Knowledge That Lasts: How Know-How Transfer Works In The Digital Workplace

Virtual and communication tools make it easy to stay in touch in everyday office life. But the daily exchange between the home office and remote workplace often only transmits selective information. Relevant facts or important details are likely to get lost in telephone conferences, e-mails, or video calls. To ensure that knowledge, skills, and project statuses are transferred to team colleagues holistically, more is needed than just a regular check-up. This is the only way to ensure the transfer of know-how in the digital workplace.

Team spirit for know-how transfer

In the classic office environment, meetings are a necessary evil that is often overused. Too often, too long, with unnecessary topics. The home office has fundamentally changed the meeting culture and made it more compressed - but the focus must be consciously set and sharpened with a clear agenda.

So make sure to structure all digital meetings to hear all voices and come to a decision. The best way to do this is to give employees the chance to have their say in turn. Use time slots to dictate what project statuses are talked about and for how long, who speaks up, and what the status of news and developments are.

Whereas a brief interjection at the conference table was still possible without an arm's length, even the most committed colleagues have to adhere to these same rules. This way, the information does not fall victim to time.

Plan innovation rounds

While weekly update rounds provide information on current progress, regular innovation rounds offer the opportunity for knowledge transfer off the beaten track. Hackathons, bar camps, or conferences outside of the usual day-to-day business are a good way to promote the exchange of know-how in the digital workplace.
They stimulate creativity, generate new ideas, and bring hidden knowledge to light. The rounds with changing participants from different departments (and also from the user community or business partners) are particularly effective. Create new incentives, listen to unheard opinions, and enable perspectives that become eye-openers.

Keep It Simple

If you use organizational tools and project management software in your team, you should focus on self-explanatory functions. Instead of confusing with extensive features, they make it easy to see the status of projects at a glance.
Responsibilities must be followed to keep responsibilities and tasks in line. A nice-to-have rush and uncoordinated processing of tasks is the beginning of chaos. Smart ticketing systems like Zammad offer history tracking, making it easier for project stragglers or absent colleagues to get started at any point.

Communicate knowledge interactively

Use all cross-media options to capture timeless knowledge in form of tutorials, checklists, or step-by-step guides. This allows colleagues to learn processes themselves much more quickly and comprehensibly without direct supervision.
Instead of poring over pages and pages of documents, use audio or video clips to explain subjects and keep the know-how transfer going in the digital workplace.

Enriched by templates for direct further processing and precise application instructions, such a knowledge pool with all its assistance leads to an immediate sense of achievement among colleagues.

Do not neglect the knowledge base

Despite all the physical distance, there is one place where all your application knowledge should converge: in the knowledge base of your organization. This defies any workplace redesign or team composition.

This makes it all more important to make maintenance easy by establishing simple formats and templates.

Ask yourself if the handling of the knowledge base is clear and understandable for everyone and reward regular work and updates. Maintaining articles or updating process flows does not have to happen daily - but it should always be up to date.

If follow-up questions about detailed issues arise in the course of daily work, they can be referenced to the appropriate article with one click (instead of having to answer them each time anew).

Summary

Keep knowledge transfer on track in digital workplaces! Whatever distances you need to bridge between team members, rely on clearly structured calls, regular exchanges, and media tools to ensure a holistic level of knowledge across the team. Don't shy away from the effort! In the long run, it always pays off to break down silos and strengthen the organization as a whole.