Fact: According to Forbes magazine, Fortune 500 companies lose around $31.5 billion yearly because they fail to or don’t know how to share knowledge. Considering the current global economy, this can be a quite scary figure.
It’s not a secret that managing knowledge in an active way can help companies increase their chances of success and even gain a competitive advantage. Specifically, this facilitates decision-making, but also builds solid learning environments, by making learning routine, as well as stimulating cultural change and innovation.
Knowledge sharing itself contributes to today’s thriving economies. Gone are the days in which organizations could get by with siloed information, while just a few key members of the organisation had access to it.
How knowledge sharing contributes to business success
Companies are aware that embracing a knowledge sharing culture can help everyone grow and succeed together. That’s why we strongly believe that we’re now at a point in time in which sharing knowledge effectively is crucial to business success.
And we’re not the only ones.
1. It improves communication and collaboration within a company
A recent study from McKinsey revealed that, on average, employees spend 20% of the working week just to search for the information they need to complete their daily tasks. Let that sink in a for a minute. A fifth of their time is wasted just trying to find something that should be already available.
“Sharing knowledge is not about giving people something, or getting something from them. That is only valid for information sharing. Sharing knowledge occurs when people are genuinely interested in helping one another develop new capacities for action; it is about creating learning processes,” claims Peter Senge, senior lecturer at MIT.
This is where a knowledge sharing platform comes in. By centralizing all the available information within a company in one place, employees are able to save important amounts of time, and also improve the relationships with their colleagues. And these are just a few of the benefits it brings.
2. It encourages innovation and productivity
Knowledge sharing isn’t just about the collaboration between team members. Its main purpose is indeed to deliver better results, but there are other aspects which can contribute to this as well.
Stimulating innovation and learning helps organisations who have taken the time to build a knowledge base be more productive. It also increases idea sharing and keeps team members up to date with the latest trends and strategies.
3. It helps team members feel valued
Working in an environment where knowledge sharing is encouraged is great for each and every one of your team members. After all, when a person is able to give back and, at the same time, contributes to collective knowledge, they can directly see the positive impact of their work.
Consider implementing a knowledge sharing platform as a way of giving team members a stake in the company. By constantly contributing to it, they do not only increase their investment in collective knowledge and help improving peer engagement, but they will also begin feeling more appreciated as individuals.
4. It makes growth easier
Let’s face it, growing a company is not easy. Scaling operations, establishing chains of command, and managing new personnel can be a real challenge. Especially the latter, which is we recommend an article about creating an effective employee onboarding process if you’d like to read more on the subject.
What kind of information does a new employee need? Who should answer all their initial questions and offer insight regarding operational practices? Such issues can be complicated if a company isn’t making good use of knowledge sharing.
Instead of letting your employees hoard valuable information and leave new team members feeling directionless, why not be one step ahead of the game and provide answers to any questions they might have?
Conclusion
If we were to describe the importance of knowledge management within a company using just one word, “crucial” would definitely be a great choice. Implementing a knowledge sharing software is essential to the long-term success of your organisation.
Fostering a pro-knowledge sharing culture can help your business fill some of its biggest information gaps, and also increase innovation and stimulate leadership.
Sounds like something you would like for your company, or want to find out more? You know what you have to do.
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