Recognizable?

Henk is about to retire. As a senior maintenance engineer, he has spent 25 years ensuring that the company’s gas turbines run flawlessly at customer sites. He’s the walking archive: anyone facing a problem goes straight to Henk.

His manager is worried: “Who will solve these problems when he’s gone?” He asks Henk to spend his last three months writing down his most important knowledge. Henk agrees and starts enthusiastically. But due to workload and urgent issues, he manages to document only a quarter of what he intended. At his farewell, he hands over a thick but unfinished document.

A week later, the manager takes a closer look. The 100‑page document is far from complete. And when a turbine malfunction occurs, it turns out that this specific issue isn’t described. Henk simply didn’t have time for it. Henk, meanwhile, is already off on his world trip. So what now? A new technician is sent to solve the issue. After two months of discussions and puzzling, an unhappy customer, and a damage claim, the problem is finally resolved.

What do we do?

Eluxis is often engaged to secure the knowledge of employees who are about to retire. When we step in, we help with the following:

Creating a solid planning process so we start on time and leave room for review and handover.
Identifying which knowledge is critical and not yet documented. In practice, we see two common mistakes in knowledge retention:
1. Writing down everything you know, which usually results in an unusable data dump.
2. Documenting information that already exists elsewhere, creating information clutter.
Ensuring timely and effective knowledge transfer.

What’s the result?

Many companies postpone knowledge documentation because they dread the process: often until it’s too late.

Our experience shows that we can quickly collect, document, and transfer the most important knowledge from departing employees.

This ensures that, once Henk retires, he can enjoy his world trip without worry. And his successor no longer needs to wonder what Henk’s golden tip would have been for a given issue, because that crucial tip has been documented in time.