If you’re losing staff during this economic downturn, you’re not just losing productivity; you’re losing intellectual property that could be used to help your company excel during the recovery.

Employee Attrition = Lost IP

In most companies, the wealth of innovative ideas that exists in the minds of employees is a tremendously valuable asset. When employees leave the company, their product and service ideas leave with them. Their files and emails might be mined for information “as needed,” but without the employee there to share AND promote their ideas, this IP is essentially lost.

If you think you can capture their ideas while they’re on their way out, think again. For most employees, ideas occur “in the moment,” so if capturing employee ideas is not a regular part of your corporate culture, you could be losing valuable IP that could have a positive impact on products, sales, customer satisfaction and, ultimately, revenue.

Employees leave companies for many reasons, including the economy, industry trends or a changing company culture. Engaging your employees in idea sharing and collaboration not only ensures that “tribal knowledge” is preserved; it raises employee satisfaction by giving everyone a voice in the discussion on how to improve products and services.

In my next post later this week, I’ll offer five tips for managing your idea assets.