Is Your Company Reliant on Tribal Knowledge?

Preserving Tribal Knowledge in Field Service

In field service, the core of any service company is the strength and tribal knowledge of its service technicians. At XOi, we understand that your techs are your greatest asset, as it's their skills and expertise that deliver value to your customers.

You invest in your talent, providing training, support, and educational opportunities to expand and grow the skill set of each member of your team, but what happens to that investment when a technician leaves or retires?

Without a tool to capture and retain the often decades worth of tribal knowledge a technician acquires throughout their career, you could be losing a lot more than just a talented team member when a tech approaches retirement.

What Is Tribal Knowledge?

Tribal knowledge is a business process term coined by Bill Smith, who worked for Motorola back in 1986.

Tribal knowledge is all about processes, products, and customers that are typically known by a select few of your most experienced or longest-held employees. This knowledge is not usually written down and exists mainly in the minds of a few.

Say you have a skilled technician approaching retirement age. Throughout his career, he has accumulated a treasure trove of experience and techniques, which he kept to himself, never wrote down, and only passed down to help favored members of his “tribe.”

As that senior technician gathered his group of followers, he created a group of kindred minds, and possibly a clique predisposed more toward hoarding information for job security than to the welfare of the organization.

Likewise, tribal knowledge can also become a barrier to formal documentation, automation, and company growth.

The Risk of Losing Tribal Knowledge

There is also the added problem when tribal knowledge resides in just one experienced person.

Maybe through trial and error, one technician has mastered difficult repair jobs that rookie technicians cannot handle without help. You’ve asked this technician to train a crew, but maybe teaching and educating others is not this tech’s strongest talent.

So, when that technician finally leaves, all of that knowledge may be lost as well.

If this tech is among the quarter-million Americans turning 65 every month, think about all the expertise that could walk out the door with them.

At the same time, the industry continues to face a growing shortage of skilled technicians. That means companies need more comprehensive training materials and systems to close the experience gap faster.

How to Capture Tribal Knowledge

You probably already have an apprentice training program where new technicians learn their basic job functions. If you have taken the time to create an employee handbook, you are already ahead of the curve and have the foundation you need to capture tribal knowledge.

Here’s what else you should do:

Identify and Document Expertise

Ask your most qualified and experienced employees to share their knowledge and document all tribal knowledge worth keeping.

Many experienced employees have a wealth of untapped knowledge and would be flattered to be asked to share it. The sharing could happen through:

• Recorded interviews
• Anecdotes and stories
• Training videos
• Written questionnaires
• On-site demonstrations

The important thing is to capture the information while it is still available.

Confront and Close the Knowledge Gap

You began the project because you recognized the knowledge gap had to be closed.

You close that gap by documenting tribal knowledge and incorporating it into an ongoing training program that helps new employees hit the ground running and work confidently in the field.

Reallocate Senior Technicians Strategically

Field work is both physically and mentally demanding. It can take years — sometimes decades — for newer technicians to gain the knowledge and expertise of seasoned professionals.

Instead of letting your most skilled technicians retire and take their knowledge with them, technology can help you reallocate their expertise into mentorship and remote support roles.

Remote video calling, augmented reality (AR), and support capabilities allow senior technicians to virtually “go on site” for:

• Training
• Troubleshooting
• Remote diagnostics
• Real-time coaching

All of these interactions can also be recorded and saved to the XOi Knowledge Base for future reference.

Is Your Company Relying on Tribal Knowledge?

If your company is overly reliant on the skills and tribal knowledge of only a select few employees, XOi can help surface that knowledge and turn it into a scalable knowledge repository that supports both current and future technicians.