How to maintain culture & knowledge when an engineer resigns

Shaun Henry | +61 474 226 332

February 2023

A toolkit for seamless knowledge transfer

When one of your engineers decides to leave, it can be a challenging time for many reasons. You've most likely built a solid relationship going through the challenges faced by most startups. Their skills may have played a key role in bringing ideas to life. You may have questions about how this will impact the company's future.

The average tenure in Australia's tech industry is 2-3 years. Engineers will inevitably leave your business someday. Don't let the departure of an engineer feel like a threat to the company. This can positively affect the business with new people coming with fresh ideas and other skills.

What to do

Now is not the time to damage the relationship: You must communicate openly and honestly with the departing engineer. Find out why they are leaving and try to understand their reasons. Ask them for feedback on how the business could prevent future departures or even provide insights into what they would like if they were to remain in the business.
Plan for the handover: As soon as you know the engineer is leaving, start planning. Identify what knowledge and skills they possess that you want to retain.
Have a knowledge transfer plan: See below
Conduct exit interviews: This will provide valuable insights into the reasons why the engineer is leaving and what the business can do to improve employee retention in the future.
Maintain a positive relationship: Even though the engineer is leaving, it's important to maintain a positive relationship with them. You never know when you might need to work with them again or when they might refer other engineers to your business.

Knowledge Retention Plan

Firstly, you'll want to minimise disruption to your culture & productivity.

We've created a plan to help you minimise disruption and maintain the knowledge developed over the years.

Step 1: Identify what you want to retain

Before bringing the handover, you must determine what you need to retain. This could be critical code and processes your business relies on.

Tip: Think of things the engineer does that make them stand out and try to figure out how to maintain this in your culture.

Step 2: Centralising documentation & processes

Once you know what skills & knowledge you want to transfer, it's time to get it all down in one place.

Creating a centralised location for all your company's processes and documentation will increasingly improve the onboarding process as you grow. This will also allow new engineers to hit the ground running.

Step 3: Training Programs

No matter how good your documentation is, it's important to provide training programs to ensure new employees understand the skills they need to perform at the standard you expect.

Step 4: Mentoring

Mentoring is a great way to transfer knowledge continuously so that when an engineer does move on, they've imparted their knowledge & experience.

This also helps with retention as junior engineers feel empowered and may take the opportunity to step up into a more senior position.

Step 5: Create a collaborative culture

Creating a culture that encourages collaboration is key to retaining knowledge with many benefits, such as:

Improved Problem Solving
Faster Innovation
Increase employee engagement
Increased efficiency

Step 6: How to leverage TechTech

Technology can be a great way to facilitate knowledge transfer, especially for remote engineers.

You'll most likely have some form of collaboration tools in place. We've found a few tools that piqued our interest.

Guru is a knowledge management platform that uses AI to help share knowledge.

Another one we found interesting is Obie, a chatbot that integrates with Slack and Microsoft Teams. Obie can be trained to answer FAQs and help new employees feel comfortable asking the 'silly' questions.

Step 7: Continuously Improve and continuously develop your process

Laying the foundations from the points above will allow everyone to collaborate more effectively. Reviewing this process continually will set your business up for success as you continue to scale.

What the stats say

Our survey says

A study by the University of Technology Sydney found that ineffective knowledge transfer can lead to a 38% decline in software engineering performance."

In contrast, A report by Deloitte found that effective knowledge transfer can improve software engineering project success rates by up to 70%.
CareerBuilder found that 1 in 5 workers have some sort of "secret recipe" that they keep to themselves, so make sure to uncover those secrets and get them documented!
A survey by Deloitte found that organisations with strong mentoring programs have 20% lower turnover rates than those without them. So, pair up your experienced employees with your new hires to create a culture of learning and development.
A study by IBM found that companies that foster a culture of sharing knowledge and ideas are 40% more likely to have higher employee engagement.
A study by Hubspot found that 84% of remote workers feel more connected to their team when they use video conferencing tools.

Template for an effective handover process:

Identify the Handover Objectives: Before starting the handover process, the handover objectives should be identified.

This could include:

Introducing the new team member to the project and team.
Providing an overview of the system architecture and codebase.
Highlighting areas of the codebase that may require more attention.
Ensuring the new team member understands the project requirements and objectives.
Clarifying any outstanding issues or questions.
Schedule a Meeting: Schedule a meeting between the existing team member and the new team member, allowing enough time for a thorough discussion.
Prepare Documentation: Prepare any necessary documentation, such as project plans, technical documentation, and coding guidelines, and make sure the new team member has access to them.
Walkthrough the Project: During the meeting, walk through the project and provide an overview of the system architecture and codebase. Highlight any critical areas or dependencies that may need attention.
Review the Code: Review the codebase with the new team member, explaining any technical decisions made and any best practices or standards used. Ensure that the new team member has a clear understanding of the code and how it works.
Explain Testing Procedures: Explain any testing procedures in place and how they can be run. Provide guidance on writing unit tests and integration tests, and the importance of them.
Discuss Project Management: Discuss the project management process, such as how tasks are assigned and tracked, how bugs are reported and resolved, and how releases are made.
Answer Questions: Allow time for questions and ensure the new team member is comfortable with the project and their new role.
Follow-Up: Schedule follow-up meetings to ensure that the new team member is settling in well and to answer any additional questions they may have.

Find this useful?

For more tips on your recruitment process. Reach out to [email protected] | +61 474226332