Organizational knowledge management: survival strategy for nigeria insurance industry

The Nigerian Insurance Industry is struggling with knowledge loss resulting from employee turnover like other public or private sector organizations. Especially when older hands are retired or downsizing of qualified and trained staff during a period of re-engineering of the organization. Costs of recruiting, of lost productivity and training to replace employees can reach huge amount. Capturing knowledge inside an organization seems to be one of the main purposes of studying knowledge management professional. In the insurance industry, trade secrets, confidential information and valuable ideas are part of the workforce knowledge. Recruiting, selecting, training and managing insurance agents constitute a real challenge for insurance companies all over the world, and a sensitive ethics-related issue is the case of insurance agents leaving the employer, in order to transfer to a competitor insurance company, while trying to take along as many clients as possible from the old employer. This paper looks at how to prevent or minimize the loss of expertise, customer contracts and product knowledge when key employees leave for another company within the industry.