KM in the Hospitality Industry: Interview with Cheryl Teh

Tuesday, October 07 2008 @ 12:07 AM EDT

Cheryl Teh is currently a KM practitioner at a leading integrated resort in Malaysia. With a background in accounting and marketing, Knowledge Management is a field she was introduced to when she joined an international accounting firm in 1999 to deploy their KM initiatives across the Asia Pacific region. She then decided to gain further public sector KM experience by joining a semi-government agency. To balance the KM experience, in 2007 Cheryl decided to return to the private sector, joining one of the world’s leading integrated resorts. KMTALK has recently met Cheryl to discuss about the KM journey in her company.

• Tell us the nature of your company’s business

The organization is one of the world’s top players in the hospitality and entertainment industry. Their operations span between UK, Malaysia and Singapore.

• When did your company begin doing KM?

They started in 2003 but it was mainly centred around technology with the implementation of an intranet. However, there was no dedicated KM team until 2007.

• What were the main areas to address using KM ?

The main areas were managing records, documenting organizational knowledge and enhancing internal communications.

• What is the main focus of KM in your organization? ( i.e. technology, process, people management/culture)

People and processes are definitely on top of the list. Being in the service industry and in order for our people to perform at an optimum level and deliver a high level of customer service, we need to them to have the information they require almost immediately. In an industry where there is high turnover, KM also helps bring our staff up to speed quickly and we achieve this by having processes documented and disseminated efficiently.

• What is the role of your KM team?

For the KM team, we initiate KM programs depending on requirements and Knowledge gaps identified. We are also responsible for ensuring that information in the Intranet is current as well as educating departments on the importance of practicing KM.

• What technologies do you use for KM?

As expected, in such a large organization, we have many different technologies implemented. It’s difficult to say that one is for KM and another isn’t. We do have a content management system for our intranet, CRM for customer’s information, SAS and SAP. All of them help provide information so that we have it at our fingertips.

• What KM concepts and techniques did you initiate to assist staff in managing knowledge wisely?

Looking at the gaps, some of the initiatives we have run included:

-  Retention of Knowledge program where we interview senior staff and encourage them to share case studies of events.
-  Revamping the intranet for better internal communication and information dissemination;
-  Enhanced policies and procedures for better records management, which also includes physical records and documents; and
-  Embedding knowledge ‘gems’ into learning interventions. We get senior staff to attend the training session to share their learnings and/or we also share organization case studies of events and incidents.

As we are a very large organization with many different areas, the different departments use different KM techniques. For example, the After Action Review is used after a customer complaint incident. Communities of Practice (COPs) are used for our Quality circles. Speed Networking is used as internal event ice breakers.

• How do you monitor progress of your KM initiatives?

Unless it’s tied to Sales or an area where KM has a direct impact, most KM initiatives are difficult to monitor. In the service industry, KM may have an indirect impact on service levels which could be measured, like shortened queue times, higher guest satisfaction, etc. We use the Balanced Scorecard to measure these.

In the back office, measurements could be shortened document retrieval time, more efficient processes, etc. We have used Ideas generated and implemented as a measurement for process improvement.

• What challenges or barriers have you faced in implementing KM? How have you overcome them?

As with any new and unknown initiatives and programs, staff are normally wary about the objective as they can’t see where KM can add value to their work. They also perceive it as ‘additional work’ added onto their workload.

Being in an organization where it’s very established and most of the ‘knowledge’ are in the heads of staff that have been with the organization a very long time (20-30 years on average), it was difficult to get them to ‘break down’ what they do into documented processes that could be shared and taught to the newer staff. Because the older staff themselves also designed many of the processes, they were reluctant to put these down on paper; they feel that if others know the processes, then they would be dispensable. Sometimes it was also the fact that they didn’t know how to break it down and document them into a workflow diagram or on paper.

Unfortunately we are at the stage where many of our staff are nearing retirement age. At the same time, our mid-level executives, which are mainly Gen Y / Millennia, are becoming increasingly mobile resulting in a high turnover. Because of these factors, a greater importance was placed in ensuring that processes are documented properly to ensure a seamless continuity when staff retire or resign.

To overcome some of the barriers, we need to make sure that KM is seen as being helpful and accommodative to the business environment. For example, instead of getting staff to document processes themselves, we would interview them and then draw out the processes ourselves.

Sometimes we also need to look at the staff. We were dealing with staff which were mainly older with limited computer skills and limited computer access. So, we couldn’t expect them to be as tech-savvy as the younger generation. For example, whilst the younger staff are quite comfortable with technology and expect memos to be communicated electronically, the older staff would still expect written and signed memos.

As KMers, we needed to be sensitive to the types and level of staff we are dealing with and to adjust and tweak our initiatives so that it feels comfortable and natural to them.

• Any lessons learnt for other companies who are willing to implement KM...

a) Organizations need to be fully aware of why they want to implement KM. Many organizations do it these days because it’s the “in” thing to do. KM also comes in many forms and shapes so they need to be very clear on which area of KM they want to implement.

b) Ensure that there is at least 80% if not 100% buy in and backing from senior management as a whole. Often, there may be only 1 or 2 members of senior management who want to implement it but do note that if they leave the organization, organizations may find the their KM program may go out the door too.

c) Choose the correct personalities to run the initiatives. Trying to get staff to change the way they work is not an easy task so organizations need to ensure that those running the programs have personalities that are easy to get along with, with backgrounds and experiences that are credible and respected. Generally, KM practitioners need to be creative about how they approach the topic of KM, to understand the people they are addressing and to pitch the ideas / proposals appropriately so that they can see the value and buy into the ideas. They also need to be a real people person, to be able to build a good rapport with others. Be a good ‘journalist’, asking well formed questions and able to translate them into well written and documented ‘gems’ that can be shared and imbedded into learnings for others.

d) Don’t try to run many programs at one time. It only serves to confuse people. Aim for 1-2 initiatives every 6-9 months. When KM is new, it is natural for resistance to be high and people are just waiting to see how it will fare. Organizations need to build KM’s credibility so the first two initiatives cannot afford to fail. For the first initiative, choose something that will affect everyone. Personally, I like to take a look at HR-related information / processes as it affects everyone. If you can get it right, you would have a large majority of staff on your side.

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