The culture that defines your organization is important, imbuing a sense of identity upon what might otherwise be a faceless entity and having both internal and external benefits. Carefully fostering a particular culture will not only give employees a better sense of the role they should play within the organization as a whole but will also let you control how it is perceived by third parties.
The question of how to curate and disseminate the foundations of this culture is a tricky one to tackle. The adoption of a knowledge base can be an ideal solution and there are examples of successful deployment that speak to how it can help. For the uninitiated, here is a look at what knowledge management has to do with organization culture and how the two can enjoy a symbiotic relationship with a host of tangible advantages.
Basic Building Blocks
First and foremost, it is important to distinguish knowledge base solutions from superficially similar services. This type of platform is not a corporate wiki, for example; it is a centrally controlled collection of information that is written and augmented by a dedicated team, rather than relying on the input of users in an undiluted, open-source ecosystem.
With knowledge management tools at your disposal, you can create a structured, consistent introduction to your organizational culture. This approach means that when new employees join the team, you can easily give them access to clear, concise details about the values your organization holds and the kind of atmosphere it hopes to foster. Effective knowledge management is, therefore, the keystone of any successful organization, especially one that is keen to avoid ambiguity about its culture and how it should be manifested in the actions of its staff.
In turn, culture plays a part in perpetuating and enhancing employee engagement, which is an undeniably important aspect of running a business. You will be better equipped to retain talented workers, rather than seeing them lost to competitors or lose motivation due to disillusionment, if you can give them direct access to information covering your organization and its culture.
Pursuing Productivity
Knowledge management, when harnessed correctly, is a vital asset for any organization that wants to boost productivity and eliminate inefficiencies. It helps to make useful data accessible in seconds, freeing up resources and reducing the resources required to train new hires.
Indeed, a knowledge base can be the foundation of your entire training strategy. For instance, if you have a major cultural shift throughout the organization, which would result in a lot of upheaval, having your plans set down in a format that is easy to understand and accessible to all will be immensely useful.
Training can be a convenient tool that helps to define organizational culture to newcomers, but it can be less impactful for those higher up the chain, who are already established in their roles. Knowledge management that is adaptable and can be augmented with fresh content on the fly is effective in both cases, especially if the organization chooses to adopt a core constitution that outlines its values as part of this overhaul.
Regardless of your situation, a knowledge base can help you bolster productivity, because the information it contains will be accessible at all times and can be referred to whenever any employee is in need. Instead of having to handle the same queries about organizational culture time and again, your organization can deal with frequently asked questions centrally and update them as necessary.
Setting Quantifiable Targets
One of the problems facing modern organizations is being able to precisely measure their success over time. Plotting out performance in raw terms of profit and loss does little to provide clues to potential solutions to the underlying factors that are helping or hindering performance.
Having a clearly defined organizational culture that lays out expectations with regards to employee behavior and how they align with the organization’s core values will enable you to measure success or failure. This clearly applies to individuals, but in an environment where collaboration and teamwork are crucial, it is also key in allowing others to provide feedback on how their colleagues are performing. In short, when everyone has access to the same information and the same training, there is a codified, unified understanding of organizational culture.
Leveraging Leadership
Ensuring that leaders can manage people effectively in the workplace is clearly important, but it is easier said than done. Any organization might play host to a number of different managerial styles in its upper echelons, making the maintenance of a core culture more difficult. A knowledge base is as useful in eliminating ambiguity at this level as it is when ushering in newcomers to the lowest rungs of an organization. It will not only set the parameters within which managers lead, but it will also provide them with a point of reference in the event that there is any uncertainty over a particular issue.
The best knowledge management solutions make sure that an organization’s culture is not some shape-shifting, malleable beast that can be exploited or ignored. Instead, they provide the benefits of more effective training, improved productivity and better performance measurement in one tidy package.
