Energy Knowledge Transfer

Learn how Steve Trautman Co. has been helping the energy industry refine the knowledge transfer process since 1993.
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Knowledge Transfer in the Energy Industry 1

Talent Risk Management & Knowledge Transfer for the Energy Industry

Steve Trautman Company has been developing talent risk mitigation processes for the energy industry since 1994. Our team specializes in helping energy companies ensure that regulation knowledge and other talent isn’t lost during employee transitions. We also use advanced data-driven processes to identify where there is knowledge risk within your organization. These knowledge-management processes are facilitated through two methodical systems: 

  1. Talent Risk Management; an assessment of where all the industry-knowledge in your organization is held and which employees currently hold it. No matter where in the world your experts are located, we provide a framework you can use to identify who your experts are, what they know, and if they pose a critical knowledge risk to your business. 
  2. Knowledge Transfer; a process-driven solution that helps linchpin experts transfer their “secret sauce” to other employees quickly — ensuring that no knowledge is left behind. Our knowledge transfer can be carried out through phone or Skype calls, so it doesn’t matter if your expert is on the other side of the world; our systems will still work. 

These systems can help your company maintain consistency in a highly-regulated environment and speed in an industry characterized by quick change. From the new hire all the way up to the C-Suite, our processes can be carried out at every level of your corporation to ensure maximum knowledge retention when your aging workforce moves on. 

Steve Trautman Co.’s knowledge-management solutions produce consistent results because they are backed by our team of certified Consultants. Our Consultants are global experts in knowledge transfer and talent risk management and they know how to work quickly and efficiently in your existing HR systems.

Let’s examine both of our knowledge-management processes in more detail.

 

How Steve Trautman Co.’s Talent Risk Management Process Strengthens The Energy Industry 

Talent risk occurs when vital industry and regulation knowledge is held by only one or two people in your company. We call employees with knowledge silos like this “linchpin experts” because it would be a severe loss to your organization if they retired, left, or got poached by the competition. 

You can mitigate this talent risk by working with our certified Consultants. They will help management identify where talent risk is found in your company and will help you eliminate that risk by taking mitigation action specifically tailored to your team.

Here is a short overview of how our Talent Risk Management system works:

Part1: Locate The Knowledge Risk Within Your Energy Corporation

Our certified Consultants will meet with members of your organization and will use Steve Trautman Co.’s Knowledge Silo Matrix (our specialized talent-risk tool) to quantify specific areas of knowledge in your corporation, often uncovering hidden pockets of specialized knowledge. Next, they will chart exactly who holds this knowledge so that we can determine if there is a talent risk.

Once the data has been entered, the Knowledge Silo Matrix will reveal where your company has talent shortages, redundancies, lack of backups, overloading, and more. All of these factors contribute to your total talent risk. 

Part2: Align on Which Risks Are Priorities

Now that you know exactly where talent risk exists within your corporation, your leadership will be able to make educated decisions about how to prioritize and respond.  For some areas, a simple re-org or load-leveling may decrease your risk. For critical talent shortages, you can decide which, linchpin experts need to be replicated immediately, and which ones can spread their knowledge over time. 

For example, an energy company contractor who is the only person that knows how to implement a critical aspect of your regulations might poses a much larger talent risk than three in-house employees who hold critical industry knowledge. In this situation, our certified Consultants would encourage you to use our knowledge transfer process on the contractor first, and the three employees next. 

Part3: Use The Knowledge Transfer Process To Mitigate Your Talent Risk

Once you have used the Knowledge Silo Matrix to identify risk and decided which risk needs to be mitigated first, then it’s time to begin the knowledge transfer process. 

Steve Trautman Co.’s certified Consultants are especially instrumental during this phase of the talent risk management process, because they will teach your team how to use the knowledge transfer tools that ensure accurate transfer takes place. These tools include the Skill Development Plan and the Knowledge Transfer Workshop. 

  • Skill Development Plan; a comprehensive list of all the skills that must be learned for a specific job. The skills are organized into a learning schedule, to ensure that the necessary knowledge is taught and that critical talent risk is mitigated.  
  • Knowledge Transfer Workshop; teaches your experts how to measurably share their knowledge. Our certified Consultants are global authorities when it comes to teaching others how to teach. During the Knowledge Transfer Workshop, they will equip your experts with 15 proven techniques for transferring their knowledge to apprentices. 

Steve Trautman Co.’s Talent Risk Management In Action

[link to relevant case study]

 

How Our Knowledge Transfer Solution Supports The Energy Industry 

Steve Trautman Co.’s Knowledge Transfer Solution is a time-proven method of transitioning knowledge from experts to their successors. Whether it’s an imminently departing employee, a linchpin expert, or another kind of talent silo, our certified Consultants will walk your team through this methodology to ensure that when your expert leaves, their energy industry talent does not. 

Our Knowledge Transfer Solution is an industry-leading process because we don’t stop at transferring institutional knowledge. We understand that experts also possess a vast amount of tacit knowledge and soft skills that can be difficult to quantify, and so our system gives your experts the tools they need to identify and teach these tacit skills, habits, relationships, and other abilities to their apprentices. 

The difference between our Knowledge Transfer (KT) and Talent Risk Management (TRM) systems is that TRM focuses on identifying and mitigating company-wide talent risk, while KT is used for the specific transferring of one expert’s knowledge to a set of apprentices across any number of groups at any scale – locally or globally.

Here is a short overview of how our Knowledge Transfer process takes place:

Step 1: Identify & Prioritize Knowledge Risk Areas

The Knowledge Transfer process begins in a sit-down meeting between our certified Consultant and your expert. Our Consultant will help the expert identify the skills that need to be transferred and enter these skills into our Knowledge Silo Matrix (a specialized talent-risk tool). The Knowledge Silo Matrix will give us the information needed to determine which skills are most important and the order at which they will be taught to successors. 

Step 2: Create a Plan 

Next, our certified Consultant will work with your expert to break their skills down into digestible sizes — we call these “tasks.” When referred to during the Knowledge Transfer process, “tasks” are specific duties and information that can be taught to successors in one hour. 

After the expert has divided all their skills into one-hour tasks, they will work with the Consultant to write up the Skill Development Plan — a Steve Trautman Co. resource that will strategically lay out the pace and order at which apprentices will learn the tasks, from their first lesson all the way to expert-level fluency. 

Step 3: Train Experts To Transfer Knowledge Effectively

An advantage of partnering with Steve Trautman Co. is that we teach your experts how to pass their knowledge onto their apprentices. 

We understand that the ability to teach doesn’t come easy to everyone — teaching is, after all, a skill of its own — which is why this step of the Knowledge Transfer Solution is dedicated to transferring the ability to teach from our Consultants to your experts. Our team has over 25 years of experience teaching others how to teach and will give your energy and regulation experts the tools they need to pass what they know onto their apprentices. 

Step 4: Transfer Knowledge

Once your experts have the tools they need, the actual knowledge transfer can start! This will happen during highly-structured meetings between the expert and their apprentices. The expert will follow the Skill Development Plan and will teach skills in one-hour periods. To ensure that everything goes smoothly, one of our certified Consultants will sit in on the first few meetings to troubleshoot and give pointers. 

Step 5: Test & Measure Knowledge Transfer 

In the energy industry, it is crucial that employees not only understand industry regulations but are also able to implement them. In this kind of environment, diligent and comprehensive testing is needed to ensure that the knowledge transfer of tacit skills and regulations has been successfully communicated. 

This is why Steve Trautman Co. has created a rigorous test to gauge the success of the knowledge transfer. Once the Skill Development Plan has been completed, apprentices will take our test to determine if they can perform tasks independently.

Steve Trautman Co.’s Knowledge Transfer In Action

[link to relevant case study]

 

Talent Risk Management & Knowledge Transfer Tools

As our client, you will have access to a suite of tools that we have spent over 25 years refining for the energy industry. We have used these tools to successfully stop talent risk and transfer knowledge from thousands of energy industry experts to their successors. 

  • Knowledge Silo Matrix: identifies at-risk knowledge areas for your team and company and helps determine possible successors. 
  • Skill Development Plans: breaks down your experts tacit energy and regulation knowledge into tangible skills that can be taught and learned in one hour. 
  • Knowledge Transfer Workshop: teaches your experts how to effectively teach their knowledge to successors.
  • Knowledge Transfer Test Questions: measure knowledge transfer progress and confirm that successors have the ability to independently perform tasks and meet regulations. 

 

Steve Trautman Co. Is The Knowledge-Management Solution Your Energy Company Needs

The ability to quickly quantify expert knowledge and systematically, measurably teach it to apprentices is an invaluable resource to energy industry companies who are looking for a way to maintain adequate staffing and consistency under regulation. By using our solutions, your company will be able to safeguard against talent risk and protect your processes in an industry characterized by quick change and instability.

The high success rate of Steve Trautman Co.’s knowledge transfers and talent risk assessments is a direct result of the experts we employ. Our certified Consultants are highly-trained specialists that excel at identifying knowledge risks and talent shortages. Nothing surprises our team and no task is too difficult or too complex.

With over 25 years of experience, the Steve Trautman Company has become the gold-standard for effective knowledge transfers in the energy industry. To learn more about what we can do for your company, contact our team today to speak with one of our certified Consultants.