Many businesses are embracing the concept of virtual teams, where employees work remotely and collaborate online. A quarter of employees worldwide now work as part of a virtual team. While virtual teams come with flexibility and cost-saving benefits, they can also have unique challenges when it comes to knowledge sharing. Without the traditional face-to-face interactions of a physical office, businesses must find innovative ways to foster knowledge sharing within their virtual teams.

In this blog post, we’ll explore the importance of knowledge sharing in virtual teams and discuss practical strategies that businesses can implement to support and facilitate knowledge sharing among their remote workforce. Whether you’re a manager overseeing a virtual team or an individual contributor looking to enhance collaboration and learning, this post will provide valuable insights on how to leverage technology and best practices to create a culture of knowledge sharing in virtual team environments. 

Why Knowledge Sharing is Critical for Virtual Teams

Despite advancements in technology such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, research shows that the Pareto Principle still exists. This principle states that 20% of workers generate 80% of revenue. Here’s how knowledge sharing can help to reduce this reliance on a small set of employees:

1. Unites expertise 

Businesses face unique challenges, each of which requires a different approach to solve efficiently. Effective knowledge sharing allows businesses to make the most of the diverse teams that they’ve built. Information silos can prevent this from happening.  

When employees are kept within department lines and lack the communication channels they need to collaborate with each other, they are unlikely to be aware of issues they might be able to help with. These silos are often deeply entrenched in virtual teams since employees can’t simply call out for help over the wall of their cubicles as they would in a physical location.

Once knowledge-sharing systems are in place, teams can fully utilize the talents of their team members, even if they are spread across various physical locations.  

2. Creates synergy and trust

When team members share their knowledge and expertise with each other, it can create a powerful synergy within the team. By pooling their collective knowledge, virtual teams can achieve more than the sum of their individual contributions, leading to improved team performance and outcomes.   

Moreover, sharing knowledge among team members builds a sense of trust and respect, which improves communication and collaboration within the team. This, in turn, helps to foster a culture of innovation, where team members feel comfortable sharing their ideas, experimenting, and taking calculated risks.  

Knowledge management and sharing also enable team members to learn from each other’s successes and mistakes, leading to continuous improvement and growth.

Ultimately, a culture of knowledge sharing within virtual teams can drive innovation, improve productivity, and lead to better business outcomes.

3. Minimizes risk 

Knowledge sharing plays a crucial role in minimizing risk within organizations. When team members openly share their knowledge and experiences, others learn from past mistakes and successes, enabling them to make better-informed decisions. By leveraging the collective expertise of the team, potential risks can be identified and mitigated more effectively. 

Knowledge sharing also promotes cross-functional understanding, ensuring that critical information is not siloed among a few individuals or departments. This comprehensive sharing of knowledge helps teams anticipate and address potential risks, enabling them to proactively respond to challenges and make more informed and strategic decisions. 

Knowledge sharing minimizes risk by empowering teams with the insights and information needed to navigate uncertainties and make better decisions for the organization as a whole. 

How to Support Knowledge Sharing 

Even if business leaders understand the importance of knowledge sharing, they can be unsure of how to build a digital workplace that supports it. Here are some tips that can help:

1. Remove information silos

Even if employees have access to all the information they need, it is important that this data is shared in a convenient way. Recent research shows that approximately half of workers say they spend too much time searching through documents, thereby affecting their ability for deep work.

Deeply entrenched information silos lead to important information being buried within complex documents or stored in separate locations across department lines. Businesses must consolidate all knowledge in a single source of truth that is cataloged and easy to search through.

Comidor offers a robust knowledge base system that acts as your central knowledge repository. As the cornerstone of knowledge empowerment within your digital ecosystem, it breathes life into the intellect of your Comidor AI-enabled chatbot. The AI chatbot retrieves data from the knowledge base and delivers information instantly to the end-users.

Moreover, Comidor presents the Wikis module, a powerful tool for swiftly and seamlessly transferring knowledge across and throughout the organization. Streamline the management of your business knowledge repository with Comidor’s user-friendly Wikipedia-style pages.

Overall, Comidor brings together advanced AI and a custom knowledge hub, creating a time where sharing information is effortless, connecting questions with answers, and boosting your team’s potential.

2. Replace harmful incentive structures with guided meetings  

When a few team members are responsible for the vast majority of output generated by the team, it makes it difficult for businesses to scale the use of each team member’s expertise. Incentive structures further discourage a team’s best performers from sharing their knowledge or insight. 

Team leaders can spread this expertise across entire teams by introducing a structure that encourages the most knowledgeable employees to guide team members who might not be performing as well. This allows every team member to develop and grow over the course of their career and contribute to the success of the business in the long term.

3. Utilize Time Management to monitor employee time clocks and analyze hours distribution

Time management is an essential skill for the modern employee. With deadlines constantly looming and tasks piling up, those who possess strong time management skills are able to stay organized, prioritize their workload, and ultimately maximize their productivity.

Additionally, managers should find a way to mimic the practices of the best-performing employees who are achieving high levels of productivity. Software-based employee time clocks can help give managers insight into why some team members are more productive than others. This insight can then be used to generate training programs that redistribute that knowledge to the rest of the team. Employee time clocks can also be used to identify when less productive team members are wasting time on low-value tasks and help guide them with best practices from other team members. 

4. Eliminate social friction that discourages employees from sharing critical information

Social friction in the workplace can be extremely disruptive to knowledge sharing. Employees can be worried about coming across as too keen or stepping on the toes of overly sensitive leaders. Team leaders must be aware of if such friction exists within their team and call it out when necessary. Training and early intervention can prevent social friction from having an impact on team performance but managers must be proactive and responsive in dealing with any issues that arise. 

5. Create a sense of community 

Once business leaders have consolidated their most valuable data and insight, they must ensure that team members are equipped with the right mindset to make the most of it. Managers should be proactive in explaining how knowledge sharing can benefit every member of the team and actively create a sense of community.  

Supercharge Employee Productivity with Better Knowledge Sharing 

Ultimately, knowledge sharing can help businesses unlock greater levels of productivity, spur innovation, and even save costs. However, there are cultural and technical barriers to overcome before that can happen. Information silos and a guarded working culture can prevent employees from sharing their expertise freely. Specialized software and a proactive approach to building a culture of collaboration can go a long way toward helping information flow between remote employees across the organization.  

Author Bio
Dean Mathews is the founder and CEO of OnTheClock, an app that helps over 15,000 companies all around the world track time. Dean has over 20 years of experience designing and developing business apps. He views software development as a form of art. If the artist creates a masterpiece, many people’s lives are touched and changed for the better. When he is not perfecting time tracking, Dean enjoys expanding his faith, spending time with family and friends, and finding ways to make the world just a little better.