Hello PPMA friends

In our latest post, Tanya Corsie, CEO and Director from our good friends and supporters, Iken, shares some valuable information about using knowledge management in the most effective way.

“After working within the Public Sector for 25 years we have witnessed time and again the amazing and transformative work conducted by Public Servants. With the nature of our workplaces rapidly changing we understand that HR leaders require a range of tools to support them achieve their organisations objectives.

There can’t be just one tool to support people management. This year the PPMA have 8 strategic themes all different, all essential. After spending so many years understanding how knowledge is created, shared & stored amongst teams and organisations, we know that knowledge management is an essential foundation for achieving many of these strategic themes and ultimately for successful people management and the management of workforce issues.

But what do we mean by ‘knowledge management’?

Think of all the data, information or in other words knowledge flying around your team, your organisation right now, think of all the different processes, people and the changes and challenges in progress. If you could collate, report on and share that information it would help an organisation to work more effectively – right?

The Gartner Group defined it as: “Knowledge management (KM) is a business process that formalizes the management and use of an enterprise’s intellectual assets. KM promotes a collaborative and integrative approach to the creation, capture, organization, access and use of information assets, including the tacit, uncaptured knowledge of people”.

So, this is what we at Iken work with every day helping HR teams within the Public Sector to manage complex and diverse work, empowering the optimisation of existing resources to effectively manage challenging cases and reach resolutions more swiftly.

With central access to full case histories, including all related documents, you can track the progress of a case whilst ensuring work has been completed in accordance with internal and external policies. Iken helps you to manage complex HR processes whilst maintaining comprehensive audit trails for additional peace of mind.

With best in class technology including both on-premise and cloud-based solutions we are an ethical tech company with all development & support carried out in our lovely offices in Bristol – but we are more than that – more than just a software provider.

How is Iken different?

We believe that when it comes to using new technology to support the current and future workforce, we all have a collective responsibility to ensure we keep people, their values, aspirations and requirements central and permit technology to support their objectives when required.  For us at Iken we realise that responsibility which is why we are a service provider (not only a software provider).  For us the service side is about helping teams through transformation change, helping to establish & improve processes and helping to bring people within an organisation together.  The Iken Support Commitment is a fine example of how we keep people and their requirements central.

We understand that technology in a vacuum is not going to change the world.  Rather it is people trying to empower people within their teams and organisations who are the real drivers of change.  Invariably it is people looking to improve and refine processes, to develop cross team working, to support teams when colleagues are away, to enable access to staff with accessibility challenges and to increase overall effectiveness of an organisation that drive change and the empowerment of people.

Yes, technology plays a crucial role in achieving those objectives but the successful organisations we work with at Iken have managed to achieve a balance between keeping the human connections and objectives at the centre whilst allowing technology to serve and enable teams and their processes.  We understand that it’s people who generate the empowerment of people and that technology needs to serve those requirements not overwhelm and dictate within an organisations culture.

I hope, that if you have read this far that you have found this blog interesting, if you would like to know more about Iken then please do get in contact with us: [email protected] or 0117 373 0790.”

Best wishes,

Tanya Corsie, CEO & Director, Iken