As the Canadian federal government moves forward with plans to streamline the public service, concerns are mounting about whether the reductions are cutting fat or muscle. The critical factor, according to observers, lies not in the number of positions eliminated but in whether the government can preserve the institutional knowledge that departing employees take with them.
The Knowledge Transfer Challenge
The success of staff reductions in any organization depends equally on the transfer and retention of organizational knowledge as on the physical headcount. Functional capacity depends not just on how many employees remain, but on whether they know what their former colleagues learned over years of service. This challenge is particularly acute in government, which relies heavily on organizational knowledge to function effectively.
Historically, the public service has struggled with knowledge transfer. As senior public servants approach retirement, they often spend their final months tying up loose ends while vital knowledge transfer sinks to the bottom of their priority list. While document archives exist, they typically remain dormant and unexplored. More importantly, these archives only record what decisions were made, not the reasoning and wisdom behind them.
Practical Solutions for Knowledge Preservation
One proposed solution involves incorporating mandatory knowledge transfer requirements into managers' performance agreements. This could include dedicating a minimum percentage of their time to knowledge transfer during designated periods before retirement or movement to other positions. Simple approaches like Friday brown-bag lunches focusing on "the hardest decisions I ever had to make in this role, and how I made them" could prove invaluable.
The current situation means that non-managerial staff often don't get opportunities to train others in crucial operational knowledge, such as who to contact about specific matters or which contacts facilitate effective collaboration. The public service employee survey has even abandoned inquiries about minimizing "silos" and facilitating efficient collaboration, further complicating knowledge preservation efforts.
Compassion Through Knowledge Valuation
For many public servants, compassion during workforce reductions also means respecting and valuing their hard-won knowledge by ensuring their former colleagues can continue using it. A former Clerk of the Privy Council once noted that the public service isn't very good at "saying goodbye." Proper knowledge transfer would significantly improve this aspect of organizational culture.
Allowing staff to potentially reinvent the wheel or repeat past errors represents a poor approach to economizing and doing more with less. As with any weight-loss program, the goal should be retaining muscle while losing fat. Failure to adequately transfer knowledge results in the loss of both.
The challenge now falls to current leadership, including Michael Sabia, Deputy Minister of Finance, and Mona Fortier, President of the Treasury Board, to implement effective knowledge transfer strategies that preserve the public service's institutional wisdom while streamlining operations.
