Tutorials for Safeguards Managers: Emerging Best Practices

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have collaborated on knowledge capture and transfer initiatives during the past several years. Both organizations are interested in finding ways to preserve their knowledge assets and to inform staff at all levels of new policies and practices as they emerge by the most efficient means available. In particular, the two organizations face a key practical need for fast, effective means of providing managers, particularly newly-appointed managers, with the process knowledge they need to carry out tasks assigned to them. To meet this need, an organization must address three distinct challenges. It must: capture the process knowledge; package it for efficient delivery; and, motivate managers to make use of it. Drawing on the experience of a recent collaborative effort by the CNSC and IAEA to convey process knowledge to managers on the topic of Retaining Job-Related Knowledge from Departing Staff using an innovative on-line tutorial, this paper discusses emerging best practices for the capture, packaging and dissemination of process knowledge using both technology- assisted and more traditional methods. As knowledge transfer activities at the Department of Safeguards are imbedded increasingly in the frameworks and processes provided by the ISO 9001:2000 Quality Management Standard, the paper also explores how a work environment guided by this standard can facilitate the on-going transfer of tacit and explicit knowledge in support of individual and organizational learning, decision-making, and continuous improvement.