How do you ensure the knowledge of your most experienced employees is preserved? How do you capture and share it across the business? In this mini-whitepaper you will find the essential things you should consider while planning a knowledge sharing initiative in your company. You’ll also learn about a global law firm, which came up with an excellent idea to capture and share the knowledge of their senior staff and pass it onto the less experienced employees. It’s worth a read. Their learning project was so successful it won them an award!

1. Capturing & sharing knowledge
3 core steps you need to consider

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Introduction
Knowledge is confidence and certainty in making decisions; and what builds
knowledge is lessons learned and experience. It’s no mystery that experienced
staff members are an invaluable asset to an organisation. They are the core of
the business, often influencing other employees, guiding them and directing them
on the job.
That’s why it’s essential that learning and development professionals preserve
such knowledge and share what’s been gathered through years of practice,
testing and correcting mistakes, with the less experienced workforce; otherwise it
won’t last.
There are many different ways in which it can be accomplished; only imagination
sets the limits.

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In the next parts of this short paper you’ll learn the
three core steps that will give you an idea of what
you should consider while preparing a knowledge
sharing project in your organisation. Enjoy!

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3 steps you should
consider

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Step 1: Identify your internal experts
Often there are people in your organisation who have a wide knowledge on
certain subjects, or possess valuable skills that no one really knows about, or are
simply great at communication and expressing ideas. They can also be
recognised as experts by others, so it’s worth a try asking other staff members
who they think is best at doing such and such job, or task, etc. They are your
internal specialists and can be a great asset to your learning project. These are
the people you want to encourage to share knowledge with others in your
company.
So start by identifying who your internal experts are, and who knows, you might
discover a hidden talent you didn’t know existed within your business and who
can add great value to your learning projects.

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Very helpful in identifying your internal experts are social media
tools. If you’re using them in your organisation you have a great
advantage there. Look at status updates, comments, forums,
etc. Who’s the one that stands out there, contributes or is often
being asked for advice?

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Step 2: Create knowledge storage
Once you’ve identified your internal experts and they’ve expressed their
willingness to share their knowledge, you need to capture it. There are various
ways in which you can do it; it’s really up to you and your team. For example, you
can use short video interviews or podcasts, or a combination of different social
learning tools. But just capturing their knowledge isn’t enough to make sure it will
be preserved in your organisation. It needs to be passed on and applied by
others in order for it to be maintained.
This means you need to make it accessible to others and that it’s easy to share.
You’ll need to create a platform where the recorded knowledge can be stored and
available on an on-going basis to the rest of your staff. The key to success here
is the informal approach to learning, captivating design, intuitive platform, and
instant access to your materials.

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Think social learning. We can’t say it enough. Create the
environment for it at work. Think about how people interact with
each other on social media sites. Social learning tools that
incorporate communication (i.e. blogs, message boards) and
content sharing features (i.e. ‘share’ buttons) can make a real
difference in distribution of knowledge within an organisation.

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Step 3: Take time to measure
Your next step is to measure the outcomes of your knowledge sharing project.
Look at the platform you’ve created and evaluate the exchange of communication
among your staff. What are they saying? Are they taking in the information and
using it to improve their work?
Notice if they are further sharing the knowledge you’ve captured. Track their
activities around knowledge share and time spent on watching, reading and
listening to the recourses. You should also get feedback from your workforce.
This way you’ll be able to learn what’s working and what doesn’t and make
appropriate changes to your knowledge sharing initiative in the future, making it
more effective.

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Schedule a review, say every quarter, to see what people are
using and saying about the content. What types of content are
people referring to the most? Has the community you’ve
created identified any gaps in their knowledge you could
provide content to fill? Is there any content that isn’t proving
useful and should be removed?

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And when you have a
great idea…

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Put it into practice…
One of Commelius’ legal clients has come up with an excellent idea about how
to capture knowledge from their senior staff and share it with less experienced
employees.
The project was really well received by their learners and the results so
successful, that they decided to put it forward for the Law Society Excellence
Awards. Not surprisingly they won and were awarded the Excellence in Learning
and Development prize for their project.

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Clifford Chance and their global
Video Knowledge-Sharing Project

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Clifford Chance is one of the world's leading law firms with their employees
dispersed across different locations. They launched their video knowledge-
sharing project in 2012 and it’s still widely used by staff across the organisation.
The scheme used video interviews to capture and share the knowledge and
experience of senior partners on what it takes to be a great lawyer and trusted
advisor. The short and informal nature of the videos proved to be very attractive
for learners, and what also appealed to them is the self-paced and a peer-to-peer
way of training.
Today, Clifford Chance’s staff can gain information they need just in time when it’s
required, and that’s what is most important for learners in a time-pressured work
environment.
The project…

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Clifford Chance’s success…
The project has proven to be very successful and the first results measured
shortly after its launch showed that the learning and development team has
reach over 6,000 users in 24 countries and as many as 1,906 hours of the more
than 25 hours of video on offer has been watched by staff.
Clifford Chance’s learners, lawyers and non-lawyers alike can simply dip in and
out of the videos when they have the time, inclination or need to learn.

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A few more words before we end…
We hope you enjoyed reading this mini whitepaper. It should have given you a
basic idea of how you can start your own knowledge sharing initiative. But if you
feel hungry for more information and hints and tips we recommend you read:
Social learning - 8 steps to successfully embracing it at work
And to learn more about Clifford Chance’s Video Knowledge Sharing Project
watch the recording from the webinar:
21st century learning for 21st century legal firms.
You’re also welcome to visit our website and send us an email to
info@commelius.com if you have any questions for us.

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