Does this sound familiar?
Team members need to look at the company manual to find out about your PTO policy, dive into the project management system to learn about the status of a software integrations, and ask senior developers for details on the legacy code base.
While your team members are always happy to help one another, they’re often too busy to give input right away and your employees can be left in a roadblock for days while waiting for critical information. Or if they choose to conduct a search for information on their own, they’re wasting precious time that could be used more productively: McKinsey found that the average knowledge worker spends close to 10 hours a week searching for information.
So how can you calm the chaos and bring all of your company knowledge together in an organized framework?
Consider using a knowledge-sharing platform. Unlike a wiki, which may be rarely updated, all employees are welcome and encouraged to contribute to a knowledge-sharing platform, where they can ask questions, respond to others’ questions, and search for relevant information. Instead of relying on a single person to contribute a response, multiple employees are able to provide their own insights, and others can respond to and vote on the top answers. Your company knowledge is on full display as a living, breathing document that can change in line with your own company’s transformation.
Once you’ve implemented a knowledge-sharing platform, look for opportunities to repurpose existing content there in a Q&A format, migrating it from your project management tools and chats. Ask your engineering, sales, marketing, customer support, and other teams to share the questions that other employees ask them most frequently, and write their responses in the platform. Additionally, urge them to ask questions that they have about their work or upcoming projects for other employees to answer on their behalf.
By encouraging an open transfer of knowledge both within teams and across departments, you can make it easier for the entire company to gain access to the information they’ll need to be more productive and agile.
