Over the past few years, the amount of information we receive every day has grown exponentially.
According to SocialMediaExaminer, mobile device (or smartphone) users now spend 20% of their activity on that device sharing content. When using a desktop computer, they spend just 6% of their time sharing content and Facebook Dominates All Channels in Sharing Activity.
Even The New York Times carried out a research in which they found that many users find sharing as a useful way of managing information.
Looking at these researches, one can conclude that knowledge sharing is important to all. In order to thrive in today’s market, businesses have to find the best possible ways to share the organizational knowledge that retained by its workforce.
So, what is the best possible way to boost knowledge sharing within a company?
Create a knowledge management strategy.
The absence will make the organization impossible to work on knowledge sharing culture, develop a self-sustaining smart business and promote smarter workforce coupling.
Here’s how and why proper knowledge management fosters knowledge sharing and builds a smarter workforce. In this post, we will shed light on how online training can help businesses stay on the same page in regard to knowledge management and the key benefits of knowledge sharing.
1. Capture the Best Practices in Specific Problem Solving Scenarios.
Imagine a situation, when a problem emerges and one of the more experienced employees manages to solve it. But what if there is no one around? There is a chance that the employee in question won’t even ask for extra credit as problem-solving is part of their job profile.
This is the classic example of how knowledge gets lost.
One of the benefits of knowledge sharing in an organization is exactly the opposite of the scenario mentioned above.
By storing the solution for the problem in question with the help of knowledge management software, that knowledge will become available for all employees. If another employee encounters a similar problem, access to this knowledge will prevent time loss.
Besides, it is only logical to assume that employees will start to value the access to ultra quick solutions and that they will start to record operations and solutions that might help their colleagues in the future on their own.
Not to mention the other possibilities of utilizing this knowledge. For instance, it can be used when managers want to create online training.
2. Foster Faster and Accurate Decision Making.
In order to make accurate decisions, an organization can benefit from having access to information derived from the actual experiences is paramount.
Every organization faces dozens of issues on a daily basis. Ranging from helping customers in distress and addressing internal issues, to developing new strategies on the go and understanding the moves the competition is making.
When everyone in the organization has access to the knowledge that comes from direct employee experience with similar problems in the past, it becomes much easier to make fast and accurate decisions.
The knowledge sharing culture inevitably leads to a smarter workforce, not only because the knowledge becomes accessible but also because it is there when you need it.
3. Progressive and Centralized Knowledge Distribution.
If we can take the concept of knowledge sharing into the world of math, it would be an exponential function, Simply because it takes time to foster. But once it kicks in, an explosion of benefits follows.
Becoming more competitive in the market is proportional to the information your organization has at disposal.
When your store your information in an internal knowledge base and use them in online courses, you can stay tension free that this information will be used to its maximum potential. And you don’t have worry about losing it as it will be located in one place.
When you follow a centralized knowledge distribution process by using platforms like e-learning tools, you will enable your workforce to quickly search through the documents that will make them more efficient, upskill and grow professionally.
A business can say goodbye to unproductive knowledge seeking just by using an elearning solution and an online knowledge bank.
4. Smarter Workforce Delivers Better Customer Service.
In order to establish a better position in the market, every organization aims to offer top notch customer services which include customer support.
In order to delight customers, an organization has to provide quick and accurate resolutions to their problems. With access to all of that information on best practices and solutions for customer problems, your workforce will be able to deliver customer care that will make the consumers come back for more.
In order to make sure that everyone in your team is aware of the best practices, you can create a course to train on how to deal with customers.
5. Capture Explicit and Tacit knowledge and Establish a Better Market Position.
We have already talked about how facilitating knowledge sharing helps organizations to prevent information getting lost in the process. Capturing both explicit and tacit knowledge is the best way to build a smarter workforce and establish better market position.
That’s because this knowledge can be retained and easy to transfer when an online training software (that allows gamification) is used.
Among the best knowledge transfer practices, short-form content is highly ranked. These are the type of knowledge transfer practices which can be supported by a web-based online training software. Organizations will start getting the most out of its experienced assets, productivity will go up and so on.
Sharing knowledge does not only mean a productive workforce. But also increased organizational agility, a better market position, and happy customers.
At the start, you might need to incentivize the workforce to follow this practice. But once they start following it on regular basis, they will realize how beneficial elearning is.
About The Author
This article was written by Kamy Anderson, an ed-tech enthusiast with a passion for writing on emerging technologies in the areas of corporate training and education. He is an expert in learning management system & elearning authoring tools – currently associated with ProProfs.