In an ever-changing professional world, the transmission of corporate knowledge is becoming an essential pillar in ensuring continuity, innovation and growth.
Yet a worrying reality is emerging: 54% of employees feel that their company does not devote enough importance to the transmission of knowledge (Source: " Employees and the new challenges of work ", BVA survey for Salesforce, 2018). This underlines a major challenge facing many organizations: the need to create a culture of knowledge transmission to guarantee the sustainability of knowledge and collective efficiency.
Creating a culture of knowledge transfer is essential! It fosters an environment conducive to continuous learning, innovation and collective growth.
A culture of knowledge transfer helps to preserve company-specific skills and know-how. This prevents the loss of critical knowledge, particularly when staff leave or changes occur within the organization.
With the most experienced generation retiring, knowledge transfer becomes crucial to transferring the knowledge accumulated over the years. New talents can benefit from the experience of older employees, ensuring harmonious continuity.
Knowledge transfer creates fertile ground for innovation. By sharing ideas, lessons learned and past successes, employees are better equipped to push boundaries and explore new approaches, thus fostering innovation within the company.
A culture of knowledge transfer facilitates the integration of new arrivals by accelerating their skills development. They can benefit from the experience of their peers, reducing the time needed to adapt to the company's processes and values.
Sharing knowledge encourages collaboration between teams by fostering a common understanding. A culture of transmission creates a sense of belonging, enabling employees to actively contribute to collective success.
Employees are more likely to stay with a company that values and encourages knowledge sharing. This creates an environment where everyone feels useful and contributive, strengthening the retention of key talent.
In short, creating a culture of knowledge transfer is not simply a strategy, but a necessity for companies wishing to thrive in an ever-changing business world. It offers a competitive advantage by fostering a continuous flow of information and creating a collaborative community, ready to meet future challenges.
Creating an environment conducive to the transmission of knowledge within the company is based on several key elements, aimed at facilitating, encouraging and rewarding the sharing of knowledge, and creating a culture conducive to continuous learning.
For example, you can organize awareness-raising sessions to explain the benefits of knowledge transfer for everyone. It's also important to highlight past successes attributed to effective knowledge sharing. Don't hesitate to share figures showing, for example, the time savings attributed to the project.
Define a structured process for knowledge transfer, with clear steps and defined responsibilities, and integrate it into existing company procedures.
One of the most common mistakes is to wait until the last moment to ask an employee to formalize his or her knowledge. It's important to anticipate the departure of key employees and identify the most critical knowledge to be passed on.
You can foster an environment conducive to the informal sharing of knowledge, through meetings, forums or dedicated spaces. Don't hesitate to encourage interaction between teams and departments, so that knowledge can be disseminated across the board.
Knowledge transfer is a way of recognizing and promoting the expertise of the most experienced employees, and creating mentoring programs, for example, can facilitate the intergenerational exchange of knowledge.
The oral culture is still very much alive in companies! It is estimated that only 20% of a company's know-how is formalized. And when critical know-how is not formalized, it risks being lost. Use intuitive, user-friendly tools, such as online platforms, to formalize knowledge. Facilitate the documentation process by providing clear templates and guidelines. Komin.io can support you in this process.
It's important to set up recognition mechanisms to reward employees who actively contribute to knowledge transfer. You can integrate these contributions into your evaluation and recognition processes.
To guarantee the sustainability of the project, it's imperative to set up evaluation mechanisms to measure the effectiveness of the knowledge transfer process. You can also make adjustments based on employee feedback to continuously improve knowledge-sharing practices and guarantee a high rate of engagement.
By following these steps, you have all the keys in hand to create an environment conducive to the transmission of knowledge, thus encouraging a culture where knowledge sharing is valued and integrated into daily practices!
"With Komin, we have documented our operating procedures 10x faster than with paper"
- J. Cerruti (Methods & Industrialization Manager)
