"An investment in knowledge pays the best interest." - Benjamin Franklin
"An investment in knowledge pays the best interest." - Benjamin Franklin
Each employee brings their own skill set and experiences that can be harnessed and molded into business assets. Creating and cultivating a dynamic culture for team members is vital to a cohesive and collaborative workflow. Having knowledgeable staff is invaluable in setting you apart from competitors, but the most critical part of staying one step ahead is to have your team sharing their knowledge transparently with one another. Facilitating and promoting the business value of knowledge sharing and breaking down silos that stifle productivity is essential.
What is the incentive for sharing?
Knowledge sharing boosts team morale
Having employees transparently share knowledge directly helps the team and increases individual morale. This also aids in preventing redundant efforts across departments and offices. Being able to verbally explain a concept (or in this case spell out an explanation on an enterprise social network) to a fellow co-worker not only displays your personal thought leadership, but it also helps you proficiently grasp the concept. Sharing knowledge provides the opportunity for reciprocal exchange, empowering team expertise as a whole. Innovation and growth happen simultaneously with the exchange and flow of knowledge throughout your team. Housing employee knowledge and skills in an enterprise social network ensures that their expertise is passed on to their colleagues and successors, such as notes from a brainstorming session, training courses, or documents.
Knowledge sharing is a time saver
Why keep creating the wheel? Using an enterprise social network to house client deliverables and knowledge assets not only makes resources more readily available for future projects, but it provides time-saving templates and great references for best practices. Harnessing knowledge saves time by allowing employees to quickly find past approved final projects rather than continually recreating new deliverables without the benefit of past assets. Sharing and storing knowledge helps retain skills and experience that your business has invested in building and can be reused for upcoming training and future projects or meetings. Employee engagement and collaboration catapult with productivity enhanced by your company’s enterprise social network. Exchanging expertise accelerates delivery of projects to customers, providing the opportunity to add to your client portfolio of success stories.
Knowledge sharing helps the entire team
Day to day tasks can go unnoticed and unrecognized. Using an enterprise social network to showcase and display thought leadership across the team is a great way for coworkers and executives to see and monopolize on in-house expertise. Having the advantage of being able to find experts quickly on the network allows for projects and tasks to advance accurately and rapidly. Responding with helpful answers and asking questions that benefit the team helps build individual and personal brands while strengthening the company brand. Regardless of the position with your organization, sharing helpful insights places you in a leadership position.
Leveraging knowledge in the right way can help you run your business more efficiently, decrease business risks, and exploit opportunities to the fullest. Use knowledge to your advantage. Offering an enterprise social network provides the opportunity for a reciprocal exchange of knowledge which encourages additions to a shared knowledge library. There is no better way to grow your personal network and spread your influence than sharing your expertise.
