Internal knowledge sharing is a popular trend and is particularly interesting for small structures: it is inexpensive, adaptable to all professions, promotes team cohesion, and values employees… the benefits are multiple! However, if it is poorly organized, internal knowledge sharing can have negative effects. To avoid these pitfalls, we have prepared a complete guide to internal knowledge management.
The benefits of internal knowledge sharing
Knowledge sharing is widely acclaimed in companies (43% of training courses are organized this way). The economic context is now pushing companies to look for the most relevant training methods, with the best return on investment. Let’s see how internal knowledge sharing successfully addresses this issue of efficiency.
These are particularly relevant training courses…
It is often cheaper and more interesting to capitalize on the expertise present internally rather than to seek external trainers. In particular from a purely economic point of view, but also because it allows to have training directly aligned with the business, processes and culture of your company . Indeed, an external trainer will most often provide standardized training and will not have the time to adapt its content and intervention to your business specificities.
But more than that, as the saying goes: “ teaching is learning twice ”. Indeed, asking an internal expert to share their expertise is also a way to help them progress and anchor their know-how. Sharing knowledge requires organizing knowledge management to transmit it in a progressive and intelligible manner. It is often a new exercise that allows you to evolve by gaining perspective on your daily work.
Sharing knowledge internally is therefore a virtuous movement that is relevant in three ways: it allows savings to be made, provides perfectly adapted training, and enables an overall increase in the skills of trainers and trainees.
… which also have many positive effects:
Beyond the economic aspect, building a culture of knowledge sharing is particularly interesting and positively influences employee engagement.
Indeed, even more than traditional training, internal knowledge management and sharing promotes team cohesion and strengthens the feeling of belonging to a close-knit group. Promoting internal training encourages mutual assistance, helps identify experts within the company and therefore allows for easier collaboration between departments. It is also an excellent way to value your employees. Becoming the company’s “Excel referent” and feeling that you can help and simplify the lives of your colleagues daily can be very motivating.
Furthermore, internal training allows you to create inter-departmental team-building moments in a more intimate setting than traditional training. It involves getting employees to share their business reality and understand each person’s challenges, an excellent way to provide a cross-functional view and perspective to make your organization more agile and transparent.
The keys to successful internal training
Although internal training therefore seems particularly interesting, it must nevertheless be implemented with caution to have truly effective effects in the long term.
Take care in preparing your training courses
The most important step is choosing the training to be implemented, and the participants. This is a diagnostic step that should not be overlooked. While it is interesting to survey employees’ expectations, it is essential to distinguish their “desires” from their “real needs”. It is at this stage that it may be necessary to include managers in the discussion to conduct a collective consultation on priorities.
Once the training courses to be offered have been decided, it is essential to carefully select your resources: your trainers must be both experts in the subject and teachers. This implies having good knowledge management upfront. In the same way, it will be necessary to ensure that they have the time necessary for the preparation and management of these training courses. To relieve them, it may also be possible to provide them with basic educational materials and resources, which they can take and adapt according to their specific needs.
It is also possible to quickly train these trainers. Indeed, pedagogy is not always innate, and learning to learn can considerably increase the effectiveness of training. In the same way, tools can be provided in order to build educational materials. In this respect, there is software such as Kumullus which facilitates the creation of contextual video support, called “ augmented ” in order to create engaging and effective training materials.
Finally, before starting the training sessions, one last step is required: setting clear educational objectives that will be shared with the trainers and trainees. These objectives must be linked to the daily work of the trained employees to allow a real match between what will be covered during the training and the operational aspects of the participants. This framework not only makes it possible to offer training with high added value, adapted to the business reality of the participants but also to set the framework for a longer-term evaluation that will measure the effectiveness of the latter.
Track and measure after the fact to ensure real impact
Once the training is over, there is no question of letting your attention drop, the serious stuff is just beginning. This is the time to make sure that the knowledge is well-anchored. Several techniques are possible: asking for feedback from trained employees, setting up practical cases, monitoring KPIs linked to team performance… We know the expression: “ what is well conceived, is clearly stated ”, and indeed, putting it into practice through concrete cases allows knowledge to be anchored over time.
This is also the time to ask for feedback – the famous feedback – and not to fall into the trap of short-termism. Don’t just fill out a questionnaire the day after the training. On the contrary, the relevant assessment of the impact of training is done several weeks later, with the employee but also with their manager to highlight any possible developments. This development must also be done within the spectrum of the educational objectives that we mentioned above. Have they been achieved, or exceeded? If not, why? These are the questions that will allow you to validate or not the true relevance of your training.