Key takeaways
- Knowledge often exits a company the moment an employee leaves, and it’s rarely captured in writing before they go.
- A well-thought-out knowledge transfer plan helps you differentiate between what’s crucial and what’s just nice to have, so you don’t end up in a mad rush to document everything in the last two weeks.
- Having a clear, repeatable knowledge transfer template can help you turn haphazard handovers into predictable processes you can track accurately.
- Recording a workflow as it’s being executed, instead of relying on someone’s memory to write it down later, helps preserve important details that might otherwise get lost.
What happens when that team member with encyclopedic knowledge leaves? All of the valuable insights they can offer leave with them. Unless, that is, someone has taken the time to transfer that knowledge.
This guide takes you through the essentials of what’s truly worth passing on. You’ll find:
- a straightforward knowledge transfer plan, with a five-step process for making the transfer,
- a handy copy-and-paste knowledge transfer template to help you implement it,
- and a list of common pitfalls in the knowledge transfer process.
What counts as knowledge worth transferring?
Before we dive into the knowledge transfer process, it's important to recognize that knowledge comes in different forms. If we don't account for this, we can easily miss important insights.
So, here are three main categories of knowledge to be transferred that you should keep in mind.
Technical knowledge refers to knowledge of the ways your company’s processes and systems function day to day. Let's take a concrete example. Imagine that your dashboard numbers differ from the ones appearing in the spreadsheet maintained by your finance team. An analyst might be the only person who knows why that is the case. Very few people have the time or willingness to write up such details into manuals and share them with their colleagues.
Process knowledge describes the steps and judgment calls required by recurring tasks. Generally, this has less to do with how a given system works and more with how a person uses that system. This can include knowledge of things like shortcuts, exceptions, and sequencing that make the system more manageable.
Relationship and institutional knowledge is often the softest and most easily lost. The best way to manage a challenging stakeholder; the rationale behind decisions made years ago; which clients prefer a phone call to an email – this is the kind of knowledge that can only be built up over time in a specific role.
Most knowledge transfer efforts are restricted to technical knowledge because it feels concrete. Process and relationship knowledge gets missed far more often. And, unfortunately, it's the loss of these forms of knowledge that tends to cause the most disruption.
For software-based processes, capturing the workflow as it happens can preserve details that written documentation often misses.
Knowledge transfer process: 5 steps
A knowledge transfer plan works best as a short, deliberate process rather than a single meeting squeezed into someone’s last week.
Step 1: Identify critical knowledge
To start with, ask yourself: what would break if this person left tomorrow? To find an answer to this question, list their recurring responsibilities, the systems they’re expert at, and anything only they seem to know how to do.
Once you have this list, rank every item by impact and rarity. Our goal is to identify the knowledge that’s both high-impact and held by only one person in your company.
Step 2: Choose the right transfer method
Different knowledge requires different capture methods:
- Written docs suit reference material like configuration details or contact lists.
- Live walkthroughs and shadowing are best suited to process knowledge that involves judgment calls, since the receiving person can ask questions in the moment.
- Recorded video walkthroughs offer a nice balance of the two. They capture the actual sequence of clicks, including any surprising workarounds, and can be replayed by anyone who wasn’t in the room.
New AI tools like Guideless are emerging to make this process seamless. Rather than putting the burden on a departing employee to jot down a step-by-step guide from memory, they can simply record themselves clicking through the actual process like normal. This might be approving an invoice, setting up a dashboard, or generating a report. Meanwhile, the AI tool records their screen and transforms it into an AI-narrated video guide. It captures the workflow as it happens, rather than relying on a reconstructed summary, making it a much more reliable resource once the team member has left.
Step 3: Assign an owner to capture it
When knowledge transfers get stuck, it’s often because they’re seen as everyone’s job but no one’s specific responsibility. To fix this, pinpoint one individual who owns each critical piece of knowledge. Options for this role include the departing employee themselves, their manager, or a teammate. These people can then be made responsible for facilitating any knowledge transfer sessions and processes. Make sure to establish a firm deadline: a vague “before they leave” deadline can leave the process open to failure.
Step 4: Document everything in one place
When handover information is not properly organized, it is only marginally more useful than having no information at all. If it's spread out across Slack threads, personal notes, and a half-finished Google Doc, no one will know where to find it.
So, it’s best to consolidate all the information from your knowledge transfer process in one place. This could be a shared drive, a dedicated knowledge base, or whatever is most convenient. Just make sure the person who will be using it and their manager are aware of its location before the employee departs.
Step 5: Validate with the receiving person
This is a step that many handovers overlook. Once the knowledge is documented, have the person taking over try completing key tasks using just the information that’s been recorded.
They can then point out any gaps while the departing employee is still available to clarify things. It’s also a great opportunity to ensure that any walkthroughs and written instructions are up to date. Using a guide from last year’s workflow can actually hinder productivity instead of helping it.
Knowledge transfer template
A knowledge transfer document doesn’t need to be complicated to be useful. The simplest structure you can use tracks just five fields per item.
Copy-and-paste knowledge transfer template
| Knowledge area | Current owner | Location | Method | Receiving person |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ____________ | ____________ | ____________ | ____________ | ____________ |
| ____________ | ____________ | ____________ | ____________ | ____________ |
| ____________ | ____________ | ____________ | ____________ | ____________ |
Here’s what it looks like filled out for a marketing operations role during handover:
| Knowledge area | Current owner | Location | Method | Receiving person |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly reporting workflow in the analytics dashboard | Priya (departing) | Team wiki, “Reporting” section | Recorded walkthrough (Guideless) | Marcus |
| Email platform configuration and segment rules | Priya (departing) | Shared drive, “Email Ops” folder | Written doc + shadowing session | Marcus |
| Vendor relationship with the design agency | Priya (departing) | Team wiki, “Vendors” page | Handover meeting notes | Team manager |
| Campaign approval process and escalation contacts | Priya (departing) | Shared drive, “Process” folder | Recorded walkthrough (Guideless) | Marcus |
Notice the two software-heavy items use a recorded walkthrough rather than a written doc. The reason for this is that when it comes to multi-step software processes, written descriptions often miss out on important details. They can also be confusing and complex to work through as text instructions.
In this example, a quick screen recording allows Marcus to go back and review any step he might be unsure about, without having to interrupt Priya after she’s gone. This approach is similar to that used in AI-powered SOPs. Many teams find these guides not only helpful for a single transition but also valuable as onboarding resources for new hires.
Common mistakes in the knowledge transfer process
Starting the knowledge transfer process too late
Kicking off knowledge transfer at the last minute is like trying to cram for an exam – it’s just a frantic rush to get everything out. When it comes to complex processes and the nuances of relationships, they often take more time to unpack than we think. And by the time you realize that something crucial has slipped through the cracks, the departing employee has already gone. The real cost of these hurried handovers tends to reveal itself weeks down the line, leaving a bewildered new hire with a bunch of unanswered questions.
Relying only on a handover meeting
A conversation can feel really productive while it’s taking place. But 2 days later, it becomes obvious how unreliable our memories can be. Plus, it’s hard to cover every possible angle in a single meeting. After 2 hours in a meeting, we might be tempted to rush through a process rather than dig deeper into it, even if it's critical to operations.
If nothing gets written down or recorded, people may be reduced to trying to piece everything together from hasty notes that felt clear in the meeting, but are hard to make sense of afterwards.
No clear receiving owner
If knowledge is captured but nobody is assigned to receive and use it, it tends to remain unread. Every item in a knowledge transfer plan should have a named person on the receiving end, not just a general team or department.