Corporate knowledge-sharing is more widespread than we may think. Probably, you may have not noticed that you are already immersed in some learning and sharing knowledge moments within your organization.  For example, when you participate in a training session or technical talk, when you work with a peer to innovate a solution to a problem, when you are stuck with an issue and you find information on the Web to solve it, or when managers coach to their teams resulting in an improvement of their skills.

Communication among distributed teams poses its own particular challenges. Read here to learn more about different communication tools for remote teams and how to make the most out of each one.

Promoting corporate knowledge-sharing is beneficial for everybody in an organization. It has been demonstrated that this practice improves performance and productivity in teams, reduces the loss of know-how, helps employees in their professional development, and enables better and faster decision-making, among other benefits.

At Intraway one of our main purposes to live our company values is to share knowledge. That is why we are always innovating and looking for new ways to empower our corporate knowledge-sharing.

Creating a Corporate Knowledge Capital

One of the company’s initiatives was to create a knowledge base called “LearnWay”. Everyone in the organization is invited to contribute their knowledge to this eLearning platform by submitting a video. Then, employees can take a course of their preference. After watching the video, they can take a test in order to evaluate what they have learned so far.

Courses are cataloged by business units and topics and divided into different levels allowing employees to acquire knowledge at their own pace, and according to their needs. This online training tool has also shown to be very beneficial to reduce induction time for new employees and to better leverage knowledge from more experienced employees.

Producing Specialized Content

Another way of sharing knowledge is by means of publishing blog posts and white papers. This is an excellent way not only to spread knowledge, but also to promote yourself as an expert in a subject, to exchange ideas with other colleagues either inside or outside the organization, to build and expand your professional network, and to stay knowledgeable in your field. At Intraway, every employee contributes their expertize in our blogs. This one, Work With The Best, focuses on business practices and technical concepts for specific roles. Our other blog, Think Incredible, highlights industry news and trends to serve our industry.

Making Corporate Knowledge Accessible

As a technical writer I had this great challenge in front of me – how could I share my knowledge and expertise? How could I be part of this company strategy? How my knowledge can help others?

First, I started with one of the most common ways of sharing knowledge, by providing classroom-based training. I wanted to make sure that all teams involved in the development and maintenance of our software products knew how to access our official documentation and use it as learning material.

I trained functional analysts, DevOps, testers, and support teams on how to navigate our document repository, “Alfresco”. I also explained the organization, style, scope, format, and content of each type of document. I wanted to make them feel that knowledge was easy to find and understand.

Brainstorming New Ideas to Solve Knowledge Gaps

As most of our software products are in English and Spanish, I came up with the idea of sharing tips on English and Spanish grammar to support the use of both languages. Once a week a “Docu-Tip” is sent to all employees by email. Some of these tips respond to questions I received or errors found during testing and documentation processes. I also sent a survey to continue providing user-generated content on future editions. Helping others makes me feel more motivated. What is more, I have also noticed that my peers now identify me as a valuable expert.

I hope that after reading these examples and best practices, you feel encouraged to create your own culture of learning and knowledge sharing. I am sure you will feel great and motivated, as I’m feeling now with this blog post.

Communication among distributed teams poses its own particular challenges. Read here to learn more about different communication tools for remote teams and how to make the most out of each one.