Improving Your Communication Via Knowledge Sharing

Improving Your Communication Via Knowledge Sharing

Your company’s most valuable asset is the skills and knowledge held by staff. Regardless of your business idea’s uniqueness, what makes your entity different is the individuals who make the vision come to life. In just one year, a person encounters an impressive amount of information. Scientists have gone ahead to figure the exact amount of data that the average person receives, which can be compared to reading up to 174 newspapers per day. The amount of data that people handle every day shows just how important it is to adopt a practical knowledge-sharing strategy within your organizations.

The Role of Knowledge Sharing in Improving Communication

Typically, knowledge sharing involves the transfer of undocumented (tacit) and explicit (documented) data among individuals in the organization. Knowledge-sharing approaches and tools ensure faster communication. They centralize data, and this helps transmit important information quickly and widely.

When applied in your entity, the approach can necessitate fluid communication while also increasing your productivity and empowering staff to complete their tasks efficiently and effectively. With simplified access to resources, expertise, and insights, teams can work smarter and deliver faster.

Knowledge sharing doesn’t just enhance communication in your company. It’s also vital for your decision-making and can help nurture a learning organization. This substantially stimulates innovation and cultural change.

Communication in business is rapidly changing, and knowledge management approaches are getting more sophisticated by the day. Further, in the current business landscape, platforms are now designed to serve collaborative purposes and promote circular and social business knowledge.

You have vast tools and alternatives to choose from, so it would help if you first determine what best suits your needs. Regardless, one fact remains constant: organizational knowledge sharing matters. These approaches and tools ensure faster communication.

Benefits of Knowledge Sharing

Here are the main ways in which your organization benefits from knowledge sharing:

• Facilitates innovation and development – Efficient knowledge-sharing approaches draw all team members together. It also informs them of the company’s progress and familiarizes them with the current market trends and competitive environment. The employees will understand what’s happening in the market, inspiring them to think bigger.
• Engagement – Staff engagement focuses on ensuring all members feel part of the company. Most staff would prefer being updated on the organization’s decision-making processes; hence insight sharing will empower them. Knowledge sharing means the worker’s expertise and voice are valued, and they’ll feel more engaged.
• Alignment – A well-structured acquaintance sharing approach allows for improved collaboration and workload distribution. This aligns the staff to tweaking their priorities constantly. Clear and automatic communication ensures they’re all up to date.
• Quick thinking – Sharing information offers staff vast opinions on a centralized platform, saving company executives’ time. Team leaders will quickly note the necessary changes to meet staff needs.
• Faster delivery – Through efficient communication, companies can now address customers’ needs faster and with ease. Efficient knowledge sharing allows for seamless integration of procedural improvements into your operations.
• Zero constraints – Shared company experiences substantially reduce the risk of repeated mistakes. Staff will have an easier time identifying and evading any restrictions or blockages.
• Direct feedback – With a robust knowledge exchange structure, all your relevant knowledge will be centralized and instantly updated. This may include the impact of advertising and press campaigns, market intelligence reports, and vital company documents.
• Reassured employees – When supplied with the correct information, new members will feel welcome and deliver from the first day. When other members leave the company, they’ll know that they’ve left a legacy, and their knowledge will continue benefiting the company.

Knowledge Management Best Practices

You can only improve your communication and overall business performance by using the correct knowledge sharing approaches and doing things slightly different from the norm. This is according to recent research published in the Ivey Business Journal.

So what are the correct steps to embed a practical knowledge-sharing strategy in your organization’s culture? Let’s explore.

Adopt the Right Mindset

About 83 percent of staff are happier when helping others and sharing knowledge. However, everyday challenges like disparate teams and expertise silos can prevent this. To foster a knowledge-sharing mindset, you need to model the mentality from the top and use autonomy and intrinsic motivation.

You can also make it a company value to share knowledge and dismantle information silos. It’s also important to celebrate employees who exemplify the mindset.

Create Opportunities for Sharing

Most traditional workspaces can be unknowingly counterintuitive to your knowledge-sharing goal. One great idea is to get rid of closed cubicle setups. Create areas for collaboration without distractions and virtual spaces for knowledge sharing among your staff. You can also create regular virtual events for remote workers.

Adopt Various Approaches

Encouraging the use of different approaches boosts staff engagement. For instance, you can provide multiple knowledge-sharing avenues and reserve time for staff to contribute and share knowledge continually. You may also host retrospective meetings and try off-site meetings and events.

Lead By Example

Senior stakeholders should provide sufficient opportunities and also lead by example. Company leaders who transparently and openly share their failures or successes are an encouragement to staff. As such, consider collaboration before the hierarchy.

Invite Experts

Another excellent way of improving communication is by identifying a scalable and efficient way for the organization’s subject-matter experts to share knowledge. You can use a tool that captures staff expertise and skills then inform the experts that their experience is critical and highly valued. An automated knowledge management system integrated into other apps can make their work easier.

Create a Formal Process

A practical knowledge sharing approach requires employee awareness. A formalized process will reduce the chances of losing valuable skills and experience. Make the process as simple as possible by using a platform that lets staff access know-how and crowdsourced expertise in real-time.

The Bottom Line

You lose a lot by simply failing to share knowledge. Indeed, top players like Microsoft and Google flourish because they understand the value of employee engagement, creative collaboration, and team alignment. All these processes are founded on one crucial business element: effective knowledge sharing.

Need help getting the right guidance and resources to necessitate knowledge sharing in the company? You’re home. CTECH Consulting Group is here to improve your Calgary business communication through advanced knowledge sharing approaches and tech solutions.

Schedule a free IT consultation today and begin reaping the benefits of improved communication through knowledge sharing.

Written by Carl Fransen

posted on April 21, 2021

Carl Fransen

My passion is to make my mark on the world in a positive and lasting way. I want to set an example for my son that his father can compete with integrity in today’s world, be very successful, and leave the world a better place for him.

Combining my technical/business-based education with a long career steadily progressing up the corporate ladder, I decided to build a company that held true to my values. So, I founded and designed the next generation of IT support firm: CTECH Consulting Group Inc. We are a completely automated, cloud-based IT company designed to compete against any other IT firm without the overhead. We promote a lifestyle to all our staff where they can work anywhere, at any time, access any information on any device that is relevant to their job, and collaborate with anyone they want to.