Sinequa Finds Over Two-Thirds of IT Leaders Are Concerned by Organizational Knowledge Loss From Employee Turnover

New study exposes how knowledge loss from employee resignations and layoffs impact employees and business risk

As the Great Resignation continues to challenge companies of all sizes, across all industries amid new trends of layoffs, concern over declining employee productivity and loss of corporate knowledge is building. This is according to a recent study by Search Cloud provider Sinequa, which today announced findings from a survey of 1,000 IT managers at large organizations in the UK and US to explore the impact the Great Resignation has on employee experience, productivity, and organizational risk.

High employee attrition and turnover spur concerns of knowledge loss

Key findings from the survey include:

• 67% of all respondents reported being concerned by the loss of knowledge and expertise when people leave the company
• 71% of respondents agree the Great Resignation is contributing to organizational knowledge loss
• 64% felt that their organization has experienced loss of knowledge due to people leaving the company

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When given a list of options to describe the most significant challenge resulting from knowledge loss, survey respondents cited workplace inefficiency/declining productivity (45%), followed by communication gaps (12%), and poor employee experience and poor customer experience selected by 11% of respondents respectively.

Access to information and knowledge impacts employee experience

Unsurprisingly, nearly all respondents (91%) agree that greater access to knowledge helps people work smarter and more efficiently. The survey also revealed how access to knowledge is perceived as having a direct impact on employee turnover and employee experience:

• 45% of survey respondents felt that greater access to corporate knowledge would reduce employee turnover
• 70% agree that if employees could easily find and access relevant information in their organization, knowledge loss would be reduced
• 49% agree that loss of knowledge or expertise will harm their organization’s ability to hire new employees, and an additional 56% agree it will hurt the organization’s ability to onboard new employees

Preventing knowledge loss amid employee turnover

One-quarter of the respondents said their organization has a knowledge management strategy, with 46% of those respondents indicating that it has been adjusted to address the risk of employees quitting or leaving. This is significant, as new trends of mass layoffs and hiring freezes emerge. As of early August, more than 34,000 workers in the U.S. tech sector have been laid off in mass job cuts so far in 2022, according to a Crunchbase News tally.

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“Whether an organization is facing resignations or layoffs, some of the most underreported risks are the impacts employee turnover has on the loss of invaluable tacit knowledge and organizational intelligence, along with disruption to productivity and workflows,” said Scott Parker, Director of Product Marketing at Sinequa. “There’s never been a more critical time for IT leaders to prioritize knowledge management strategies and look to intelligent technologies to fill critical gaps. At Sinequa, we’re empowering companies to retain information while providing their employees greater access to knowledge that helps them work smarter and more efficiently.”

Sinequa serves both large and complex organizations with the most complete enterprise search, ever. Sinequa’s Search Cloud platform provides employees with secure, unified access to all information regardless of source, format, or language. That way, they always have the knowledge, expertise, and insights they need to make informed decisions, work more efficiently, optimize responsiveness to customers and drive innovation. By enabling organizations to surface the know-how and experience of their best employees, and preventing that knowledge from becoming lost or hidden when an employee leaves, Sinequa helps increase knowledge sharing and accelerate innovation and employee productivity.

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