application (how often and how effectively shared knowledge is used in real work). Additional indicators include utilization of critical knowledge over time, time to proficiency for new or transitioning employees, and improvements in quality or error rates. Many organizations also track user feedback and satisfaction with knowledge resources, along with business outcomes, to gauge the overall impact of transferring knowledge.

What role does leadership play in sustaining knowledge transfer efforts?

Leadership sets the tone by clearly prioritizing knowledge transfer as a strategic imperative and allocating time, budget, and tools to support it. Leaders model desired behaviors like sharing lessons learned, recognizing contributors, and encouraging cross‑team collaboration, which normalizes knowledge sharing across the organization. They also remove barriers, hold teams accountable for participating in knowledge practices, and align knowledge transfer goals with performance expectations and organizational strategy.

Easily Transfer Knowledge with a Knowledge Management Platform

Modern organizations cannot rely on informal handoffs and scattered documents to protect their most valuable asset: institutional knowledge. A dedicated knowledge management platform enables capturing expertise as it is created, standardizing how it is shared, and ensuring people can quickly find what they need. When knowledge is centralized, searchable, and kept up to date, every employee spends less time hunting for answers and more time applying their knowledge to move the business forward.

By investing in the right platform and defining clear processes, roles, and governance for knowledge transfer, you create a repeatable system rather than one‑off efforts that depend on individual heroes. When you put all of the pieces in place, your organization can easily transfer knowledge at scale and turn every transition, project, and collaboration into an opportunity to strengthen performance and resilience.

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Note: This blog was published in June 2023 and was most recently updated and expanded in December 2025.

About the Author

Betsy Anderson

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.