Share What You Know: The Benefits of Knowledge Sharing

Knowledge sharing could become your organization's secret weapon.

Don’t believe us?

Read on to discover the benefits your organization could unlock by simply encouraging your employees to share their knowledge and experience with their teammates.

Why knowledge sharing should be considered

It’s only a matter of time until your organization runs into problems if knowledge sharing isn’t a cornerstone of your company culture.

Every department has that one team member who everyone else goes to when they get stuck. If that person decides to leave for another role and you don’t have a knowledge sharing platform in place, all their knowhow leaves with them.

That’s where knowledge sharing comes in. It helps you avoid institutional knowledge being lost when teammates choose to move on – plus a whole lot more.

Key benefits of knowledge sharing for a company

Could knowledge sharing really have that big of an impact on your business? 

Here are some research-backed benefits that come from baking knowledge sharing into your company culture…

Empower your people to be more productive

One of the biggest benefits of sharing knowledge at work is the impact it will have on productivity across your organization.

In fact, it’s estimated that the typical knowledge worker spends a massive 20% of every working week looking for information they need to complete their daily tasks. Which means the right knowledge sharing tools and techniques can unlock an extra days’ work out of each of your employees – a huge productivity boost.

Reduce staff turnover 

81% of employees say they feel frustrated when they can't get the information they need to do their job.

And frustrated teammates don’t tend to stay teammates for very long.

So, it’s no surprise that research has uncovered a direct link between employee turnover and knowledge sharing: employees of companies with higher turnover rates are 65% more likely to state that it could be "very difficult" or "nearly impossible" to "get the information needed to do my job well."

Plus, 35% of businesses say the frequent shifting of which people are in what roles at what time is a barrier to effective knowledge management.

Which means making the most of knowledge sharing tools is a surefire way to increase employee retention – which will then help make knowledge management easier, which in turn will make holding on to your best employees easier.

Capture employees’ invaluable insights

Every one of your employees brings their own unique experience and knowhow to your organization. And getting each of your teammates’ invaluable insights out of their heads and into a knowledge base where everyone else can access it could be a gamechanger for your company.

Skeptical that a company intranet will really have that much of an impact on your organization?

Research shows that 42% of the institutional knowledge within a company is unique to individual employees. In other words – if an employee leaves their job or is otherwise unavailable, their coworkers would be unable to do almost half of that job effectively.

One of the biggest benefits of knowledge sharing in organizations is that it captures your employees’ individual knowledge so it’s not lost when they move on to another role.

Encourage collaboration across departments

Seamless collaboration isn’t the default among teams.

In fact:

• A massive 60% of workers find it difficult, very difficult, or nearly impossible to obtain information vital to their job from their colleagues.
• 86% of workers say a lack of effective collaboration and communication is the main cause of workplace failures.
• 36% of workers find it so difficult to exchange information across different teams within their organization that it causes productivity-sapping silos.

The thing is: your teammates don’t want it to be this way. In fact, 91% of workers are interested in feeling closer to their colleagues.

Empowering your people with effective collaboration tools can be the first step in fostering more collaboration and communication across your company.

This is even more important in the age of remote and hybrid working. Remote employees can’t just ask a question to a teammate across their desk, so it’s crucial they can always quickly and easily find what they need to do their jobs – otherwise, their question might end up sitting unanswered in someone's email inbox for days.

Free your employees up from endless meetings

Meetings are a cornerstone of knowledge work. 

But research shows that:

• 71% of employees think meetings are unproductive and inefficient. 
• 65% of employees think meetings keep them from completing their own work.
• 64% of employees think meetings come at the expense of deep thinking. 

One of the benefits of knowledge sharing is that an up-to-date company knowledge base will help ensure your employees spend as little time in productivity- and morale-sapping meetings as possible. Instead, they can just look up the information they need in your internal wiki rather than booking in a slot to get that information from a teammate.

Boost profits

Given all the benefits of knowledge sharing in the workplace, it will come as no surprise that baking collaboration into your company culture can have a huge impact on your bottom line. 

Studies show that companies with a headcount of around 1,000 employees could save $2.7 million each year by empowering and encouraging their people to share their knowledge and insights with each other.

So, while it might not be the sexiest project you’ll work on this year, getting your company set up with knowledge sharing software might just make the biggest difference to your business’s bottom line.

Benefits of using knowledge sharing tools and software

75% of organizations say creating and preserving knowledge is important or very important for their success over the next 12-18 months. But only 9% feel like they’re very ready to address this trend.

Finding the best knowledge sharing software to suit your peoples’ needs is the first step in capturing your employees’ expert insights.

Empower your people with an effective knowledge sharing tool and you’ll quickly start to see big benefits in these major areas of your business:

Knowledge management

The right knowledge sharing tool makes it easy for your employees to share, access, and update all the important information they need to do their jobs.

A knowledge base and internal wiki makes capturing up-to-date versions of all your organization’s important information, guidelines, and processes in the cloud. An idea portal helps your team think of new ideas – and actually implement them. And meeting notes make sure important insights are captured from meetings rather than simply scribbled in a notebook and forgotten about.

Cross-departmental collaboration

80% of workers want to know more about how decisions are made in their company, while 87% would like more transparency from their organization in the future.

Knowledge sharing tools like a workplace news feed, CEO and Executive updates, and weekly updates will help satisfy your employees’ need to be kept up-to-date about what’s happening within your organization.

Plus, an “Ask Me Anything” employee question template will empower your people to get answers to questions that aren’t covered in your knowledge base from the best placed person to answer those.

Employee recognition

40% of people say they'd put more energy into their work if they were simply recognised more often.

And 44% of workers will regularly recognize their teammates when they’re offered a simple tool that makes that easy to do. Plus, peer-to-peer recognition is 36% more likely to improve your business’s bottom line than manager-only recognition.

Running a recognition program through your company knowledge base makes it easy to empower your employees to nominate their teammates to be rewarded for a job well done.

The final word

Countless studies have shown that effective knowledge sharing can boost an organization’s key metrics, from productivity to staff turnover all the way through to the bottom line.

Provide your people with the right tools and you’ll quickly start reaping the many benefits of knowledge sharing in your business.