Lindsay LaNore: Practical Tips for Knowledge Transfer

When community bankers with decades of experience retire, they take with them a precious commodity: their knowledge. But it doesn’t have to be that way. By being purposeful and deliberate about knowledge transfer, a bank can minimize disruption and confusion, while also creating a culture of mentorship and learning.

Start by taking a look at your written procedures. Banks do a pretty good job of having procedures in place for certain processes, but details can be missed, not updated or not written completely. How long has it been since your written procedures were reviewed and updated? An annual review is advisable, and since crafting the best written procedures doesn’t come naturally to everyone, lean on your risk, audit and compliance officers. They tend to think in those very detailed ways, and it makes sense to leverage that skill set.

Documenting tasks is another effective tool. Put simply, this means creating a list of a person’s responsibilities, and it goes beyond what is written in their job description. It’s a chronological list of what a person does each day or week on the job. Ask the retiring team member to keep a diary during their last year with the bank, noting all tasks big and small. This ensures that actions which happen less often don’t get forgotten.

Job shadowing is another great tool for knowledge transfer, and it’s especially effective for visual or verbal learners. As it is more of an immersive, back-and-forth opportunity, creativity is needed to find the best ways to leverage this process. You should still think about starting it sooner rather than later.

Learning via YouTube or TikTok is commonplace today, so consider using video to create content that has long-term value. It’s like job shadowing that you can pause, rewind and share. It may feel a little awkward at first, but the camera can capture a lot of processes. The key is to have someone who is great at asking questions help make the videos. (Pro tip: Be careful not to capture private personal information on these videos, or you’ll need to find appropriate ways to store them for privacy purposes.)

Repurpose teambuilding

One final tip to consider is repurposing the traditional “team-building question.” At meetings, throw out a prompt that gets more people sharing the intricacies of their specific roles. What is the hardest aspect of your job? What steps did you take to complete this report? This is the fun part! Get your team talking, sharing stories and exchanging ideas. Learn from others. Be curious.

All of these tools can be used to share the knowledge of subject matter experts—whether they are retiring imminently or not—and building knowledge transfer into the bank’s culture is a great way of avoiding a last-minute scramble.