Knowledge Transfer-Lessons Learnt - A Case Study of Kuwait Oil Company

Abstract

Competent Manpower always considered as a big challenge in rapidly transforming business environment. Traditionally, most of the National Oil Companies are dependent on training providers for their technical staff development. However, most companies are judicious in identifying the competency gaps within their employees through either available Competency Management System or customized system. Once they identify the gaps, various training options like basic, advance courses, workshops etc. are being delivered through training providers. However, there are concerns related to the quality assurance and competency gap fillings (for selected learning options) keeping in view of the company's strategic business needs and vision. In order to make the competency development process more effective with quality assurance on their gap fillings, Kuwait Oil Company in the past three to four years has come out with a new approach of engaging their internal resources for knowledge transfer. These internal resources are subject Discipline Experts (DEs) available within the company who knows the business needs of the company. Human resource development is a business-driven function and its effectiveness depends on thorough understanding of organization's strategic direction. The present paper focusses on an approach of knowledge transfer and lessons learnt through identification and engagement of senior employees as DEs with proven track record of coaching/mentoring abilities. The DEs are being proved as most effective and powerful resource to develop not only the new hires but also the mid-career employees. DEs have established a comprehensive job family wise customized competency matrix based on critical business need of the company. The approach has also helped the company in fast track development of technical manpower and filling generation gaps between large number of new hires and aging available technical expertise. This has proved to be a cost effective approach with win-win situation for the employer and employees.