Crealanta Magazine

5 ways to preserve and share institutional knowledge •

Sep 27, 2022

A typical business in the US loses $47 million (!) per year in productivity due to insufficient information sharing.

The inability to access company-wide information that is kept by individuals (technically known as institutional knowledge) could have a negative impact on the performance of employees and their motivation.

If you're keen on keeping institutional information, you'll find this guide useful. The guide will cover the essentials of what institutional knowledge is, and outline steps to start retaining the information.

In this article

What are the characteristics of institutional information?

Knowledge of institutions is the combined knowledge of a company's employees which includes information about workflows, processes, techniques and best practices developed over the course of many years of work.

Consider it the memory of an entire organization.

When employees retire or embark on other jobs They take their experience, expertise, and lessons learned over the job along with them, leaving nothing with the company.

Knowledge of institutions is the culmination of the employee's experiences, insights data, knowledge, and the details that are stored in the company's memory central.

What institutional knowledge does though is it keeps collective employee memories, so companies develop their own memory centre.

The four ways in which the impact of institutional knowledge on the business

Besides serving as a company's memory centre over time institution-wide knowledge can help improve the efficiency of employees, their performance and much more.

We'll look at the benefits in storing and utilizing information from institutions:

1. Increases the efficiency of company processes as well as accessibility

Research conducted by Panopto shows employees are spending 5.3 hours each week getting information from colleagues. 60% of them also claim it's hard, difficult, or nearly impossible to get project-required information from coworkers.

Thankfully, institutional knowledge decentralizes the information available and available to all. This is particularly useful for remote businesses where employees can operate at their own speed in different times zones.

2. Increases satisfaction with work and performance

A knowledge bank for institutions can cut down on the needless back and forth needed for information retrieval, leaving employees more space for focused work.

The free information flow -- otherwise hidden in team silos- also empowers employees with the information needed to perform their work, thereby which can improve performance.Not to mention, institutional knowledge sharing reduces frustration which 81% of employees suffer when they are unable to get the information they require to do get their job done.

3. Improves company productivity and the bottom line

The new hires can take 200 hours per year searching for lost data or to figure out how to duplicate procedures. It's a waste of time and productivity.

To add, inefficient knowledge sharing contributes revenue losses in the range of $2.7 million and $265 million based on a firm's size. Better knowledge sharing practices can assist organizations to reduce the time new hires spend searching for the information they need to perform their work.

4. Develops a culture of learning

In the event that more and more employees get in the habit of documenting their processes, workflows, and work principles They can exchange information for better the efficiency of their processes.

Making the effort to write video and info-sharing documents provides employees with the opportunity to think about their lessons and identify any gaps.

5 strategies to keep sharing, distributing, and scaling the knowledge of institutions

Establishing a corporate-wide knowledge hub could be a difficult job, especially when you're just beginning to realize the need to keep records of certain things. But it's nothing that having a defined process and invested employees cannot accomplish.

1. Make use of internal subject matter experts

Employers can help deliver knowledge sharing seminars and short courses.

Bonus points for recording sessions since it helps preserve information, and allows them to be accessed for a long time.

2. Build an internal intranet or create a wiki

Intranet sites are private site that an organization develops for company-wide community, collaboration as well as knowledge sharing.

It is also possible to build a playbook of knowledge that is akin to a wiki in a knowledge management tool like the Notion. It lets you format pages the way you prefer. You can also easily embed instructional videos or screenshots.

Pro advice: If you're a small group and aren't sure where to begin, go through the more frequent questions the team members ask you, and record the responses.

3. Make a video library that can host all your trainings, town halls, product information

Video libraries are the central repository for all your knowledge-sharing videos so employees can easily use them at any time. From the peer-to-peer presentation videos to expert workshops held by internal experts and town halls, be sure that you include all video material to your library.

  • Videos of presentations from peer-to-peer, internal expert workshops with experts, as well as town halls

"The subfolder and folder organization can be extremely helpful when managing our content, regardless of regardless of whether it's for external use, or just for our team on the back end. This has made it so much easier for our team to collaborate, organize and reduce the amount of time spent looking for resources."

It also automatically converts the videos , allowing staff to look up videos using captions by typing in whatever phrases they are able to remember into the"search" box.4. Create documentation for new procedures to be a part of the team's work flow

4. Build documentation of new processes a part of your team's work flow

Teams won't get in the habit of capturing their procedures in a matter of days. There are two things that will help:

  • Engage employees to share the advantages of knowledge sharing with their benefit. Highlight how it'll help them reduce time, and boost productivity as well as increase their own knowledge in this process.
  • Get employees involved. Instead of presenting a list of procedures to follow to complete the task, work with them to determine the best way to build a process for documentation. Suggest tools and take advice. Give examples of other ways that have done it. and get feedback on what format(s) they'd like to document their processes in.

After you've listened to all the suggestions then distill them into an effective documentation procedure and record a guide sharing it. Identify:

  • Who will be accountable for What?
  • What tools will employees use for documenting?
  • What is it that makes an idea appropriate for documentation?

Pro-tip: Encourage employees to write down time for documenting their work processes, principles of operation and the top practices. In the absence of scheduling it's likely that they'll continue pushing the task down their priority list.

5. Create the workflow

Additionally, you will require a document process that is atop the process, tools, and even examples. It should describe the phases the content will pass through between production and its introduction to the knowledge sharing central hub.

Here's a sample workflow

  • Ideation. Develop ideas and process for capturing
  • Outlining. Plan out what you want to include in each video/document before making
  • Create. Make a recording of the raw materialwhether it is text or video any format that best suits your idea
  • Edit. Either work together with an editor or send the content to an appropriate team, and a short summary of the creator's ideas for improving the quality of content, its accessibility, and readability.

Make your library of institutional information

In short, keeping institutional knowledge helps improve company-wide processes. This also increases employee satisfaction efficiency, productivity, and performance levels.

Before you start retaining and storing knowledge, make certain that:

  • Choose the right tools to document your work and select a central library to host the entire institutional information.
  • Audit prevailing content to identify videos and previously shared feedback notes that are worth editing and adding to your knowledge base.
  • Create a production workflow and lay out a process to standardize creating easy-to-digest documentation.