Knowledge Management Succession Plan Strategy KBR Australia Essay

Knowledge Management Succession Plan Strategy

KBR Australia Knowledge Management Succession Plan Strategy

Kellogg, Brown Root (KBR) is an international company founded by Brown and Root in 1960 as Kinhill Engineers, and has gone through various changes over the years. A significant chapter in its history occurred in 2007, when it was split from Halliburton, to become a fully independent company. KBR's Australian division has offices in Melbourne, Adelaide, Canberra, Sydney, Brisane, Perth, Gold Coast and various project offices. This network of offices is served by 2,000 employees, with over 370 active contractors and employees. The company is a major engineering service and construction company, which offers support to energy, hydrocarbon, government and civil infrastructure sectors (Halliburton Corporate Sustainability Report, 2006). Table 1, in Appendix I, shows a breakdown of the different organization and operations level, while Table 2, shows the breakdown of the different staffing levels for the Brisbane branch. The focus of this research is the company's knowledge management (KM) succession strategy.

This analysis is necessary given that KBR's KM strategy was redesigned in 2006, following the separation from Halliburton. The policy was implemented in 2007, and was designed to create criteria for ensuring the transfer of knowledge and the planning of local succession (Halliburton Corporate Sustainability Report, 2006). The current KM and succession strategy used in KBR, is based on this policy which also describes the creation of new multipurpose facilities for managerial and technical training. Training is offered in five categories, these are: technical excellence focus, location, internal, online KBR training and munch 'n' learn. A survey carried out by Energy Services Group in 2006, showed that employee training hours had increased by 10.7% in 2006 as compared to 2005 following the inception of the program, as indicated in table 3 Appendix I. In addition, the company found a need to develop strong innovative leaders, for the future success of the company by creating the "President's Leadership Excellence Program" (Halliburton Corporate Sustainability Report, 2006).The succession strategy entails succession planning, where career paths are clearly defined. Management uses these career paths along with performance management initiatives to expand employee retention programs. The goal of this succession strategy is to encourage goal setting and gauge competitive and progress compensation among employees (Halliburton Corporate Sustainability Report, 2006).

According to Bagorogoza & Waal (2010) "KM entails knowledge acquisition, knowledge dissemination and responsiveness to knowledge for greater high performance organization." High performance management was described by Banham, McDonald and Wisner (2007) as the set of management actions that improve employee relations via employee participation and involvement, which in turn improves the performance and profitability of the organization through consultation and communication between employees and management. Based on this broad definition, Banham, McDonald and Wisner (2007) and Bagorogoza & Waal (2010), recommend that high performance organizations can be attained when management is able to link human resource's management practices with performance. To turn KBR into a high performance organization, its management should create a high performance organization (HPO) framework, which should comprise of HR activities that focus on knowledge management in order to gain a competitive advantage.

Based on this theory, it is evident that following the 2007 separation KBR' KM succession strategy, needs to focus on several HR issues to attain competitiveness. KBR needs to develop its KM around knowledge dissemination, knowledge acquisition and responsiveness. Knowledge here implies the set of insights, technology, products, markets, customers, processes, and competition that lead to effective action (Bagorogoza & Waal, 2010). Analyzing KBR's transferable competencies, it is evident that its training strategy incorporates various types of knowledge associated with the broad categories of communication, empowerment, strategic process thinking, business process thinking, leadership, commercial, and quality, health, safety and environment. Given that KBR is an engineering firm, there is a need for the HR department to….....