- Learning and Development
Unlocking Internal Knowledge with Video
The strongest resource in your L&D toolkit is already in your organization: your people. Did you know that 42% of valuable company knowledge is unique to the individual employee?
This knowledge can be anything from how to operate a specific machine or in a factory or troubleshooting a POS system in a retail store. Although these individual pieces of information may appear insignificant, the negative impact of not having an easy process of sharing these bits of information or even losing them over time is substantial. The repercussions include employee frustration, decreased productivity, and heightened confusion and miscommunication
Your business can’t afford a knowledge sharing bottleneck. To remain competitive when resources are tight, L&D leaders must help ingrain knowledge sharing into the company’s culture, from upskilling and cross-skilling to peer-to-peer learning and more.
Knowledge sharing is a vital component of L&D success in any business setting. It plays a pivotal role in fostering innovation, promoting collaboration, and driving overall organizational growth.
By sharing knowledge, employees can capitalize on each other’s expertise, experiences, and insights, resulting in quick problem-solving and increased productivity. In addition, knowledge sharing encourages a learning culture within the organization, leading to continuous improvement and adaptability in a rapidly changing business landscape.
In this guide, you’ll discover industry trends, case studies, and the essential strategies you need to achieve knowledge sharing excellence by utilizing video.
Let’s get started.
We’ll cover…
- The Power of Internal Knowledge Sharing
- 3 Benefits of Knowledge Sharing
- 4 Strategies for Improving Knowledge Sharing Within Your Organization
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- Master Skills On Demand with Just-in-Time Learning
- Bring Upskilling and Cross-Skilling In House with Ease
- Easily Increase Peer-to-Peer Learning
- Scale Insights from Subject Matter Experts
- BONUS: Your Downloadable Checklist for Unlocking Internal Knowledge with Video
3 Benefits of Knowledge Sharing for L&D Leaders
Picture this: you’re staring at your computer, desperately trying to fix a technical glitch that’s got everyone scratching their heads. As frustration mounts, you suddenly remember a tidbit of information shared by a colleague during a casual conversation. With a glimmer of hope, you share it with the team, and just like that, the glitch is resolved. That, my friend, is the power of knowledge sharing! In this section, we’ll explore three amazing benefits that come with it that will make you say, “Why haven’t we been doing this all along?”
- A Culture of Innovation
When employees openly exchange their knowledge and ideas, it sparks creativity and encourages the generation of new concepts and solutions. By leveraging the diverse perspectives and skills of the workforce, businesses can discover innovative strategies, products, and processes that give them a competitive edge. Knowledge sharing also helps in avoiding redundant efforts and reinventing the wheel, as individuals can learn from past successes and failures, leading to more efficient and effective outcomes.
2. Increased Team Collaboration
In today’s interconnected world, no business or even team within a business operates in isolation. By fostering an environment where knowledge is freely shared, businesses can break down silos and promote cross-functional collaboration. When employees have access to a wide range of expertise and information, they can collaborate more effectively, leveraging each other’s strengths and building upon existing knowledge. This collaboration leads to better decision-making, streamlined processes, and improved problem-solving capabilities, ultimately contributing to the overall success of the organization.
3. Organizational Growth
As employees share their knowledge and expertise, they contribute to the collective intelligence of the organization. This accumulated knowledge forms a valuable organizational asset that can be leveraged to address challenges, seize opportunities, and adapt to evolving market conditions. Additionally, knowledge sharing facilitates the development of employees’ skills and competencies, empowering them to take on new responsibilities and contribute to the organization’s growth trajectory. By cultivating a culture of knowledge sharing, businesses can create a dynamic learning organization that continuously evolves and stays ahead in a highly competitive business landscape.
4 Strategies for Improving Knowledge Sharing Within Your Organization
1. Master Skills On Demand with Just-in-Time Learning
Just-in-time learning refers to a learning approach that focuses on acquiring knowledge and skills precisely when they are needed to perform a specific task or address a particular challenge.
For example, in a retail setting, just-in-time learning could involve a store associate quickly accessing a mobile app with bite-sized training modules on handling customer complaints, providing them with immediate guidance and strategies to address a challenging situation. And with the ability to search within the video library the associate can find exactly what they are looking for with ease. This on-demand learning approach allows the employee to apply the newly acquired knowledge immediately, ensuring a positive customer experience and fostering their professional growth.
Typically delivered in microlearning format, just-in-time learning helps employees stay up-to-date with the latest information and trends in their field. Compared to the traditional way of providing training, just-in-time learning provides more flexibility to learners, allowing them to access the information they need quickly and easily in order to get their job done right.
💡 Discover how American 1 Credit Union uses Panopto to help employees easily access on-demand trainings.
5 Steps to Creating Just-in-Time Learning Content Using Video
When it comes to encouraging just-in-time learning in an organization, video takes the crown as the most effective medium. With its visual and auditory elements, video can deliver information in a concise, engaging, and easily digestible format.
Employees can access short video tutorials or microlearning modules on demand, allowing them to quickly acquire the specific knowledge they need at the precise moment they need it. Just-in-time learning is best for practical problem solving – whether it’s demonstrating a new safety procedure, showcasing a product feature, or providing step-by-step instructions, video captures attention, enhances retention, and facilitates immediate application of knowledge.
You can implement just-in-time learning content using video in just five easy steps.
Step 1: Identify Specific Learning Needs
Start by understanding the specific knowledge gaps and learning needs of your employees. This analysis will help identify the specific areas where timely information delivery – such as new product updates, customer service techniques, or safety procedures – can provide the most significant benefit.
Step 2: Plan and Structure the Content
Once you have identified the learning needs, break down the information into bite-sized, easily digestible modules that can be quickly consumed by employees. Consider the use of videos to deliver the content, as they are engaging and can effectively convey complex concepts or visual demonstrations in a concise manner.
Step 3: Create Engaging Video Content
Develop short videos that cover the essential information related to the identified learning needs. Use clear visuals, animations, and demonstrations to make the content more engaging and memorable.
Step 4: Ensure Accessibility and Availability
Make sure the just-in-time learning videos are easily accessible to employees when they need them, whether that be through a learning management system or internal video library like Panopto. Provide clear instructions on how to access and navigate the video content repository. Plus, a VMS automatically captions and indexes all content, making it easy to find exactly what you are looking for.
Step 5: Facilitate Interactive Learning and Support
To enhance the effectiveness of just-in-time learning, provide opportunities for interaction and support. Encourage employees to comment, ask questions, or seek clarification about the content they are viewing. This dialogue right within the training videos fosters a learning community where employees can share their experiences and best practices related to the video content.
Bring Upskilling and Cross-Skilling In House with Ease
Investing in continuous learning through upskilling and cross-skilling employees is one of the best ways to train your company’s workforce and foster knowledge sharing within the organization. By investing in these development strategies, companies empower their employees to acquire new skills and expand their areas of expertise. Providing your team members with opportunities to cross-train and expand their skill sets will help them feel more comfortable in their roles and increase employee retention rates.
While you have the opportunity to pay for external training or curriculum to upskill and cross-skill, it’s much more effective to leverage your own teams. This way, you are able to save costs, time, and be more deliberate about the specific content in the program to match the needs of the company.
For example, in a cross-skilling program aimed at enhancing collaboration between marketing and sales teams, employees can gain valuable expertise from both disciplines. Marketing professionals share campaign strategies and audience analysis with the sales team, while sales representatives provide real-time feedback on customer interactions and market trends to the marketing team. This cross-skilling effort facilitates knowledge sharing, fostering a culture of collaboration, improving sales performance, and optimizing marketing efforts.
By utilizing video as a medium, employees can access targeted training content on demand, allowing them to acquire new skills and expand their expertise conveniently and efficiently. Video-based upskilling and cross-skilling programs provide employees with visual demonstrations, step-by-step instructions, and real-life examples, making the learning process engaging and memorable. This empowers employees to share their newly acquired knowledge with their colleagues, fostering a culture of knowledge sharing and collaboration.
💡 Learn how Industrial Training International uses Panopto to cross-skill employees.
What Do Upskilling and Cross-Skilling Mean?
Upskilling is the process of strengthening existing skills or learning complementary skills, often to close an organizational talent gap. For example, a retail store manager may share customer service skills with a new employee who then has the tools they need to advance positions within the store.
Cross-skilling (also known as cross-training) is the process of developing new skills that apply across different functions. For example, a user experience designer might learn software development fundamentals from the engineering team to improve cross-functional collaboration and productivity.
How to Upskill and Cross-Skill Your Workforce
- Assess the skills your team possesses now and what skills you may need in the future.
Turn to your team members when building your upskilling and cross-skilling training program. Since your team is familiar with their roles and the organization as a whole, begin the process by surveying and understanding employee skills and areas of opportunity for employees to grow.
- Set upskilling goals.
Why are you implementing upskilling and cross-skilling training? Do you wish to expand employee opportunities and responsibilities? Are leadership positions available? Will training help fill gaps between departments? Set training goals for all individual contributors along with larger teams and the organization as a whole.
- Determine what learning format is most suitable for you.
Do you already have some training program elements in place? For some, live or in-person training programs are used. For others, asynchronous video-based learning offers flexibility and scalability throughout the training program. It is up to you and your team to review all options and decide the best approach.
- Identify who in the organization can help train others.
Assess the existing skill sets and expertise of employees across different departments and teams, and look for individuals who have demonstrated proficiency or knowledge in specific areas to help upskill and cross-skill others.
- Design the upskilling or cross-skilling program.
Once you have an idea of how you wish to implement the upskilling and cross-skilling training, the next step is creating the training. Take all elements you have compiled to this point to develop a training program with your team and goals in mind. One effective way to do this is to create the program internally, such as creating training videos by department leaders.
- Monitor progress and match newly skilled employees with opportunities.
Upskilling and cross-skilling training is successful when employees have the opportunity to expand on their responsibilities. A video management system like Panopto provides analytics that will easily show progress made by each individual. Once training is complete and implemented, matching employees with positions that include these new skills show an organization’s commitment to upskilling and cross-training to offer greater opportunities to employees.
2. Easily Increase Peer-to-Peer Learning
Peer-to-peer learning is a rapidly growing approach in the L&D industry where employees teach and learn from each other. Peer-to-peer learning not only enhances engagement and retention but also fosters stronger connections among employees, leading to increased productivity, better teamwork, and a more comfortable environment for asking questions and receiving feedback.
Training new employees and answering the questions of existing employees is simple when capturing and centralizing knowledge from subject-matter experts in video. With a video management system like Panopto, inside video search and easy recording mean your employees don’t need to be experts in technology to make effective training and knowledge-sharing videos. This prevents the loss of valuable institutional knowledge and allows newcomers to access videos and resources that showcase the expertise of experienced employees. For example, if a seasoned salesperson departs, their replacement can immediately access videos of them delivering persuasive sales messaging or product demonstrations, enabling a seamless transfer of skills and techniques.
To ensure the retention of internal knowledge, organizations can create an online learning center or knowledge base using an internal video library like Panopto. Incorporating video content and technology into this approach is particularly effective for millennial and Gen Z employees who thrive in digital environments. This provides a secure and easily accessible repository for storing critical information, including legal policies, project deadlines, performance reviews, customer service guidelines, and more. The convenience and searchability of an internal video library makes it effortless for employees to navigate and retrieve key knowledge, further promoting knowledge sharing and preserving valuable expertise within the organization.
💡 Explore how Perkins Coie takes advantage of their shared expertise using Panopto.
5 ways to encourage social learning with video
- Foster employee rapport through introduction videos
Employee introduction videos are a great way to help new hires feel like a part of the team by sharing their best face with their new colleagues. It also helps them get to know the rest of the business, identify subject-matter experts, and understand who is responsible for what functions. Personalized video introductions help distributed teams build relationships and rapport.
- Demonstrate job-specific functions and how-to’s
On top of formal onboarding processes, managers spend significant time responding to the needs and questions of each new hire. Video empowers teams to share peer-to-peer knowledge without the interruption of constant real-time interactions. Whether in a home office, in the field, or on the go, a quick video recording creates an informal learning module that new hires can draw from as they onboard.
- Role play with video
Engaging with customers and prospects is an essential role within a business. Yet more often than not, scripts and manuals don’t capture the nuances essential to great communication. Video conveys important style, tone, and delivery. Simply recording a star employee in action can help new hires discover communication strategies to help them succeed.
- Capture knowledge shared in meetings
Some of the most common and effective internal learning happens incidentally, in day-to-day meetings. From project kick-offs and retrospectives to business scorecard reviews, information shared in meetings can be an enormously valuable reference for new hires to help understand how an individual or team approaches their work, driving understanding and alignment across the organization.
- Provide easy tools to quickly share knowledge
Your executives and employees likely don’t have bandwidth to create detailed documentation around their many responsibilities. Reduce the friction of knowledge sharing by adopting tools like Panopto that employees can quickly and easily use to record and share social learning videos.
3. Scale Insights from Subject Matter Experts
Most companies have someone who can answer the most obscure questions about a particular topic, system, or protocol. That person might be a coworker or, more likely, an internal subject-matter expert (SME). SMEs have deep knowledge and expertise in specific processes, functions or technologies. They can illuminate those topics with the confidence of years of experience.
Having a SME on the team is invaluable for many aspects of an organization, especially when creating learning content – but not all SMEs are natural teachers, nor do they often have the time to develop and sustain training programs Using video to assist with e-learning and other training projects can help maximize the value of your SME.
Having SMEs record a brief training video removes the need for them to continually appear in front of employees to teach, saving them time in their day-to-day work. Video also allows the SME to deliver their message in a controlled environment and gives them more time for other tasks.
SMEs often have full-time jobs outside of training. Collaborating with L&D teams can be additional work on top of their day-to-day duties. SMEs have a unique and valuable perspective to offer, so it’s crucial that they be given the time and tools they need to contribute their expertise. Using video to assist with e-learning is an excellent way to ensure that the process is easy for everyone involved. With user-friendly video tools like Panopto, SMEs can create fast, easy recordings, even if they have limited technology experience.
💡 Read how ROCKWOOL preserved years of experience by recording SMEs with Panopto.
Unleashing the Power of Video: Inspiring Subject Matter Experts to Share Knowledge within Organizations
- Identify SMEs and their preferred content topics: Identify employees who possess valuable knowledge and expertise in specific areas relevant to the organization’s goals and objectives.
- Utilize a video management system (VMS). SMEs don’t want to have to deal with equipment, complicated processes, or several different tools to record and save. A VMS like Panopto empowers SMEs by making recording their knowledge a cinch and automatically saves it into a searchable, accessible library.
- Provide SMEs with training and resources: Offer training and resources to SMEs on creating effective video content. This can include guidance on virtual teaching techniques, best practices for presenting information, and easy video production advice. Panopto offers an entire library of free resources to help beginners with easy video creation and editing.
- Establish a video production process: Define a streamlined process for creating and publishing videos, including scheduling, reviewing, and approving the content. Ensure that the process allows for collaboration between SMEs and any relevant stakeholders.
- Provide technical support: Ensure that SMEs have access to the necessary tools, equipment, and technical support for video creation. This may include providing video recording equipment, access to video editing software, or assistance with troubleshooting technical issues.
- Seek feedback and evaluate effectiveness: Regularly gather feedback from employees who have accessed the videos to assess their usefulness and impact. Use this feedback to continuously improve the video content and the overall knowledge-sharing process.
Take Action: Your Checklist for Unlocking Internal Knowledge with Video
Now that you have an idea of how to unlock internal knowledge using video, you may be asking yourself – now what? How do I put these thoughts into action?
Lucky for you, we’ve already created a list of action items for each of the four strategies we’ve discussed for improving knowledge sharing within your organization. These are easily implemented first steps to transform your company’s brain power into scalable, budget-friendly knowledge sharing that opens a world of insights, expertise, and innovation.
Share Internal Knowledge Easily with Panopto
Panopto is the leading all-in-one video solution for knowledge sharing. Discover how you can increase employee engagement across all stages of organizational learning by enabling easy creation and sharing of interactive video content, with clear, measurable outcomes.