What knowledge can you not afford to lose? Two questions to prioritise any knowledge retention effort

When an experienced employee leaves the company — through retirement, resignation or illness — you often hear the same line: "We should have secured their knowledge sooner." Most managing directors know it. They know the demographic wave is coming: 13.4 million workers in Germany will reach statutory retirement age in the next 15 years; in manufacturing, 59 % of those over 55 will retire within five years. They also know — according to a study by the Alster Akademie Hamburg — that nearly 60 % of companies rate knowledge loss as one of their biggest risks.

And yet very few act in time. The reason is surprisingly simple: it feels like too much. Hundreds of processes, dozens of key people, decades of grown ways of working — where do you even start?

That is exactly the question on which most knowledge management initiatives in the Mittelstand fail. Not because the approach is wrong. But because everything is tackled at once.

Why "document everything" is guaranteed to fail

We see it in nearly every other company we visit: at some point, a knowledge management project was started. A wiki was set up. A SharePoint library was created. Employees were asked to "write down what they know." The result six months later? A collection of half-finished documents in a folder no one opens.

The problem isn't the idea. The problem is the missing prioritisation. A company with 120 employees has hundreds of processes — from payroll to material ordering to customer acquisition. Documenting them all at the same time is neither realistic nor economically sound. And most companies only realise that after they have already invested months of effort.

The right question therefore isn't: "What knowledge do we have?" It is:

"What knowledge can we not afford to lose?"

That reframing is more than wordplay. It forces prioritisation — and that is what separates a project that fizzles out from one that actually works.

The two questions for your prioritisation

Successful knowledge retention starts with two questions. You don't need more to identify the right areas.

Question 1: How business-critical is the process?

Not every piece of knowledge is equally valuable. A process that directly drives revenue or shapes customer contact carries a different weight from an internal admin routine.

In concrete terms: quote calculation, production documentation, technical reporting, risk assessment in complex projects — these are the areas where knowledge loss directly hits revenue or delivery capability. If your estimator is out, no quotes go out. If your site manager leaves, the mandatory documentation goes missing. If your project engineer retires, no one knows which customers can live with which tolerances.

These are the processes that get priority. Not internal travel expense reports.

Question 2: How high is the attrition risk for the knowledge holder?

The second dimension is timing. A 62-year-old project engineer who retires in three years has a completely different urgency profile than a 35-year-old team lead with 30 working years ahead.

Don't only consider age. Other factors play in too: is the employee currently in poor health? Has there been a private change (relocation, family) that makes a job change more likely? How marketable is their profile — could they be poached tomorrow?

It feels uncomfortable, but it's necessary. Knowledge retention only works as long as the knowledge holders are still in the company. Once they're gone, it's too late.

The matrix: where to act first

If you combine both questions, you get a simple four-field matrix:

The top-right field — business-critical and at risk of leaving — is your absolute priority. This is where you act first. Everything else follows in order.

In practice, this often means: it isn't ten areas that need immediate attention. It's one, two, maybe three. But securing exactly those delivers more than a sprawling project that tries to capture everything at once.

What you can do in your next leadership meeting

You don't need to launch a knowledge management programme to run this prioritisation. A 60-minute session with your leadership team is enough.

1. List ten key processes. Which ten processes in your company would be especially critical if the responsible person were suddenly gone?
2. Score each on two axes. Business-criticality (1–5) and attrition risk (1–5).
3. Sort the list by total. The top three are your action focus for the next 12 months.

This exercise regularly surfaces areas that no one in daily work had on their radar — because the people involved do their jobs so reliably that the risk stays invisible.

About the author: Oliver Bührer is managing director at SimplifieD Solutions GmbH. With his team he supports mid-sized companies in mechanical engineering, construction and manufacturing in securing critical experiential knowledge before it leaves the company with the demographic wave — with more than 30 successfully delivered projects.