Whether and How to Retain Employees’ Knowledge During a Sabbatical or Study Leave?
- Sagit Salmon
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
Knowledge retention during sabbatical or study leave is a structured process for preserving critical expertise before an employee’s absence, capturing new learning throughout the leave, and reintegrating it upon return. Through planned documentation, check-ins, and a return debrief, organizations reduce knowledge-loss risks, maintain continuity, and turn temporary absence into organizational learning.
Those who follow us have surely seen our intensive work in knowledge retention, a topic that occupies and troubles many organizations.
Knowledge retention is an organizational activity aimed at learning from the knowledge employees have accumulated and improving continuity of operations in their absence.
As part of this activity, employees document their knowledge and make it accessible to others, reducing the risk of knowledge loss.
The types of employees whose knowledge it is recommended to retain include departing employees and expert employees.
Departing employees are those who are ending their role due to retirement, leaving the organization, or a job change.
The knowledge retention process for these employees is usually quick and simple, requires little time investment, and can be carried out independently by the employee or with minimal guidance from a knowledge management professional. Its main purpose is to shorten the replacement’s training time.
Experts are employees with unique knowledge, and documenting that knowledge is a longer, more complex process that a professional knowledge management person should carry out. Its main purpose is to "free" the organization from dependence on the expert, and to enable additional employees to become specialized in the field.
Another type of employee, not always reflected in the organization’s knowledge retention plan, is employees who go on sabbatical or study leave.
First, they may be experts, and their departure for the year poses a risk of knowledge loss. Second, during the year they continue to develop, learn, and accumulate knowledge, which they will bring back to the organization upon their return to work.
Regarding these employees, we propose a knowledge retention model made up of several stages:
Preliminary stage - before departure:
Going on sabbatical/study leave is a planned move, which does not happen by surprise. Therefore, we recommend including employees going on sabbatical/study leave in the annual knowledge retention plan.
As part of the plan, decide which of these employees is defined as an expert and, accordingly, carry out an expert knowledge retention process with them.
Before departure, whether or not a retention process was carried out, align expectations with the employee regarding knowledge documentation during the year through a joint conversation with the manager, video review, and guidance on how to document. You can even create a blank document with guidelines and headings to serve as a documentation aid.
During the sabbatical/study year:
The expectation is that the employee will independently document the knowledge they accumulate during the year.
This way, the organization documents and retains the new knowledge, and the employee can adopt a routine practice of knowledge retention.
What is recommended to document during the year?
If they went to study - new topics they learned or things that surprised them
If working on a project - decisions, issues, and instances where judgment was exercised at each milestone of the project
In any case - gathering documents in a dedicated repository, documenting thoughts and ideas for the future
You can contact the employee from time to time to make sure they are documenting, or to remind them to do so.
After returning to work:
An "onboarding" meeting with the participation of the employee, the direct manager, and the knowledge management person.
In this meeting, the employee will review the activities carried out during the year of absence and present the materials they documented.
In the meeting, it is also recommended to decide how to make the materials accessible and whether additional meetings are needed, with guidance from a knowledge management person, to deepen the documentation of a particular topic.
In conclusion, this process allows the organization to bring an additional population of employees under the retention umbrella, one that is not always reflected in knowledge retention work plans.
Most importantly, it enables a structured, orderly retention process integrated into the work routine, without waiting until the last minute.
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