Sources of external knowledge often include other ISO/International standards; research papers; webinars from conferences; or knowledge gathered from, or about your customers, stakeholders or other external parties. Your organisation should assimilate and deploy internal and external sources of knowledge, such as:
- Lessons learned from non-conformities, corrective actions, and the results of improvement;
- Gathering knowledge from customers, suppliers and partners, benchmarking against competitors;
- Capturing knowledge existing within the organisation, e.g. through mentoring /succession planning;
- Sharing knowledge with relevant interested parties to ensure sustainability of the organisation;
- Knowledge from conferences, attending trade fairs, networking seminars, or other external events.
You might want to look for the following to judge how effectively you are retaining organisational knowledge:
- Has your organisation used the PDCA (plan/do/check/act) approach for addressing organisational knowledge?
- Has Top Management provided the leadership and direction for establishing strategies to use organisational knowledge and policies and objectives to optimise the value derived from organisational knowledge?
- Has your organisation identified the scope of organisational knowledge relevant to its business and related risks and opportunities associated with each type of organisational knowledge?
- Has your organisation defined the process needed to manage organisational knowledge – identify, obtain, accumulate, store, communicate, use, maintain, protect and evaluate the performance of organisational knowledge management against objectives?
- Has your organisation defined roles, authority and responsibilities for organisational knowledge process activities listed above?
- Has your organisation determined competency requirements and provided appropriate training and awareness for all employees using organisational knowledge?
- Has your organisation established processes for communication, participation and consultation?
- Has your organisation determined the nature and extent of documentation required to manage organisational knowledge?
- Has your organisation identified any applicable regulatory and other requirements?
- Has your organisation defined an organisational knowledge change management process?
- Has your organisation implemented the organisational knowledge plan defined above?
- Has your organisation performed organisational knowledge activities – assign responsibilities, identify, obtain, accumulate, store, maintain, protect, communicate, use and evaluate the performance of organisational knowledge?
- Has your organisation tracked organisational knowledge performance measures?
- Does your organisation investigate loss, irretrievability or theft of organisational knowledge?
- Has your organisation evaluated compliance to applicable regulatory requirements?
- Has your organisation maintained appropriate records of organisational knowledge management activities?
- Has your organisation reviewed data and determined improvement actions?
- Has your organisation verified achievement of organisational knowledge goals and objectives?
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