Collaboration
How a Knowledge Sharing Platform Can Improve Workplace Productivity
Is workplace productivity struggling through too much software, or not enough? Are companies limiting their employees by not aligning each and every one with the proper skill set to tackle projects, to use a variety of software applications effectively without feeling overloaded?
These are just some of the many starting points to consider when assessing employee productivity. Sometimes it boils down to the processes employees are put through. Other times, the issues have more to do with communication snags between manager and employee. Some employees may feel their talents are being ignored, that their individual success toward a project, or two, or three, haven’t led to other challenges or room to grow. And that’s where workplace productivity can start to unravel for many.
But there are many solutions outside of internal investigations by your company’s HR team as to why employees aren’t eagerly anticipating the next work day as they once did. And one place to start is to leverage software platforms with repairing communication from one employee to another.
That’s one of the many facets of a knowledge sharing platform. And there are dozens of unique platforms out there to help counter the growing issues of workplace productivity from a communication lens. From certain tools like Cognizant or Huddle on up to one of the newest knowledge sharing platforms in Thinkzoom, companies can turn to these streamlined applications to better communicate a message to their employees.
And they can do so on their own terms.
What these knowledge sharing platforms allow is a way for workers to create and record custom content that can then be socially shared with the rest of the office to consume. The themes of their message can cover practically anything. It could be a simple 5-minute recording from one employee to another on their latest idea on how to help their sales team close a deal with more authority. Or maybe they’re recording a recent product launch, going over the finer points and framing questions for their staff to answer. The possibilities are there.
But how would you start? And why would this help patch up productivity issues?
To answer those questions, I’ll go over how easy it would be for a company, or an employee, to showcase their message using a knowledge sharing platform to help elevate department meetings, while also effectively reducing run times and labor costs and encouraging healthier employee engagement at the same time.
Account For Absentees
Productive meetings are one way to alleviate general workplace productivity snags. But how do you trim the fat of meetings, go over the necessary topics and have it presented to all parties, present or not present? One of the biggest pains for any meeting presenter is going over material and then hear employees come up to you later on and say they didn’t remember the call to actions. Simply repeating yourself is a time waster and is borderline frustrating.
That’s where creating your own content with a knowledge sharing platform or some similar online presentation tool can enhance your communication in more ways than one.
Let’s say you’re the presenter. You have a team of ten employees, but only six can actually make the meeting. The other four are out and about creating sales, on vacation or just not in the office for whatever reason. If you present a number of key points on some future product or software launch, you absolutely want every eye and ear to your meeting. But you can’t account for the unaccountable, either.
That’s where knowledge sharing tools come into play. If you’re able to take the time and record the finer points of the meeting, what the product is, how much it costs, where it’s being marketed and other important details before you have the actual sit-down meeting, you have a permanent, custom message waiting to be uploaded whenever by your absentee employees from their phones, tablets, laptops or other devices. And you could just as easily share that content with those in attendance beforehand. There’s a good chance it’ll take care of this second problem, too…
Knock Down Meeting Times With Custom Video
How much do you think unproductive meetings cost your business? Rick Gilbert, an executive business coach recently opined that wasted or failed meetings can cost a business up to $3.1 million dollars a year. Granted, that figure accounts for a certain amount of employees, which high-level managers attend, the total number of employees at the meeting, etc. But it’s not like your business can’t use some simple meeting cost tool out there like this one. They even have portable devices you could set right on the conference table (although that might make everyone turn into clock watchers).
But you really don’t need some tool like this to tell you if your meetings are running on borrowed time. Ask everyone at the meeting if they’re running too long. If you have 1-hour meetings when you should be having 30-minute meetings, that’s a starting point. The other improvements can be leveraged through video.
If you’re able to record and outline a meeting on how employees implement the latest version of MS Office to their computer, you save the time it takes having to play show and tell, come meeting time. Or maybe you don’t even have a meeting? If you load up a custom video with the perfect amount of content and demos, you have a one-size-fits-all training video that enhances the delivery.
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- Consultant
Kyle O'Brien
Consultant On Training Video & eLearning Advice
