Use of Knowledge Management in Adapting to Team Member Loss

PURPOSE AND RATIONALE OF THE RESEARCH

People come and go. It is true for most life situations and encounters either in personal, social and religious affiliations, same is true in the business setting, in our workplace. Change is indeed inevitable, a huge part of this change is the people which usually move either from one department to another or from one company to the next. Today’s business environments are dynamic in nature and it is usually tough for a team to handle changes especially when members keep on coming and going. Survival is in question, and the need for flexible and adaptive responses arises.

This action research was conducted in Manila Shared Service Center of Chevron where I, as an academic researcher, work as a Financial Analyst in the Accounts Payable (AP) department.

This study sought to determine the stability and readiness for change in terms of employee movements in our team, AP-Freight, Utilities and Shipping. It described the strengths and weaknesses of the team as well as its ability to adapt to team member loss. Fastened with the analysis of these data, I designed and proposed implementation of standardized processes to enhance the team’s adaptation to change in terms of having a smooth transition for the exiting employee and to avoid gaps in the employee exit process.

This research narrates my experience as a researcher-exiting employee as I introduce interventions aimed to streamline the process of knowledge handover and improve the flexibility of each team member to absorb the additional work and concurrently train incoming new team member. Is a good back-up system enough to sustain quality operations? How important is transition awareness to quickly respond to critical changes that could be detrimental to the team performance if not addressed on a timely and effective manner?

Despite my resignation from the company, I felt that as an insider researcher, I would still be able to use my talents, knowledge, and experiences to help effect positive change in my team within the time left. I want to leave something useful and beneficial to the team that had given me learning and experience, which contributed to the factors that helped me bring my career to the next step.

CONTEXT

Continuous improvement is an essential element in any effective business strategy, whether in small or large scale. With the rapid advances in technology, the drive to achieve world-class performance standards is resulting in innovative structures, strategies, and solutions to complex business problems.

Staff services activities are not exempt from this ongoing pressure to become more efficient and market driven. As a result, shared service centers are being created as the optimal solution to the need of reducing costs and improving core staff services such as finance, human resources, and information technology systems.

Shared Services as defined by Strikwerda^[a] (2006), is an accountable entity in the internal organization of a firm tasked to provide specialized services to operational entities (divisions, business units) on basis of a service level agreement and full charge out of costs on basis of a transfer price system.