Wednesday 23 March 2016

The top 10 organisations that value Knowledge Management skills

Which organisations value KM skills the most? One way to answer this question is to see where the people with KM skills mostly work. 


This is relatively easy to do via LinkedIn.  If you find the profile of someone who has Knowledge Management as a skill, and click on Knowledge Management, you can find a list of the ten organisations which hire the most people with this skill.  Here they are.

1. IBM - 2110 people with KM skills.

IBM are top of the list partly because they are huge (nearly 400,000 employees) and partly because of their long history with KM (they started in 1984). They have been MAKE award winners for many consecutive years, and you can read about their KM approach here. IBM also sells KM consulting services. 

2. Accenture - 1706 people with KM skills.

Again, a big company (370,000 staff) with a long-term KM history (since 1990) recognised by the MAKE awards. 

3. Hewlett Packard - 1431 people with KM skills.

You can see the trend - huge company (300,000 staff), long-term KM history (since 1995), multiple MAKE awards. 

4. EY - 1364 people with KM skills.

EY see their knowledge as a selling point, and are actively recruiting into their knowledge team. As a large (190,000) global company recognised for KM, they certainly value it as a skill, as shown by their multiple MAKE awards.

5. Deloitte - 1233 with KM skills.

Another big (225,000) global consulting company and MAKE winner. Consulting firms certainly understand the value of knowledge, as that is the product they sell. Deloitte also sell KM consulting. 

6. PWC - 928 with KM skills.

A third big (200,000) consulting company in a row. And another MAKE winner

7. US Army - 869 with KM skills.

Something different! Not a consulting company, although still big and global (over a million active and reserve staff), the US Army has been doing KM since forever. However it never seems to get into the MAKE awards!

8.Oracle - 836 with KM skills.

The computer giant, 160,000 staff and also a MAKE winner.

9. SAP - 751 with KM skills.

SAP (75000 staff)  sells KM products, and to my knowledge has not been a MAKE winner. 

10. Cap Gemini - 750 with KM skills.

The 180,000-staff consulting firm offers KM solutions and is not a MAKE winner.


So if you are looking to join an organisation that values Knowledge Management as a skill, look for a really big one that appears in the MAKE awards. Or join the Army.


By the way, if you take the average of the numbers above, these organisations (with the exception of the US Army) have 6 people with KM skills per thousand staff. 

4 comments:

Unknown said...

The number per thousand is remarkably consistent as well

Ana Neves said...

This is really interesting stuff, Nick, but am I wrong to conclude that you can only compare these with other equally large companies? If you have a 150 people company where 100 have KM skills, that company values KM more than any one of those you list, right?

Also, how much of KM is about KM skills? What happens when KM is so embedded in the culture that you believe is no longer about KM skills but just about work skills?

Not trying to take away any credit for the work you did, obviously. As I said, I find it really interesting and the results are certainly food for thought. I'm just thinking out loud and sharing my thoughts with you :)

Nick Milton said...

Yes, you are quite right Ana. The analysis I showed is really "which companies have the most employees with KM as a ranked skill on LinkedIn", and even then, I dont know how LinkedIn calculates the numbers. Are these "people with KM as their highest skill"? I suspect thats how they do the calculation.

LinkedIn shows us this list as automated data, and to find any other data would be an exhausting process. Were the LinkedIn dataset ever made open, then we could do the sort of calculations.

Nick Milton said...

To pick up on your second comment Ana, about whether you need KM skills when a KM culture is embedded - I would say that all the companies on this list have KM fully embedded in the culture, even though they are top of the list for KM skills.

Embedding a KM culture does not remove the need for KM roles, any more than embedding a safety culture removes the needs for HSE roles, or embedding a quality culture removes the need for Quality roles. The numbers suggest that even with KM embedded, you still need 1 person in about 200 with KM skills and playing KM role.

In fact, I would say that these organisations only have a KM culture *because* they value KM skills and have KM roles.

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