With the development of new technologies, business is moving at an increasingly faster rate. In order to stay at the leading edge of the market, organizations have to keep up or face being left behind by the competition. Knowledge Harvesting is one way that organizations can keep their employees well-educated and train new employees quickly. It is a great setback when organizations lose a veteran employee, and with the baby boom generation nearing retirement, “organizations will face a major exodus of institutional knowledge as their most experienced employees leave the work force” ("Intelligence at risk: capturing employee knowledge before retirement” 14). Without any way of capturing the knowledge from these employees, years of valuable experience will be lost. In fact, in a recent survey of over five hundred fulltime workers, more than twenty-six percent of respondents noted that their organization would let them retire without any form of exit interview or transfer of knowledge. Fifty percent of the five hundred surveyed said that their organization had absolutely no formal way to capture knowledge prior to losing an employee (Knowledge Harvesting - KM Toolkit: inventory of tools and techniques). The fact that these employees are allowed to leave without passing on any form of their experience means that new employees will have to continuously rediscover and solve past mistakes, creating a major loss of efficiency.
Through the implementation of Knowledge Harvesting systems, many hindrances created by the loss of experienced employees can be avoided. One of the most notable benefits of Knowledge Harvesting is that vital knowledge is not lost when experts leave the company (Knowledge Harvesting - KM Toolkit: inventory of tools and techniques). If this experience is properly harvested and stored, the knowledge of a few key individuals can then be made available to others who need it without creating a crippling dependence on the expert. This Knowledge Harvesting technique can also aid in training new employees. Since past experience is taken into account, the learning curve will be shortened due to the fact that the individual will no longer be reliant on their own problem solving skills; they can use past experience to solve problems more quickly.
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