One of the departments in your organization is starting a project similar to one that was completed by you a couple of years ago. However, all the team members from that time have switched jobs, taking their strategies and expertise with them.
What would have helped here is if your team had maintained documentation on that project, such as project timelines and plans, roadmaps and sketches, meeting summaries, and step-by-step processes.
This highlights the importance of documentation while also supporting the Deloitte research that found only 9% of organizations are equipped to leverage the benefits of knowledge sharing effectively.
Knowledge sharing is the process of exchanging information between teams, people, and organizations. This information could be explicit knowledge in terms of processes or documents or tacit knowledge, which comes from experience.
It is important for improving collaboration and productivity, streamlining processes, removing departmental silos, increasing competitiveness, and ensuring the success of your organization. However, the key tool for knowledge sharing and bridging the gap of knowledge-readiness is documentation.
In this article, we will discuss the importance of documentation for knowledge sharing.
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The Problem: Knowledge Silos and Information Loss
When one group or individual has information that is not shared with other groups or individuals, it is referred to as a knowledge silo. This indicates that they are operating independently within your company as opposed to interacting and cooperating with one another.
Knowledge silos arise because of factors like:
- Poor onboarding of new employees
- Inadequate communication, collaboration, and teamwork
- Absence of alignment with company objectives and visions
- Lack of processes, tools, and technologies that facilitate knowledge sharing
Thus, knowledge silos have detrimental effects on employee productivity and innovations which would have otherwise led to an increase in revenue and profits for your organization. It also creates the need to rely on informal knowledge-sharing means like tribal knowledge and reliance on communication with specific individuals.
Tribal knowledge refers to the sharing of unrecorded information through the spoken word. For this, you will have to rely on specific individuals who have developed expertise in the given subject. Incorporating these will help you optimize your business operations.
However, this type of knowledge sharing is prone to errors and challenges like:
- Individuals forgetting certain parts of the knowledge
- Ineffective communication due to barriers like language, technology, and differences in preferred communication style
- Misinterpretation by the recipient
- Difficult to verbalize intuition and experienced learning
- Conscious or unconscious hoarding of information
Lastly, employee turnovers have a significant impact on knowledge sharing. It leads to information loss because they take their unique expertise, experience, skills, and knowledge along with them. This results in decreased productivity and quality, increased mistakes and delays, inefficient change management, and lesser customer satisfaction.
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How Documentation Empowers Knowledge Sharing
The key to bridging the knowledge gap is resorting to strategic documentation. To do so, you need to first understand what documentation is and its role in empowering knowledge sharing.
What is Documentation?
Documentation of a business refers to the creation and maintenance of written and visual records of all the processes and information that will help your organization perform better. Ideally, this should happen in real-time, wherein employees record each step they are taking to complete a task.
It should record all the steps in sequence, along with other important details like responsible roles, points of decision-making, alternative ways of completing a procedure, and various outcomes of a procedure.
Thus, documentation acts as a centralized repository for capturing and sharing knowledge with the relevant stakeholders. It will also help you boost employee engagement and ensure the retention of top talents.
Why is Documentation Important for Knowledge Sharing?
If your organization’s documentation is well-structured, clear, and inclusive, its importance for knowledge sharing is as follows:
1. Increased Accessibility and Searchability of Information
Documentation is important in knowledge management because it makes information easily accessible to the required people. This will remove the need for guesswork by your organization, while the documentation acts as a central hub for all the vital project and team information.
This will benefit your organization in the following ways:
- Smooth and efficient transitions between tasks and projects
- New team members will be able to learn from it and start contributing quickly to your organization
- Promotion of seamless work collaboration and knowledge sharing as all your employees will be able to access the same documentation regardless of their location
- Identification of inefficiencies and bloated workflows, which, when rectified into a streamlined process, will help you boost your productivity
2. Standardized Processes and Procedures
Another importance of documentation in organizations is its help in ensuring that all your employees are following standardized processes and procedures. This whelps in building positive workplace relationships between employees and management.
The benefits that your organization will be able to leverage through this are:
- Consistent and efficient execution of tasks
- Predictable and accurate results
- Elimination of wastage of time and other forms of redundancy
- Removal of the risk of misinterpretation of processes that leads to inconsistent outcomes and chances of product failures
- Maintained product quality
- Higher customer satisfaction and loyalty
- Faster and easier problem-solving
- Successfully upskill employees in alignment with your organization’s objectives and needs
3. Reduced Errors and Rework
Clear project documentation results in clear and effective communication, clarity for tasks and projects, and continuous and proactive risk mitigation for all the projects from start to end.
Thus, the importance of documentation for knowledge sharing lies in its crucial role in reducing errors and rework, helping your organization improve efficiency and productivity by:
- Staying compliant with all the regulatory requirements
- Removing the risk and expense of costly fines and legal issues
- Helping avoid mistakes and the need to rework
- Maintaining the reputation of your organization
- Allowing the application of past expertise and learnings to enhance the current performance
4. Faster Onboarding and Training of Employees
In the absence of proper documentation, onboarding and training of employees can become a stressful process for the existing employees and the new hire. This highlights the importance of documentation for knowledge sharing as it will lead to the following advantages:
- Your new hires will be able to go through guides, procedures, and helpful tips and tricks to acquaint themselves with how to properly carry out their roles.
- Make the employees more self-sufficient by removing the reliance on others in new or adverse situations.
- Encourage self-sufficiency amongst the employees, which will further boost their morale, ensure innovation and creativity in problem-solving, and increase employee engagement and satisfaction.
- Help them refresh their knowledge and stay updated with the latest procedures and best practices.
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Different Types of Documentation for Knowledge Sharing
Knowledge management is a vital practice for every organization to ensure success and employee happiness. It gives you an edge over your competitors, keeps your departments aligned with each other, and results in higher revenue and customer retention.
However, based on the process, you will need to select the most appropriate type of documentation. The top five documentation types are:
1. User Manuals and Guides
- User manuals and guides include step-by-step instructions for completing a process or procedure and using an organization’s tool or system.
- It will help your employees understand how to perform their tasks effectively and efficiently.
- This will lead to reduced errors, enhanced productivity, and guaranteed consistency across the task or project.
- While making user manuals and guides, clearly define the scope, use clear and concise language, and include examples and troubleshooting tips.
2. FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)
- The importance of documentation for knowledge sharing can be addressed effectively through FAQs, which are a repository of information that your employees can access instantly to find answers to their questions.
- They are suitable for direct, simple, and basic questions and not for complex or specific needs.
- They are easy to search if the keyword matches with the FAQ and are appropriate for answering questions whose context and answers do not change completely over time.
3. Big Picture Documents
- Considering that documentation is important for knowledge sharing, one of the formats that you can opt for is big-picture documents.
- These are overview or conceptual documents that will help your employees understand the importance of documentation for knowledge sharing and the role they play in ensuring its success.
- These are relevant for those employees who want to understand why things work the way they do and the available resources of the organization.
- They will also help in understanding knowledge management better including how it is governed, its objectives, leaders, priorities, and expectations.
4. Wikis and Knowledge Bases
- While the importance of documentation for knowledge sharing is evident, choosing a collaborative form of documentation is most relevant for processes that are constantly evolving and adapting to the changing market demands and trends.
- They are thus useful for handling product updates and catalogs, as well as business maintenance documents.
- It is easy to use, edit, and access. However, its accuracy can become questionable. This is because it can also have outdated or incorrect information updated there.
5. Video Tutorials and Screen Recordings
- With the importance of documentation well-established, one of the types of documentation that you can rely on is video tutorials and screen recordings.
- This is because learning through videos is quick and easy, with clear visuals, supporting voiceovers, and often soothing background music. It simplifies otherwise difficult-to-understand complex tasks.
- You can also create simulation videos that show how a software or system can be used or how a process has to be carried out.
- These videos can also have interactive features embedded in them, which will help your employees press buttons, select data, learn how to deal with the data, and so on. Thus, they are a vital element of your organization’s communication plan to boost performance.
Building a Culture of Documentation
Considering the importance of documentation for knowledge sharing, you must build a culture of documentation in your organization. To do so, follow these practices:
1. Shift the Mindset
- The first step in building a culture of documentation is to stop taking it as a chore and give it its due position of being a valuable knowledge-sharing tool.
- This means that you will have to align it with your organization’s mission, vision, and strategic plan.
- You will need to make it a fundamental part of work to the extent that it is adopted throughout your organization, becoming a repository of information.
- This will foster innovation, support knowledge retention, and ensure the success and continuity of your organization.
2. Encourage Collaboration in Documentation Creation
- To ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of your documentation, you must encourage collaboration between multiple departments, teams, and individuals.
- You should also seek the contributions of subject matter experts, such as industry experts or former managers and employees.
- Lastly, to ensure the accuracy and clarity of documentation, seek peer reviews and sample tests with the users. Follow this with complete proofreading.
3. Promote the Use of Documentation
- With the importance of documentation for knowledge sharing evident, it is time to promote its use to ensure that you can take advantage of its advantages.
- To do this, you must ensure that your business and technical documentation is easily available, accessible, and searchable by all the required stakeholders.
- Additionally, you must integrate your documentation with the relevant processes as this will increase its accessibility, help your employees resort to it when required, and streamline your workflows even more.
- Lastly, to promote the use of documentation and encourage continuous contributions to it, resort to gamification and reward systems. You can even offer appreciation for your employees’ efforts to improve their documentation skills.
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Conclusion
The importance of documentation for knowledge sharing is ever-increasing in this highly competitive market. With comprehensive documentation ensuring that knowledge is accessible, you will be able to increase transparency in your organization. This is because everyone concerned will know the processes and best practices to be followed.
It will also facilitate increased collaboration and effective use of every individual’s skill set. Lastly, with access to crucial knowledge, your employees and managers will be able to make better decisions.
However, use training tools like Mentoring Complete to give training to your employees related to documentation and best practices. Also, assess the performance of all these initiatives through Engagedly.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the best documentation practices that you must follow to ensure its effectiveness?
The best documentation practices that you must follow are:
- Keep it straightforward.
- Maintain version control.
- Use visual assets to present complex information.
- Make a standardized terminology.
- Store it in a centralized location.
- Choose the correct type of documentation.
What is internal documentation?
Internal documentation refers to the maintenance of detailed records on processes and procedures for reference by your internal team members and facilitates decision-making. They can also include documentation of schedules, meetings, and team policies. The three main types of internal documentation are team documentation, reference documentation, and project documentation.
What is knowledge management and its importance for businesses?
Knowledge management refers to the process by which organizations identify, record, store, and distribute knowledge within their workforce. It helps businesses improve collaboration and decision-making, prevent knowledge loss, and enhance customer satisfaction.
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