5 strategies for sharing and upgrading knowledge in your business

Being hungry for knowledge and being eager to share it play vital roles in business success. Businesses and organizations, in general, should know that the wealth of experience and knowledge their employees possess is one of their most important resources.

By encouraging further education and knowledge sharing, the whole organization becomes better and more effective. But what exactly should you do to encourage your employees to upgrade their knowledge?

For a start, keep reading. Below you will find the five proven strategies that have worked for other organizations.

Build a knowledge base

There is no doubt that having a good knowledge base within your business brings many benefits to you and your employees.

For instance, a knowledge base (when used properly) can improve the overall productivity, increase employee engagement, prevent knowledge loss, enable employees to work from anywhere, and so on.

A knowledge base is designed to allow employees from all of the departments to share content to a central, searchable unit. 

In most cases, it is built with a knowledge management software solution. For instance, many companies have knowledge engagement platforms that allow users to create a dynamic knowledge base containing the documentation, FAQs, and individual expertise that exists across their organization.

Employees can share different types of files and media, post content directly to the platform, search the platform for information, and ask questions of their colleagues.

If you have a WordPress website, you should learn how to create a WordPress knowledge base. WordPress is well-suited to serving up a good knowledge base that both your employees and website visitors can benefit from.

Keep in mind that you can make your own knowledge base using a good plugin, but you can also look for a knowledge base theme. A plugin will integrate into your existing install of WordPress, while a knowledge base theme will provide you with more functionalities, but you will have to create a separate WordPress installation just to make it work.

Organize group coaching

How can you improve your knowledge and the knowledge your employees possess?

Well, group coaching is becoming more and more popular across a lot of organizations where it makes better use of employees’ time and cuts training overheads. This coaching method is designed for working with people to improve their health, wellbeing, personal strengths, self-efficacy, leadership qualities, team building, and so on.

Besides cost-effectiveness, group coaching brings many benefits to the table. First of all, it can strengthen team bonds and improve awareness of the decisions made within a wider structure. It can also encourage knowledge sharing and better collaboration among the team members.

It’s true that one-on-one coaching sessions can really do wonders when it comes to an individual and their skills and leadership traits. But to make an impact on a higher level, both individuals and groups need to have a good understanding of the business, and they need to know that individual decisions, too, can lead to results that can impact everyone.

Hence, attending sessions with peers can open the individual to awareness of the bigger picture.

Offer incentives

Here is an interesting trick to consider when you start with the knowledge boosting and sharing efforts at the office. Try to incentivize the whole experience.

This is a type of wishful thinking about knowledge sharing that most entrepreneurs have. They imagine that their employees will share the knowledge they have with each other and that they will all contribute toward the higher good (the company’s mission).

Unfortunately, that is not the case. In most situations, people are not so eager to share or invest themselves in something that does not directly give them anything tangible in return.

You can make something a top priority, but some people may still be reluctant to dig in and give their 110% even if the reasons are good. Some employees simply see the company as their way of making money, and that’s it. Or they may have other projects that they are passionate about.

So, give them a good reason to start learning new things and sharing what they know with others. In other words, incentivize the whole experience.

Just consider what you’re willing to offer employees to encourage them to develop training materials and then share what they know with each other. If you don’t have much to offer, then it may not be as high a priority as you think.

The bottom line is that there has to be something in it for them if you want high motivation levels and good engagement.

Invest in a long-term effort

Keep in mind that a lot of knowledge sharing happens outside of the official company channels. This informal ‘channel’ of knowledge sharing often presents itself in a simple question one colleague poses to another.

When a co-worker turns to their peer and asks a question regarding a problem they are having, or when they have a simple conversation about work over lunch, that is when knowledge sharing happens.

But if you really want to make it a serious routine, you need your business to create a strategy that will last longer with better effects. To do this, you need to formalize the process.

A good way to do this is to place your faith in learning platforms and software. Doing this will not only create a record of your course that will be available as long as it is needed, but it will also mean that both the in-house workers and remote workers can access it and benefit from it. Ultimately, the whole business will benefit from this kind of action.

Introduce several forms of knowledge sharing

When you introduce several forms of knowledge sharing, you get to boost employee engagement considerably.

According to a study, knowledge sharing can result in higher satisfaction rates among your organization’s members, more time savings, and better efficiency.

So, make sure to do the following:

• Provide your employees with more than one way to share the knowledge they have.
• Reserve time every week for employees to share and contribute knowledge to make it a habit.
• Host regular meetings where employees can talk about what went well and what needs some additional work.
• Refresh the scenery every now and then. Try implementing off-site meetings to inspire creativity and brainstorming among your colleagues.

Of course, you should also lead by example. After all, sharing is caring.

Final thoughts

Making your employees constantly learn new things and share what they know with each other is a thing of culture. To truly make this work, you need to embed this into your business’s values and goals.

Unfortunately, knowledge sharing will not happen on its own. As an organization, it is up to you to commit the resources, time, and patience to make it happen.

However, remember that all of the resources you invest in will be outweighed by the rewards that will follow later on. Do this the right way, and there is no doubt that your organization will prosper.

26/05/2021