8APRIL 2021When I first thought about knowledge sharing, my mind jumped to traditional onboarding and training programs. The classroom-style powerpoint presentation where the teacher sends the message to the student. As I dug a little deeper, I started to uncover some of the less obvious ways knowledge is shared; observation of non-verbal cues, scrolling through old conversations in an organization's intranet, listening to stories of more tenured teammates. As our organizations and interactions become increasingly (or even primarily) supported by technology, it's important to consider how our digital workplace technology (DWT) can facilitate knowledge sharing and learning. For the purpose of this article, you can think of DWT as organization's digital social collaboration tools such as Webex Teams, Slack, Sharepoint, etc. Below I will reflect on my top 6 key considerations for leading the design and use of DWT solutions for organizational knowledge creation, sharing, and learning. From a full-scale organizational perspective1. Knowledge sharing is everyone's responsibilityIs knowledge sharing the responsibility of the sender or the receiver? The individual or the organization? Without a clear conclusion, leaders must consider how every level of the organization contributes to the collective knowledge. Leaders may start with a more formal approach, setting the strategy and identifying the team(s) and tools to execute. The more informal aspects of the organization must also be considered, such as how the culture may facilitate or inhibit the type of communication and collaboration that fosters knowledge transfer. Managers will need to encourage and celebrate learning and sharing, while also embodying the behaviors they want to see in their team. At the individual level, employees should be coached to reflect on what they've learned and encouraged to share with others. In the absence of an explicit step-by-step guide, it's crucial to embed mutual responsibility for knowledge sharing in every level of the organization. 2. Develop your business case using affordances, not featuresOn the surface level, it can be simple to evaluate the effectiveness of a DWT by its features, like the ability to search or send a message. To truly understand DWT as a business driver, I encourage practitioners to see beyond the features and focus on what the technology affords the user to do that is unique. The affordance perspective is the approach to evaluating 6 Key Considerations for Developing Technology Solutions to Support Organizational Knowledge SharingSydney May, PHR Master's Candidate in Learning, Organizational ChangeCXO INSIGHTS
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