3 easy ways to streamline sharing knowledge in remote teams
According to McKinsey & Company’s report from 2021, 52% of workers said they would prefer a more flexible working model post-pandemic and over 50% claimed that would like to work from home at least 3 days a week. As we can observe nowadays, their answers were honest. Although the remote mode of work seems to be preferred more than before, it is very often linked with serious issues regarding sharing knowledge in remote teams.
With remote teams, knowledge sharing is a bit different, as employees can’t see each other face to face. What can be done to transfer the entire process into remote working conditions?
1. Sharing knowledge in remote teams – connect knowledge and socialization in one place
Socialization is an important factor in creating employees’ well-being that translates into their better productivity. In the conditions of the remote mode of work getting socialized is difficult, but not impossible. Of course, your employees cannot gather in the kitchen for a cup of coffee, but with appropriate tools, you can ensure their interaction during their work.
To make the cooperation effective, the technology should allow your employees to stay in touch with each other and give them the ability to view and manage documents in the same place at the same time. How to make it possible? With a next-generation Employee Experience Platform containing an interactive knowledge base and internal social network, these things are not problematic. Supporting sharing knowledge in remote teams with appropriate platforms contributes to a better quality of work, faster information exchange, and higher employee engagement.
2. Encourage video calls and chit-chats
The remote mode of work makes it more difficult for employees to get to know each other. The situation of being alone between four walls not only makes them feel more cut off from the office life but also complicates building relationships with other employees.
Being strangers to each other discourages people from cooperating and sharing knowledge in remote teams becomes inconvenient for them. By encouraging your employees to make video calls from the very beginning of their employee journey, you increase the chances that a new worker will quickly get to know other people and easily form relationships. In these conditions, no one will feel excluded or resist the cooperation. Therefore, sharing knowledge in remote teams will become smooth.
The remote mode of working doesn’t mean that your employees cannot chit-chat. This is natural in an in-office coworking situation, and it should be adapted to remote working. Non-working conversations reduce stress and increase engagement as it is a positive addition to the job. A bit of chit-chat and a video call will bring back the human touch between your employees and make them trust and like each other.
3. Assign mentors and encourage collaboration
Teamwork makes the dream work, so don’t let anyone in your company forget about it. To make sure that won’t happen, you can assign mentors to all employees of your organization. You probably know how important a mentor is for someone new in the company, but an employee needs someone to turn to for help at every stage of the job, not only at the beginning. The role of a mentor would be to support an employee with their expertise, discuss a problematic situation, and provide support. Therefore, the mentor should be senior and more experienced in a similar position.
Sharing knowledge in remote teams sometimes requires incentives. Therefore, you should encourage your employees to call regular meetings to discuss the work situation. These can be even 5-minutes catchups during the day to quickly assess the work progress and implement appropriate actions. Offer teams also longer team meetings at least once a week to help set the agenda for the upcoming week or month, considering employees’ needs, absences, or work schedules. Such meetings will give them a chance to solve problems together and develop effective solutions.
Streamlining the processes of knowledge sharing in remote teams is a real challenge. However, we are sure that with our tips you will be able to solve all problems. Remember that the example comes from the top, and sometimes all it takes is to encourage remote team members to open up to each other.
How can Workai support you in sharing knowledge in remote teams?
Workai is a multichannel employee experience platform that offers you 4 compatible products such as intranet, knowledge base, internal social media, and analytics. Workai components are interactive, and the goal of all functionalities is to increase employees’ engagement and build a positive employee experience, regardless of how they work: on-site, remotely, or hybrid.
Workai’s knowledge base supports your employees in sharing, updating, and managing documents in a safe manner. Thanks to its innovative CMS, it is very easy to build engaging knowledge content and organize thematically all the assets. AI-powered search engine speeds up the process of searching with autocomplete, suggestions, and internal SEO. Our knowledge base makes it easy for teams to work on documents simultaneously, using intuitive auto-versioning. It streamlines sharing knowledge in remote teams in such a way that you forget about past problems.