Knowledge Sharing

Knowledge sharing is a key to institutionalizing our existing competencies and developing new ones. This is a two-way process, as tenured employees share their experience and new employees share their knowledge of emerging trends and technologies.

Spectra Energy is formalizing our knowledge-sharing process to ensure that critical competencies, skills and behaviors are transferred and shared in the organization. This process, begun in 2008, encompasses several elements:

• Identification of critical skills needs and employees with that knowledge
• Working with leadership and employees to create or improve knowledge sharing practices
• Linking employees with critical skills and employees who need this knowledge through face-to-face and hands-on programs, such as training, mentoring and job rotations
• Documenting and sharing knowledge globally using technology such as SharePoint
• External benchmarking, performance measurement and continuous improvement.

For example, meeting the challenge of accelerating learning in a changing organization, the Regulatory Affairs department has embraced knowledge sharing as a strategy to help achieve a high-performance learning culture. In 2009, all Regulatory Affairs team members participated in goal-setting and exercises to help build a foundation for the advancement of the department’s knowledge sharing framework.

Another example of knowledge sharing is the EHS Incident Learning and Prevention (ILP) System used to track safety incidents and lessons learned. The ILP database tool logs incident information, tracks investigations to closure and generates internal reports to help frontline management better understand and control risks as well as develop corrective action plans to prevent recurrence of unwanted or unplanned events.