The more complex an organization, the more challenging and more critical it is to manage institutional knowledge. In large complex organizations such as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), capturing the knowledge of experienced employees and transferring it to new hires, as well as to workers in other parts of the organization, is necessary to ensure the organization can perform its core functions. Failure to achieve the mission—in the FAA's case to ensure safe airspace for the public—is not an option.
To remain the world's premier civil aviation authority, FAA must meet many challenges in the realm of knowledge transfer. One of the most significant challenges stems from the impending massive retirements of senior certified air traffic controllers.
The last of the controllers hired after President Reagan fired the striking controllers in 1981 will face mandatory retirement in 2014. The agency expects that by 2021, more than 12,000 of the 16,000 controller workforce will leave. This enormous brain drain creates a classic knowledge management (KM) problem that encompasses knowledge loss, capture, and transfer.
Attracting and Training Millennials
The only pool of people who can replace the departing controllers is the Millennial age group, born between 1981 and 1999, because law states that controllers must be hired no later than their 31st birthday (and retire by the age of 56). The best-educated age cohort ever, Millennials also are dubbed the "digital natives" because they grew up after the introduction of the web browser in 1991 and have never known an unwired world. Though many of them are graduating from college without the prospect of a high-paying job, FAA still faces the challenge of attracting, training, and retaining the best candidates the Millennials have to offer.
The KM challenge is to bring in these young people and transfer institutional knowledge to them as smoothly and efficiently as possible. When introducing a new age cohort into the agency, FAA must reflect on its methods of communications, training, and technology.
Most academic research points to the challenges of transferring knowledge from one generation to another. For example, Lynne C. Lancaster and David Stillman, authors of the book When Generations Collide (HarperCollins, 2002), point to the different attributes of each group:
- has its own likes and dislikes
- views and uses technology differently
- approaches the work environment in unique ways.
To successfully transfer knowledge, organizations need to take these factors into account when bringing on board members of a new generation and integrating them into the workplace. As the newest group entering the workplace, the Millennials rely heavily on a range of technologies in their daily lives and expect to use them at work. This tendency can be exploited positively by organizations that have the insight and commitment to figure out which approaches can work for their organization and implement the appropriate technologies into their training and operations.
Leveraging Tacit Knowledge
Organizational knowledge transfer and training involve not only technology but also human interaction; transferring knowledge from one age group to another can be challenging in that realm as well. As organizations strive to improve organizational learning and operations, they must leverage their experienced employees' tacit knowledge—knowledge that is often unique to them. Tacit knowledge is one of the more elusive and yet critical types of knowledge that organizations must retain and transfer, and its management is at the core of KM.
As people gain experience in their jobs, they develop expertise that enables them to perform at increasingly higher levels of performance. Often, this knowledge resides only in their heads and is not codified by the organization. KM provides organizations with approaches, such as communities of practice (CoP) and lessons learned databases, to capture and transfer this invaluable type of knowledge.
On-the-job training (OJT) is an example of a method for capturing and transferring tacit knowledge, and is used extensively in the FAA to train new air traffic controllers. As with any person-to-person approach, it has communications challenges related to the generations. Issues of trust and respect can be barriers to effective communications between the generations. Younger workers may view older ones as being technologically challenged while older workers may be dismissive of the less knowledgeable new cohort.
Organizational culture also can affect intergenerational communications, either positively or negatively. Organizations can foster positive communications by encouraging the creation of multigenerational teams that promote dialogue among the age groups. Such dialogues can bring to the forefront the different and preferred methods of communications of each age group and help build bonds, trust, and confidence across the groups, thereby enhancing training effectiveness.
Three Training Approaches
In 2009, we began a research study to address the appropriateness of the three training approaches the FAA uses to transfer mission-critical knowledge:
- formal classroom instruction
- OJT
- computer simulation.
To conduct the study, we developed a questionnaire that sought opinions from each generation of all three learning modes. We also asked their views of the potential effect on traditional air traffic control (ATC) training should the agency decide to augment it using mobile smart devices.
We asked this fundamental research question: how do age differences influence the way training and social media are used to gain knowledge within the FAA? We wanted the agency to learn how to augment technical training for new air traffic controllers in a way that appeals to the needs of the Millennials. Survey questions expanded on these basic questions:
- Whose knowledge do you use in your work?
- Who uses your knowledge in their work?
- What type of knowledge do you use in your work?
Recognize the Strength of Diversity
Analysis of the data revealed that Millennials are more open to new technologies than the older groups and embrace mobile smart devices as a part of life and work. This finding provides the basis for several recommendations for ATC training.
FAA also should consider using serious games for learning—exploiting the lessons Millennials learned playing videogames, which academic research has shown can be of enormous value to an organization. Because the generations bring different ideas, challenges, and opportunities to the workplace, executives should take their attributes into account. Recognizing the strength of diversity, they should strive to accommodate differences rather than force everyone into one mold.
We made the following recommendations to the FAA:
- Augment ATC training using mobile smart devices and interactive serious games.
- Create a controller CoP, a group of workers in an organization with shared interests.
- Create comprehensive knowledge bases to allow Millennials to access mission-critical knowledge through best practices and lessons learned.
- Introduce microblogging by implementing an internal Twitter-like environment to share knowledge.
- Develop formal mentoring programs that match leaders and managers with top employees.
- Introduce cross-generational mentoring recognizing that members of any generation can productively mentor members of other generations.
- Develop reverse mentoring to take advantage of Millennials' cutting-edge technology skills.
- Implement soft-skills mentoring for Millennials, such as the appropriate ways to dress, speak, and write.
Organizations should promote dialogue among various age groups to build communication, trust, and confidence across the groups, thereby enhancing the transfer of knowledge.