Every company has a set of knowledge that it needs to maintain in order to function: the understanding of internal processes, the knowledge necessary to carry out each activity by each employee, information about the performance of partners, suppliers, customers and everything else.

If the company identifies what this knowledge is, organizes and evaluates it, it will be able to know how to use it better, obtaining competitive advantages and increasing productivity. You will be able to identify which of these knowledge have deficiencies, or identify the lack of some that would improve the work. It may generate more knowledge. You can protect and conserve this knowledge, as should be done with any important asset of an organization. You can leave it organized and available for employees to carry out activities efficiently. This is, in short, knowledge management. A process that encompasses the areas of information systems, administration, management, librarianship and several others. As you can imagine, a process that, if well executed, can create a great impact on all aspects of a company.

How to apply Knowledge Management in the Company?

Knowledge management needs to be inserted into the organizational culture. The company’s environment needs to encourage the creation of knowledge, both linked to the company’s and individual skills.

This content needs to be disseminated as much as possible. More than keeping people connected to the necessary knowledge, this creates an environment for exchanging ideas and creating more knowledge.

The organization of generated content requires documentation in the form of texts, handouts, videos, etc. using appropriate tools, such as the Lector Live platform. This also ensures that knowledge remains within the company, regardless of who is in – or leaves – the company. And that’s what we’re going to talk about now.

How to Stop Knowledge from Going Away

Much of the knowledge we mentioned at the beginning can leave the company along with an employee who leaves their position. Loss of knowledge is never good: recovering this lost knowledge will take time and impair the ability to act. Some practices associated with knowledge management will help avoid this type of loss:

• Establish an environment where they can continue contributing. Some people invest a lot in what they have built in the company, and would be interested in staying in touch and continuing to collaborate.
• Keep most knowledge hosted online. In addition to facilitating processes, information remains available even when people change positions.
• Make sharing knowledge a habit, a necessity, almost an obsession. Use tools that allow different ways of storing and organizing information, as people have different ways of working.
• Give due credit. It is necessary to create an environment where colleagues know that they will be recognized for their contributions. People will be motivated to share knowledge when their merit is generously recognized.

A tool that allows efficient knowledge management, including the management of ideas and contributions provided by collaborators with authorship control, is Lector Live. Find out more here.