You’ve just sat down at your desk when you spot an urgent request from a client. Your coworker handled a similar request last month, but they’re away on vacation. You spend the next two hours digging through email threads, shared drives, and chat logs.
You’re frustrated, and you’ve wasted valuable time and possibly even missed crucial details that could put your client relationship at risk. The worst part is that this could have been avoided had your company prioritized knowledge sharing.
Knowledge sharing benefits everyone. Find out key strategies for creating a knowledge-sharing culture and fostering clear workplace communication at your company.
What is knowledge sharing?
Knowledge sharing refers to the intentional process of exchanging information, ideas, expertise, and experiences. The types of knowledge that can be shared include explicit, implicit, and tacit knowledge.
1. Explicit knowledge sharing
Explicit knowledge is easily documented, explained, and shared. Some examples of explicit knowledge include:
Flowcharts and diagrams
Databases and knowledge bases
Training materials and presentations
Recorded video tutorials and feedback
Written documents such as standard operating procedures, reports, and guides
2. Implicit knowledge sharing
Similar to explicit knowledge, implicit knowledge is easily explained, and the main way to acquire it is through experience. Some examples of implicit knowledge include:
Lessons learned from projects
Insights from customer interactions
Best practices based on previous experiences
Tips, tricks, and techniques based on experience
3. Tacit knowledge sharing
Based on personal experiences and instincts, tacit knowledge is more difficult to explain and share with others. Some examples include:
Creative problem-solving skills
Leadership and management skills
Interpersonal and communication skills
Intuition and gut feelings about situations
Why is effective knowledge sharing important?
Knowledge-sharing activities contribute to a more collaborative, thriving workplace in multiple ways.
Increased productivity and efficiency
Productivity gets a boost when knowledge is readily accessible and employees don’t have to waste time tracking it down.
The 2022 State of Collaboration Survey notes that 64% of employees say poor collaboration costs them at least three hours each week in productivity. Knowledge sharing is a hallmark of good collaboration, and stronger relationships develop when employees learn from each other.
More engaged employees
When they see that your company is invested in their career development, employees feel valued. This impacts employee engagement, and workers who feel connected to your mission stay with your company longer.
LinkedIn’s 2024 State of Workplace Learning Report found that 7 out of 10 employees feel more connected to their organization through learning. The same report also found that companies with a strong learning culture saw a 57% improvement in employee retention.
Fewer silos
Two out of three workers report that company culture enables the formation of data silos. This is concerning, not only because silos hinder knowledge sharing, employee development, and cross-department collaboration, but also because they can become a competitive disadvantage when left unchecked.
This is especially true when employees leave and take critical knowledge with them. Those remaining scramble to piece everything back together, wasting valuable time that could be used to improve existing processes.
More innovation and growth
When team members freely share ideas and insights, it inspires everyone to become more creative. This is because knowledge sharing opens the door to new perspectives and problem-solving angles that individuals may not have thought of on their own.
Studies have also shown that when teams share innovative knowledge, it further increases their creativity. This creates a self-sustaining loop powered by positive energy.
Improved company agility and performance
Change is one constant, and companies that thrive are agile enough to pivot and adapt on the fly. The free exchange of collective knowledge is one trait agile companies have in common. Aquent’s 2024 Talent Insights Report found that 88% of workers in high-performing teams stated that their team is very effective at sharing information across different departments.
Companies that foster communication for distributed teams as well as across departments also benefit from quicker decision-making processes.
How to build a culture of knowledge sharing
Many employees and companies still operate under the myth that keeping their cards close to their chest gives them a competitive edge. But, this approach often results in inefficient processes, stifled innovation, and less-engaged employees.
Creating a knowledge-sharing culture in day-to-day work results in more powerful collaboration. A culture focused on breaking down knowledge silos is especially essential for leading successful remote teams, where silos can be physical barriers as well.
Here’s how to build a culture where knowledge sharing is easy, valued, and streamlined into daily events and tasks.
Step 1: Develop a knowledge management strategy
Your first step to setting the stage for a knowledge-sharing culture is to create a knowledge management strategy. While knowledge management and knowledge sharing sound essentially the same, they’re slightly different:
Knowledge management involves organizing, storing, and sharing both explicit and tacit knowledge.
To develop your knowledge management strategy, collaborate with your team to answer these questions:
What types of information should we document to improve day-to-day efficiency?
What types of information should we document that impact business objectives?
What information is already documented?
How should we create, store, and share documentation?
How can we incorporate knowledge documentation into our existing workflows?
With a solid knowledge management plan in place, you can maintain a curated set of resources efficiently and your teams will spend less time and effort looking for information.
Step 2: Set up a central knowledge management system
Based on feedback from your team, select knowledge-sharing tools that make it easy to document, access, and share knowledge. Ease of use and accessibility are key here.
Some potential platforms to consider include:
Loom: Paired with its screen recording tool, Loom’s video hosting service allows you to organize and share video recordings of team processes, training, feedback, product demos, and more. Plus, Loom AI makes it easier than ever to manage your team’s knowledge by automatically generating video titles, chapters, and summaries—as well as turning your recordings into written standard operating procedures (SOPs).
Confluence: As company wiki software, Confluence makes it easy to capture and organize knowledge, and the Atlassian Intelligence AI makes it easy to automate repetitive tasks and summarize documents.
GitBook: Designed for technical teams, GitBook not only supports knowledge documentation but also syncs with your codebase. The built-in AI also indexes all knowledge within your GitBook so you can ask it company-specific questions.
Step 3: Establish clear processes
How should your team document different types of knowledge, and when in the current process should documentation take place?
Creating documentation templates makes it easier for teammates to adopt new knowledge-sharing policies. Some examples of knowledge-sharing templates include:
Troubleshooting guides
Team and cross-department SOPs
Team and company policies
Client-facing processes
Company, team, and role-specific training
Centralizing these templates as part of your knowledge management plan ensures that everyone uses the most current versions of files for recurring processes and adheres to company or department best practices.
Step 4: Provide necessary tools, resources, and support
You need to provide your team with tools that make it easy to document and share knowledge. Share best practices and training resources for each tool to help each employee get the most benefit.
When choosing tools, consider the limitations of digital communication and ways you can promote inclusivity, especially within hybrid and remote teams.
In a 2022 survey, Loom discovered that 91% of workers have had coworkers misunderstand their digital messages on Slack, email, and other platforms. The worst part is that these digital tools had a greater impact on BIPOC employees, with Black employees spending an average of two minutes longer thinking about their messages compared to their white coworkers.
Hybrid and remote teammates may also find themselves at a knowledge-sharing disadvantage due to proximity bias. Tackling this problem requires training leaders on how to effectively manage distributed teams, but Gallup found that 70% of managers have had no formal training on leading hybrid teams.
A good place to start is by providing manager-focused remote work resources while also promoting knowledge sharing among your company’s community of managers.
Step 5: Measure and track knowledge sharing impact
While feedback is a key way to see whether your knowledge-sharing culture has the positive impact you hoped for, it’s important to gather quantitative data to measure its value.
Choose metrics that align with your team and company goals, then regularly review them. Some potential metrics impacted by knowledge sharing include:
Knowledge management platform usage statistics
Time and cost savings
Employee skill development, competencies, and job performance
Number of customer service requests and response times
Success rate of company key performance indicators (KPIs)
Regularly assess these metrics to track the quality of your knowledge sharing and its impact on team and company performance.
6 powerful knowledge sharing strategies + examples
Here are specific examples of ways to implement knowledge sharing at your company.
1. Add knowledge sharing to your onboarding process
Onboarding is a critical moment for setting remote workers up for success. Including knowledge sharing and documentation best practices during this time shows new hires that you value the exchange of information. Some ways you can foster knowledge sharing during onboarding include:
Buddy up: Create a mentor program that pairs new hires with experienced team members.
Share the wealth: Invite new employees to your company’s knowledge management platform.
Create new hire videos: Use recording software like Loom to train new employees on the tools they’ll use daily.
Bring in external experts: Organize cross-department introductions to expose new hires to different areas of the business.
Once they’ve settled in, invite new employees to share feedback on your knowledge-sharing system. This can uncover knowledge gaps or unclear documentation.
2. Start team meetings with knowledge sharing moments
During its company all-hands, social media app Buffer includes updates from the CEO and each department. Buffer also breaks employees into smaller groups during its all-hands to discuss and share ideas around a specific topic.
You can share knowledge on a smaller scale by starting team meetings with a quick opportunity for someone to share recent learnings.
3. Create a “learn and share” policy
If a teammate attends a conference, invite them to share the most important things they learned. This helps expand your entire team’s skill set, essentially multiplying the benefit of the individual employee’s time spent away from work.
Attendees can write up their top takeaways in an email, share them in a Loom recording, or present them at the next team meeting.
4. Provide informal learning opportunities
Invite employees to host a “lunch and learn” session to share their expertise on a specific topic.
You can also invite members from other teams to share processes that are integral to their workflows. This provides insight into how each team works and may inspire innovations that improve the efficiency of other teams’ workflows.
5. Encourage leadership to host “office hours”
Like it or not, leadership acts as a role model for the rest of the company. So, if your leaders keep their personal knowledge behind locked doors, chances are employees will follow in their footsteps.
One way leaders can set a positive example to promote knowledge sharing is to host office hours. Each leader blocks out 30 minutes to an hour every week or two weeks where any employee can schedule a chat with them about a topic of their choice.
6. Block off time for knowledge documentation
We all have items on our to-do lists that won’t get done unless they’re added to our calendar. Another way to ensure documentation doesn’t slip through the cracks is to include it as a task and prioritize it during a weekly review.
Author of Building a Second Brain Tiago Forte describes a weekly review as “preventative maintenance of the mind,” saying that chaos is inevitable when we don’t maintain our tools and our environment.
Embed knowledge sharing into your everyday work with Loom
Knowledge sharing creates an environment where your employees feel engaged, connected, and empowered.
Loom provides an easy, time-efficient way to document and share knowledge. In just a few clicks, its intuitive screen recording tool lets you capture key on-screen details. By recording your webcam at the same time, Loom adds vital context like nonverbal expressions and tone of voice to help your team create helpful, friendly collaborative learning content.
Find out how Loom makes knowledge sharing effortless and try its screen recorder for free today.