By Kirstin Downey Grimsley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 23, 1997; Page C01

Andrew Jewell, 29, a software programmer hired last year at American Management Services Inc., a Fairfax-based management consulting firm, was still a little shy around the office, so he turned to his computer one day for help with a thorny technical problem he faced with the program code he was developing.

Using the company's state-of-the-art knowledge center, a sort of in-house Internet that allows workers to share information, Jewell sent out a request for assistance from people who had worked on similar problems in the past.

Quickly, an answer came back. A co-worker had a good solution, and suggested Jewell stop over to talk about it. Jewell headed out the door and down the hall, and only as he approached the man's office did he realize it housed an AMS executive, Leif Ulstrup, whom Jewell would typically have been reluctant to approach with a question.

"If I had known right away that this is the business process reengineering guru, and a vice president of a whole operation, I would never have gone into that office," Jewell said recently with a laugh. "I'd have figured he had better things to do than talk to me."

Such tales of collaboration are fueling the popularity of corporate knowledge centers, with an estimated one-third of all companies nationwide planning, implementing or using these programs. Some systems use the Internet, some employ in-house corporate intranets and some permit networked personal computers to link up in cyberspace.

Yet the main concept behind all of them is that they enable workers to share information readily, even if they work at far-flung sites. In an increasingly impersonal world, such centers are a sort of virtual water cooler, where colleagues can gather to talk and teach each other how to do things better.

AMS developed its system as a way of linking its 7,200 employees, located in 53 offices worldwide, and because it is adding 2,000 employees a year. This means that at any one time, many workers are struggling to learn the ropes at AMS.

"We're geographically and culturally dispersed, and we're not all working in the same time zone, so it's not easy to know who knows about what you're working on," said Sue Hanley, director of the AMS Knowledge Centers. While technology is making these contacts possible, psychology remains a formidable obstacle. Here's the rub: It's easy to understand why Jewell, for example, turned to the system for information he needed, but what caused Ulstrup to volunteer to help someone he didn't even know? In an era of downsizing, when it's everybody for himself, how can workers be expected to give away what they went to great pains to learn on their own? That's the puzzle managers of these knowledge centers are trying to solve.

"We're brainstorming those things now," said Marshall Lewis, director of ELF Interactive, a Bethesda-based worker training firm developing its intranet. "It's not easy at all."

AMS encourages participation by turning its knowledge center into a closed club. It has chosen only about 850 workers as knowledge center "associates," who are invited to offer their insights and expertise, and has dropped from the roster those who don't participate enough. Associates' names are posted on a wall at the firm's headquarters and they are given special business cards that identify them as AMS's experts on given topics. And workers' participation in doling out information also has an effect on future promotions.

At Amoco Corp. in Chicago, where the corporate knowledge system is known as the "Network of Excellence," a little healthy competition has proved the key to cooperative information-sharing, according to Dave Ledet, Amoco's director of shared learning. In May, about 200 teams from around the world competed to be honored at company headquarters for developing innovations and sharing that information with colleagues in other locations.

About 40 teams, including a group from Amoco's refinery in Yorktown, Va., were selected to attend the events in Chicago, where posters detailing their accomplishments were mounted on the walls and they met with top company executives to share their war stories.

And, of course, money always talks.

"If people are compensated to share information, they will," said Gerry Murphy, a San Francisco-based consultant with Watson Wyatt Worldwide of Bethesda, which uses an intranet extensively. "If they are compensated to hoard information, they will. It's as simple as that."

OH, THOSE BATTLING workplace impulses.

Absenteeism is at its lowest rate in a decade, according to a recent survey of 451 firms by CCH Inc., an Illinois firm that researches human resources and employment law topics. Workers cited two principal reasons they were cutting out less: Fear of punishment and a strong work ethic, each cited by 23 percent of respondents.

A third reason for showing up at work? About 21 percent of employees said they came in, when they would have preferred to stay home, out of loyalty to their supervisors.

Workers failed to show up for work about 2.3 percent of the time in 1996, the survey found, compared with about 2.8 percent two years earlier, with the decline most notable among mid-sized firms.

Industries in which employees were more likely to skip work include utilities, universities and the government. Lower absenteeism was found in retailing, banking and manufacturing.