The waste of food, electricity and water is now at the center of economic and social concerns, so businesses have a major role to play. However, waste does not only concern material resources, on the contrary, there is a real subject around the waste of intellectual resources. With each arrival of an employee, the company creates knowledge but at each departure a major part of this knowledge is lost, so there is a real waste!

Let's see together how to fight against this waste of knowledge in business.

The fight against waste: an issue that is now at the heart of business strategies.

All businesses, whether they produce goods or services, have need resources which can be factories, machines, raw materials, or energy. Since Ford's time, the dogma has been: Produce more, more quickly. Technological advances have made it possible to optimize the use of these resources in order to gain in productivity, but this Unrestrained race for productivity is not without consequences. The waste of resources is indeed a real challenge and many sectors are at the heart of this poor use of resources. The textile sector for example, uses an impressive amount of energy, especially water, to produce multiple tissues, most of which will be eliminated during production (losses). However, this waste of resources is being seriously questioned and is increasingly part of the main commitments of businesses.

Innovative companies have already taken the step of anti-waste, Anti-waste clothing as with Vinted which allows you to resell clothes that we no longer wear instead of letting them gather dust in our closets. We can also mention Too Good To Go (cocorico 🇫🇷) which acts directly against food waste by offering restaurant owners to sell their unsold items and leftovers to individuals.

This type of initiatives shows that the anti-waste of resources is possible in our current economic model, we are now in the era of “produce better” and not “produce more.” Anti-waste is playing an increasingly important role in the commitments of large companies and is no longer limited to a few innovative companies. Sodexo, the leader in corporate catering, has for example put The anti-food waste at the heart of its concerns and is committed to limiting the overproduction of food as much as possible. However, whether in small businesses as in multinationals, it seems that a resource is always a victim of waste, a resource that is nevertheless essential to the development of the company itself and of the development of society more generally: human resources or human capital.

The anti-waste of knowledge: when human capital is taken into account.

The skills, knowledge and best practices of employees are a resource of significant importance for businesses, yet it seems that many of these intellectual resources are being squandered. For each employee, the company creates and develops this human capital, it is a real investment in both money and time which makes it possible to gain in productivity in the long term. The problem? At each departure, the company incurs a net loss, since the employee leaves the company with a large part of their knowledge and skills. At best, this collaborator will transfer part of this resource to his successor through a wedge period, but in most cases this Passing over, for lack of method and resources, is far from being effective. Businesses therefore invest in a resource that is essential for their development, but they do not make optimal use of this value creation. So we can talk about a waste of knowledge which is all the more important in companies with a high rate of Turnover : the more rotations, the more the quantity of uncapitalized human capital is lost.

While energy waste or food waste are now well known issues and accepted by most, the waste of knowledge seems to be left out. According to The Panopto Workplace Knowledge and Productivity Report (2018), large companies lose on average $47 million per year in productivity because knowledge is not shared effectively between workers. Companies therefore have every interest in introducing human capital into their policy of anti-waste of resources since a real hidden cost is now identifiable. But what solutions do businesses have to limit this waste of knowledge as much as possible? How to optimize the creation of knowledge for each of its employees? At Komin, our answer is as follows: to establish a circular knowledge economy. But what is it about in concrete terms?

Knowledge transfer: towards a circular knowledge economy.

By definition, the circular economy consists of a sustainable production that limits the waste of resources. It is called circular because resources are not “thrown away” once their use comes to an end, on the contrary, they are reused in order to relaunch a new phase of production: the production cycle never ends, as in a loop. The aim is is to giving a second life to the resources used in order to optimize their use as much as possible. This is particularly relevant in the case of rare resources, since thanks to the circular economy, businesses can use the same resource several times, which reduces their costs while fighting waste.

Depending on an employee's experience, their knowledge can be really valuable and the company cannot afford to see this wealth leave it in the event of a departure. However, No employee is forever and the departure of the latter is inevitable, so you might as well plan solutions for Recover as much of your knowledge as possible to keep them in the company. For this, a circular knowledge economy can be applied in order to give a second life to an employee's knowledge. How to do it? By formalizing and transferring them to his successor and why not also to other members of the company. But transferring such a resource is not easy: you need to know What to transfer, How to transfer and Who to transfer to ? That's when Komin comes in!

We developed our solution based on the following observation: There is a real waste of knowledge in business because when an employee leaves the company, he leaves with know-how, Tips and information about his position, knowledge that could however be transferred to his successor in order to make him more productive and more easily integrated into his new work environment. While the manager spends a lot of time training each new recruit, Komin suggests doing this handover intuitively and effectively. The departing employee formalizes, using video, podcast and documents, his formal and informal knowledge directly on our online platform in order to transfer it directly to his successor (s). Thus, the manager saves time during these various transitions and the new recruit benefits from a real handover even though his successor has already left his post, since it is not uncommon to sometimes have several months of heartbeats between the departure of an employee and the arrival of his successor. For the purposes of contracts (CDD, CDI, work/internships), internal mobility, parental leave and early retirement, Komin is committed to The anti-waste of knowledge. Knowledge no longer leaves the company but is transferred and developed thanks to the different people succeeding each other in a position, it is a real virtuous loop.

And you, what are you waiting for to say STOP to the waste of your employees' knowledge?