Question

Discuss the ways to measure KM impacts. Give example.

Answer 1

The KM impact can be measured by evaluating progress on the objectives set while developing the program. For example - Let's assume the KM initiatives are established to improve:

• Enhance Productivity
• Establish ease of finding information
• Increase collaboration

Once a KM process and system is in place, there are multiple ways to measure the impact of KM system:

1. Observation of Behaviour Change - Managers can be instructed to observe employee adoption of the KM process. They can be asked to observe if they see an increased level of collaboration between employees with the KM process.

2. Surveys - Traditional surveys can be triggered to employees asking feedback on the KM system/process and its impact on the daily work of the employee. The questions could cover our objectives:

• Has KM system improved your productivity?
• Are you able to find information easily using the KM Sytem?
• Has KM system enhanced collaboration at the workplace?

The survey can ask employees to rate the responses on a scale of 1 to 5 where 5 is high and 1 low rating.

3. Focus group discussions - We can also initiate focus group discussion with 6-8 employees from different teams to assess if KM initiative has improved cross-team collaboration or improved their work speed by easy access to information.

Please note: There are other ways also to measure KM impacts. One of the measures could be time taken to respond to customer queries. This would be applicable to companies who have, say a customer call center. Customer service reps can easily look up information using a KM process/system and respond timely to the customer. However, such measures are industry-specific and depend on objectives set.