Oral culture: what is the hidden cost for your company?

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An employee spends an average of 7 hours a week searching for the information needed to carry out his or her mission. That's almost one whole working day a week devoted to searching for information, often due to inefficient oral transmission of knowledge and skills.

A McKinsey study also reveals a solution to the oral culture: the use of a knowledge transmission tool, which can improve employee productivity by up to 35% .

So, what is the hidden cost of this oral culture for your company? How can digitizing processes and better skills management help reduce this cost and increase productivity? That's what we're going to explore in this article.

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Digitizing processes to combat the oral culture

A quick reminder of 2 concepts:
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• The process digitizationThis is an approach aimed at transforming traditional processes, often oral or paper-based, into digital ones. The result is greater efficiency, speed and precision.

• The oral culture, which means that information is often scattered and difficult to find. This can mean a considerable loss of time for employees, who have to search for the information they need to carry out their mission.

By centralizing information and making it easily accessible, you fight against the oral culture.

For example, with a tool like Komin.io, employees can create "Playbooks" that document the company's processes and knowledge. These playbooks can then be accessed by all relevant employees, facilitating information retrieval and reducing the time spent searching for information on the same subject.

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Other factors also need to be taken into account

After using our ROI calculator, you should have a clearer idea of the cost of oral culture to your company. Time spent on information gathering, when scaled up to a company level, can be astronomical.

Even if it's not always easy to quantify the ROI of tools like Komin.io, it's easy to see a positive impact on productivity. In fact, several studies have shown that by facilitating the transmission of knowledge and reducing the time spent searching for information, your employees' productivity can increase by 20 to 35%.

Factors to consider when estimating the cost of oral culture in your company :

• Company size: in small companies, communication is often more direct and informal, which favors a culture of oral communication. Conversely, in large companies, although information is more often written and stored, the sheer volume of information can make it difficult to know which information flows are relevant to one's person.‍
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• The nature of the work: In certain sectors or professions, the work is heavily based on the spoken word (e.g. sales, consulting, etc.). In these cases, the oral culture is often more present.‍
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• Employees' habits and preferences: some employees prefer to communicate orally rather than in writing, and in that case, you'll have to deal with it. But all is not lost, with Komin.io you can give them the means to express themselves orally while centralizing information.
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• Training and education: employee training and education can also influence the oral culture.
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• ‍Knowledge management: Finally, the way a company manages its knowledge can also influence the oral culture. If a company doesn't have an effective system for documenting and sharing knowledge, this can encourage employees to rely more on oral communication.

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Conclusion: the oral culture, an economic and know-how loss

The oral culture, although natural and often appreciated for its spontaneity and humanity, can represent a significant economic cost for companies. The time spent searching for information, repeating the same instructions or reformulating the same concepts represents a cost in working hours that could be invested more productively.

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What's more, the oral culture can also lead to a loss of know-how. Information transmitted orally is not always well retained, and can be forgotten or misinterpreted. Without an effective system for documenting and sharing knowledge, companies risk losing part of their intellectual capital, which in this case can be invaluable.

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That's why it's essential for companies to be aware of these hidden costs and implement solutions to deal with them.

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Ultimately, transforming the oral culture is not just a question of economics, but also of know-how and competitiveness. By investing in the digitization of processes and knowledge management, companies can not only reduce costs, but also improve their performance and capacity to innovate.