Knowledge is the lifeblood of any organization. The proper application of corporate knowledge sharing streamlines workflows, maximizes productivity, and protects revenues. Conversely, the loss of vital, mission-critical knowledge through attrition or poor documentation practices is detrimental to best practices and effective operations. The good news is, capturing important organizational data that will benefit your company is not only possible but is also becoming more mainstream every day.
This article will examine the overall importance of aggregating, storing, and disseminating your businesses’ most important information.
Keeping Data Current
Your employees’ productivity and success are based on their engagement, their talent, and the information given to them to perform their jobs optimally. On a daily basis, most people require significant data to carry out their duties appropriately, with that data being provided through employee manuals, policy documents, workflow diagrams, and product specifications. When content changes, it is essential for each employee that utilizes that content to be informed of the difference – and, if necessary, to be trained on any information they may need.
Most companies review their manuals and update their libraries of SOPs annually. Training sessions, town halls, and employee meetings can be practical tools when ensuring that each employee understands any changes that have occurred year over year. But when incremental changes are made throughout the year, relevant personnel needs to know about those updates, or they may make mistakes that require backtracking or troubleshooting to solve. If not disseminated promptly, new industry regulations and compliance requirements could cause the company far more than an inconvenience. From a sales perspective, employees learn from each other, and access to immediate information and experience is critical for sales success. Companies should strive to find an effective and intuitive way to deliver information to all employees impacted by the changes or need to replicate other successful team performers.
Sending a group email regarding every change or a new piece of data impacting the organization is likely to become overwhelming – and eventually, cause employees to ignore the steady stream of irrelevant changes clogging up their inboxes. However, for job-specific changes, the relevant team members must have timely access to the data they need. The solution is an information portal that allows management to broadcast changes and provide access only to those employees who need to be advised of the updates.
Departmental or team forums can notify appropriate workforce members that prompt attention is required. Managers may consider the following methods of knowledge sharing:
- weekly update emails only to relevant team members
- weekly Q & A forums by invitation
- monthly town halls for all affected and interested personnel
- in-person training sessions as required
- scheduled feedback of the latest best practices
By informing team members only of the changes that affect their job and workflow, companies can limit the amount of messaging and updates and reduce interruptions throughout the day and week.
Attributes of Effective Knowledge Sharing
The content of a company’s information portal should be interactive, accessible to the right people, and easily updated.
Traditionally, companies stored their essential knowledge in various formats: physical manuals, PDF files, how-to guides, or documents in physical binders. The KLONE Organizer’s AI processes extract text and data from diverse electronic and physical formats, aggregating that knowledge and assimilating it into the system for easy access and dissemination. Mission-critical data and information is gathered, sorted, and provided via easily consumable data bites, available to every employee with a few keystrokes.
The system creates a more efficient daily workflow, enables on-demand training, and allows a business to provide a comprehensive knowledge library that informs their team and keeps them at the top of their game.