A guide to knowledge management in today s digital workplace

Transcription

1 A guide to knowledge management in today s digital workplace

2 Knowledge management is mission critical 23% 23% of employees say it takes 5 10 minutes to access the latest version of a standard template or document. State of the Digital Workplace Survey, 2018, Igloo Software. In today s workplace, there s more information available to employees than ever before. But it s only valuable if everyone knows where to find it and how to use it and often they don t. 32% of employees have avoided sharing a document with a colleague because it would take too long to find/access. State of the Digital Workplace Survey, 2018, Igloo Software. 32% Knowledge lives everywhere, and you can t afford to lose it At any organization, regardless of size or industry, knowledge is currency. It includes both traditional data and documents as well as everything your employees know. We call these two types of knowledge explicit and tacit. 1. Explicit knowledge includes data, information, documents, records, and files stored across your organization. It s relatively easy to manage and consolidate. 2. Tacit knowledge is people-generated, encompassing employee experience, feedback, dialogue, and ideas. Unlike explicit knowledge, it s harder to collect and organize. It requires more complex knowledge-transfer tools, such as those that promote dialogue, ideation, and the recording of best practices. What is knowledge management? Knowledge management is the way you capture, store, and share knowledge. The knowledge management process handles all types of information by: Finding it wherever it resides Selecting what is worth preserving Organizing it into meaningful categories Distilling it down to its most useful, accessible form Presenting it in the context of solutions to business challenges This process transforms information into a vital tool for enhancing employee productivity and understanding. A proper knowledge management platform should: Allow colleagues from across the organization to gain insight from each other s experiences Foster problem-solving, learning, strategic planning, and decision-making Protect intellectual assets from decay and build organizational intelligence 2

3 Trends affecting knowledge management The nature of work has changed. More and more employees work away from the office using their preferred apps, creating geographical and technological divisions within organizations. This lack of cohesion has made knowledge management a significant challenge. 43% of American employees work remotely at least part of the time. Gallup 43% Harness your collective wisdom, or fall behind 30 DIFFERENT APPLICATIONS 87% of global employees are not engaged in their work. Gallup The average employee uses 30 different cloud applications. 87% The stakes are high for organizations struggling with knowledge management. If the wealth of information in your organization is centralized and easily accessible to everyone, it will drive innovation and productivity. If it remains scattered and hard to access, its potential will be wasted. When you bring together the knowledge that currently lives in apps, hard drives, desk drawers, and your employees heads, you can put it to work solving your organization s most pressing problems. The U.S. productivity growth rate has slowed to just 1.1%, the lowest since the early 1980s. - US Dept. of Labor Organizations are also burdened by the increasing onslaught of information. Employees can become overwhelmed trying to find the right information to do their jobs efficiently. The result: workers spend a growing number of hours each week searching apps and inboxes for what they need. By focusing on the following four key domains, you can create optimal conditions for successful knowledge management. Employees spend an average of 9 hours each week searching for information. By 2020, there will be 30x more digital information and 60x more files. Demonstrate 1 management buy-in 3 Put the right knowledge in the right place McKinsey IDC Foster a knowledgesharing culture 2 4 Use technology to optimize knowledge management 4

4 1 Demonstrate management buy-in To be effective, knowledge management cannot be an afterthought or an add-on. It requires deliberate and systematic effort across an organization especially from the top. Fostering a knowledge-sharing environment requires consistent, visible management support. Some key strategies for leadership include: Assigning accountability for knowledge management in specific areas across the organization. Removing workload and technology barriers for employees to share knowledge and ideas. 5 ways to demonstrate the ROI of improved knowledge management If you track changes in the following factors, the value should be clear: 1. Time spent hunting for information and sorting through Work duplication. 3. Reading of, and compliance with, policies. 4. User engagement with organizational news and other content. 5. New idea submissions. Defining clear policies on information governance. Recognizing and celebrating good knowledge sharing practices. Treat knowledge as capital Lost knowledge is lost capital. Ensure you have formal structures and policies in place to effectively capture, organize, store, and share company knowledge. Measure your success It s important to monitor your organization s progress towards creating an optimal environment for knowledge management. Use analytics, collect user feedback from employees on the ease and efficiency of knowledge management systems, and discuss your strategy with industry peers. Use what you learn to adjust, move forward, and repeat the process. 6

5 2 Put the right knowledge in the right place While capturing knowledge in all its forms is crucial, the way you organize and present it to employees is just as important. Before designing any knowledge management strategy, consider your unique organizational structure and employees workstyles (such as how they search for and share information). Preserving and sharing knowledge should be an intuitive, efficient, and enjoyable process that employees will want to incorporate into their workflows. The key to promoting increased productivity is putting knowledge in the context of solutions to real organizational challenges. The pitfalls of weak knowledge management Solutions-driven knowledge management Information only becomes knowledge when it s made insightful and actionable. In other words, information needs to formed in a way that helps people solve business problems. For marketing and all of their stakeholders, this could come in the form of a Brand Portal, where official assets can be retrieved and new requests submitted. For HR and their stakeholders, this can take the form of an Employee Handbook, Onboarding Center, or Policy area, where critical information is made self-service and questions can be submitted. Whoever the owner and the audience, focusing knowledge in a manner that addresses their specific business challenges will enable people to be more productive and engaged. Make it fun and easy Knowledge management solutions should be social, engaging, and simple to use. Whether it s a company-wide policy discussion or a party-planning committee, ensure there are intuitive publishing tools as well as mechanisms to capture and share the dialogue. Information scattered across teams, departments, and individual apps. Uncertainty about the credibility of content. Frequent, repeated information requests often to the wrong people. Duplicated work. 8

6 3 4 Foster a knowledgesharing culture Creating a culture of knowledge sharing in a highly dispersed digital workplace can be hard. Direct, daily interaction with colleagues is declining. But with tools that support the open exchange of current, trusted information, organizations can expand the opportunities for interaction beyond the water cooler and boardroom. Here are a few effective methods here for building a culture of knowledge sharing in the digital workplace: 1. Process Embed process into employees daily work lives where they can quickly and easily share stories, ideas, and lessons learned across the whole organization. 2. Peer and Manager Recognition Encourage sharing of knowledge through commenting and re-sharing across channels. Celebrate stories of the organization, its people, and its customers; publish important decisions to align people to mission and vision, and to keep a history of decision rationale. 3. Ideation and Feedback Create a digital workplace environment that has easy mechanisms for submitting ideas and feedback openly. Allow it to spark dialogue, excitement, and change. Use technology to optimize knowledge management Remote work and the explosion of apps in the workplace have created a chaotic landscape for knowledge management. While best-of-breed enterprise apps can boost individual productivity in the short term, they re counterproductive when it comes to the broader dissemination of knowledge. Multiple apps used in isolation create multiple siloes of hard-to-access content. But the right technology can cut across these knowledge divides and create a single source of truth. A central digital destination can surface content from apps and third-party enterprise systems, and place them in the context of related content and conversation. The downside of standalone apps in the enterprise Without a unified destination for sharing information, knowledge can get trapped in hard drives and file-sharing apps. Only a limited group of people can access it, and the file hierarchy is often hard to navigate. The result: stagnant, unused information. Recognize that knowledge sharing can be social Forums, polls, microblogs, and other features encourage knowledge sharing and storytelling in a fun way that people already use in their personal life. Don t forget that employees expect consumer-like technology experiences in their work tools. Powerful search capabilities are key A unified digital destination with a strong, centralized search function allows employees to find what they need, fast. Search is critical to the whole digital workplace experience, with multiple benefits for knowledge management and productivity, including: Increased visibility of all types of knowledge. Reduced time searching across multiple apps or systems. Decreased volume of s and messaging. 10

7 A digital destination for knowledge management Every digital workplace can benefit from a central destination that enables and encourages knowledge exchange. It s the place where data, documents, conversations, insight, and ideas come together to solve core business problems. The Igloo difference Challenge Low employee uptake of business-critical information. Solution The Governance Center keeps employees informed by centralizing policies and procedures, and mitigates risk through digital signatures. When you build a digital workplace with Igloo, you can: Embed knowledge exchange into your workflows Structure knowledge to solve specific challenges Promote meaningful storytelling Make knowledge sharing social and engaging Preserve dialogue in context Incorporate apps and systems that employees use every day Provide advanced, centralized search across apps and systems Use analytics to monitor trends in knowledge sharing Igloo is the leading provider of digital workplace solutions Challenge High employee turnover and intensive training needs. Solution The Onboarding Center accelerates time to productivity and can significantly increase retention. Igloo enables organizations to move beyond a traditional intranet to a digital destination that brings knowledge, people, and resources together to solve critical business challenges. Based on our experience implementing thousands of workplaces, we ve combined product features into an evolving solutions portfolio. Every solution is intuitive, configurable, and simple to use. These are just a few: 12

8 Challenge Weak brand consistency. Solution The Brand Portal puts all your creative guidelines and resources into a single digital hub, so everyone can stay on brand. Search across all of your file repositories from a single interface Users can search multiple file repositories (including SharePoint Online, Google Team Drive, Box, and Dropbox) from any location in their digital workplace with the new, mobile-friendly Igloo search widget. Even better, search results are highly contextualized to the surrounding content on the page. With this advanced search capability, employees can dramatically reduce the time spent searching for information. Get started: Build a roadmap for your digital workplace At Igloo, we like to say, Think big. Start small. Scale fast. You don t need to solve every knowledge management challenge you have at once. Identify the most urgent problems, then choose a few digital workplace solutions that address them. Move on from there to deploy your solution roadmap. 14

9 We re ready when you are Learn more about how Igloo digital workplace solutions are designed for today s knowledge management challenges. Global recognition for Igloo In the Gartner Magic Quadrant for 7 years in a row. Named KM World s Top 100 companies that matter for the past 6 years. Ranked #1 in Enterprise Social by IDC. About Igloo Igloo is a leading provider of digital workplace solutions, helping companies build inspiring digital destinations for a more productive and engaged workforce. Learn more at: igloosoftware.com info@igloosoftware.com Copyright Igloo Inc. All rights reserved. All other company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. 04/18