Productivity through Personal Knowledge Management

You need more than just the right tools to boost your employees’ productivity. Streamlining your knowledge management can also impact their performance in their respective roles within the organization. It gives them access to the processes, solutions, and best practices that can help them work more efficiently and effectively.

However, a study by Deloitte has discovered that 82% of businesses fail to fully utilize the advantages of knowledge management within their operations. They tend to get stuck with documenting essential processes and information only to let it sit unused within their database. Instead of becoming a tool to boost productivity, it becomes yet another dreaded task for your employees.

So, take full advantage of your knowledge management by following these steps on how to improve process knowledge to boost productivity within your organization.

Choose the right software

Creating a knowledge database from scratch can be time-consuming and costly. Fortunately, there are countless solutions that can help you store and manage all your business documentation and data. This will serve as your second brain where you can transfer your insights and think into an accessible and reliable digital environment.

While there is no such thing as a “correct” knowledge management solution, you must carefully evaluate its features and capabilities to find out if it is suitable for your needs. Hence, you must ask the questions:

  • What type of knowledge do you need to document?
  • How many employees will be using the software?
  • How much resources are you willing to spare for your knowledge database?
  • From what devices will your employees be accessing the database?

By identifying what your organization needs, you now have an idea of what features to look for in your knowledge management solution.

Make knowledge database accessible

The whole point of knowledge management is to provide your employees with accessible guides and references for their work. If your database is inaccessible to them, you lose the entire point of a knowledge database. Hence, you must make sure that your employees and anyone who needs information can easily access it whenever and wherever they are.

After all, your database is more than just storage. It is also a critical tool that can teach your employees how to improve knowledge and skills at work. It only follows that you design your database to be accessible and flexible enough to accommodate your employees’ needs. For example, you can use a cloud-based database so that they can retrieve files and data via the internet. You should also consider using a search function to make it easier to find specific information within the database.

Promote collaboration in knowledge management

Updating your knowledge database is a challenging task. One person alone might not be enough to do it properly and efficiently. You should consider it as a collaborative endeavor within the organization.

One way to do this is to crowdsource content across your teams, departments, and the rest of your workforce. Doing so can give you a well-rounded perspective on the various business processes and practices within the organization. Likewise, this allows you to work together on an effective strategy or method to improve the quality of the knowledge. Take the ISELO app, for example. It promotes collaboration in knowledge management by allowing teammates to discuss saved content through comments.

Create a system for capturing knowledge

While collaboration plays a key role in maintaining your knowledge database, you must have a system in place on how to document and capture such knowledge. Having to constantly change and update your database can become ineffective and inefficient in the long run. Moreover, it can even become an added burden to your employees’ workload.

One of the best examples of knowledge management practices is to leverage automation. You can use this technology to ensure that your database is always up-to-date. You can also use it to automatically capture know-hows and best practices by simply uploading documents and sharing links into the system. It can also check your database for any discrepancies, duplications, or errors in the process.

Integrate with other solutions

There are many benefits to knowledge management. For one, you can integrate it with other solutions within your system. This will allow you to fully utilize your knowledge management and put it into practical use.

Some great examples would be your learning management system (LMS) and your onboarding tool. By integrating your database into these two solutions, you can provide a seamless training and learning experience for your employees.

Knowledge is wealth

There is wealth in knowledge. Just look at how much does college cost. Hence, it is high time you focus on improving your knowledge management within the organization. Keep in mind that it is more than just documenting and recording processes and information. It is also a critical tool in boosting your employees’ productivity. Hence, make the most out of it by investing in the right tools. You can check out software solutions like Iselo.