This post is one in a series that answers questions from viewers of the January 28 KnowledgeVision Google Hangout where we talked about the challenges of Working with SMEs.

We got this question from Nicole:

Any tips for incentivizing and rewarding busy SMEs to deliver part of the training in the classroom? Internal SMEs maybe would like to teach others, but they are working on BHAGs, for which there are greater career and financial rewards?

First, I was not familiar with the term “BHAG”. Now I know! It means “big, hairy, audacious goals”.

As for the question, when you have a subject matter expert who is being reluctantly pulled away from their job, the first approach is to remind them how important their role as a SME is to the organization. They will be training people who are their colleagues and working along side them. It is an opportunity for the subject matter expert to have a lasting impact on the company.

Beyond that, when their time spent working on the training program interferes with their ability to generate commission-based income or pulls them away from some other activity they value, then the company needs to think about incentivizing the SME to offset their loss.

We recently had this come up with a sales training team. We had written a coaching and mentoring program that required a fairly significant amount of classroom time with ongoing commitments to training new hires. The mentoring program would get the new hires up to speed much faster and the organization stood to benefit. But the individual mentors? Not so much. Their perceived return was just not worth their time.

Solutions? The company can structure a bonus or incentive program for sales people or anyone who stands to lose income if they participate as mentors. SMEs need to be recognized for their efforts in a way that it puts a finger on the scale during their review process or in some other way is related to a measurement of their job performance.

The upshot is that when you invite or require a subject matter expert to be involved in taking time away from other activities that they value – such as generating sales or working on a research project – you need to reward them in some way to recognize their  contribution and offset their loss. Otherwise, you may end up with a SME that doesn’t want to spend the time working on developing or delivering the training program. That’s just lose-lose-lose. No good for the SME, no good for the training, and no good for the company.