1. Introduction

Retaining digital skills and knowledge when people leave your organisation is very important, especially for heritage organisations where volunteers change and short-term projects abound.

In a sector with high turnover – whether its academics moving on or community projects changing over time – organisations must ensure that they share their hard-earned knowledge before people leave, so that they can move forward easily, even with staff changes.  

Knowledge sharing has multiple benefits. It increases productivity by reducing bottlenecks – if everyone can perform a task, then there is no need to wait for someone who can. It leads to greater collaboration and teamwork – people have a greater appreciation of how things work as a whole within your organisation when understanding the different roles that feed into it.

Finally, it helps organisations future-proof themselves. Sharing challenges, solutions, and even account logins means that the work does not have to stop because the person initially looking after it has moved on. It means that no task is left without someone responsible for it. 

It means a seamless handover from one person in the organisation to another, helping them to do their job and your organisation to continue to flourish in another’s absence. 

2. Checklist for skill-retention

In this checklist, which you can download below, we show you how you can document digital skills and knowledge in your organisation in the event of staff or volunteers leaving. 

3. Download checklist

Download and print out the Checklist for skill-retention (pdf 166kb) for more information on each of these stages and to keep track of your progress. 

More help here

How can I retain digital content skills and knowledge in my organisation?

In this resource Ioan Marc Jones examines the best ways that heritage organisations can retain content skills and knowledge, with tips on auditing, sharing, mentoring and more.

 

How do I ensure that the digital content I create is accessible?

Creating accessible digital content helps you share the work of your heritage organisation with more people. This resource by Diversity & Ability look at both the ethical and legal requirements of ensuring your digital content is accessible. It provides a step-by-step guide from alt text to accessible hashtags and everything in between.

 

How do we ensure that people are at the heart of the stories we tell?

How do we ensure that people are at the heart of our heritage organisation’s digital stories? People, their history, communities, identity, culture and oral history are at the heart of many of our heritage organisations. So how can we ensure that our content is people-focused? This article by James Berg outlines an actionable plan through seven simple steps that ensures you are placing people at the heart of your storytelling.

 

Except where noted and excluding company and organisation logos this work is shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) Licence

Please attribute as: "How can I document my content when staff leave the organisation? (2022) by Ioan Marc Jones, Charity Digital supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, licensed under CC BY 4.0