A Simple Way to Capture Knowledge and Skills in your Organisation

Brian Clark, WorkPlan Director, explains how you can most effectively capture and share skills in your workplace.

One of the workforce trends we saw in large firms was the inability to meet people’s needs to capture and share specific work-based skills and knowledge. This was obvious some years ago but the trigger that lifted this to the attention of executive leadership was the entry of workers in what some like to label the ‘millennial’ and subsequent ‘gen z’ generations. These workers and subsequent generations are educated with fast access to information accessible when needed. Gen Z is particularly adept at sharing content and have this expectation when entering the workforce.

As the workforce percentage of Generation Z increases, organisations will need to adapt their workplace to meet the expectations and attract these people. Areas that need to be addressed include workplace practices, digital tools, work flexibility and training.

Supporting the Learning Needs of Younger Workers with Collaborative Strategies

I see collaborative learning as the way organisations can support these younger workers to learn quickly from peers and colleagues as well share their skills and ideas with colleagues, clients, and other stakeholders within a secure environment. This is one reason we developed WorkPlan Learning for the modern workforce.

When we designed WorkPlan Learning, we included the simple ability to link learning to strategy and team objectives. I believe learning is a critical element in strategy and an organisations ability to execute its strategy. This helps people, particularly newer entrants to the workforce, to gain a sense of purpose in their work and support the vision of the organisation.

Low-cost Way of Capturing Knowledge and Skills

The collaborative learning strategy of capturing the collected knowledge and skills within an organisation is low cost, simple and delivers flow-on impacts with improved relationships and culture. You no longer need to spend hours and engage others to develop costly online learning courses that are usually too long, too complex, and generic.

The collaborative learning strategy needs little more than capturing screencasts, creating videos with mobile phones, and adding other resources like checklists, presentations, documents or any other supporting material relevant to the skills training.

Benefits of a Collaborative Learning Strategy

Among the many benefits of a collaborative learning strategy is the improved transfer achieved in onboarding programs and the collection and retention of the shared knowledge the organisation has but rarely documented. Collaborative learning provides an ideal way to recognise people for their contribution and encourage thought leadership for those people seeking to build their knowledge and capabilities.

If you would like to learn more or have a discussion about collaborative learning for your organisation, reach out and connect with me on LinkedIn, or contact us today.

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