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            EXPERTISE MANAGEMENT: A PROMISING APPROACH FOR SUCCESSION PLANNING
      

      
  Document Series
              Research Results


      
  Author
          Federal Railroad Administration


      
Report Number
              RR 23-22

  Office
              RDI-24


      Subject
                    Human Factors


      
  Keywords
              succession planning, training, education, cognitive task analysis, expertise, knowledge management, leadership skills, emotional intelligence


      

      
      
              
                  
      
              
  Document
              Expertise Management.pdf (394.43 KB)

      
              The railroad industry is facing a significant loss of expertise that succession planning programs alone cannot adequately mitigate, largely due to shifting demographics and an aging employee population. In 2022, FRA’s Office of Research, Development, and Technology’s Human Factors Division sponsored TrueSafety Evaluation to demonstrate an innovative Expertise Management (EM) Framework to identify, capture, and transfer critical areas of expertise for safety leadership positions in the U.S. railroad industry. The EM Framework is a set of processes and methods for managing expertise, scaffolded by the collective experience of experts in the organization applied in specific organizational contexts. This work builds upon previous, FRA-sponsored Cognitive Task Analysis initiatives. The project applies the EM Framework to the domain of safety-critical rail operations to strengthen highly skilled areas of technical expertise, such as train-track interactions, and Key Impact SkillsSM within the railroad industry.
      
            
      
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