The importance of information sharing in HR

In business, a culture of sharing can be transformative. Imagine a staff base that proactively shares new techniques, insights into competitor strategy, market trends and lessons learned from mistakes. What organisation wouldn’t want that kind of culture to thrive?

However, getting people to share knowledge within the workplace isn’t necessarily easy – particularly with your HR function. In this article, we go through the hurdles to get past and how to develop healthy information sharing in your business.

Obstacles to effective information sharing

Trust

Feeling able to share information at work requires both trust in the people around you and the organisation. And this all starts with a healthy company culture.

If your company culture is competitive and your employees feel pitted against each other in some way (such as competing for the best targets or opportunities), they will be less likely to share their knowledge, as that may diminish away their competitive advantage. Likewise if a colleague worries they will be blamed for any mistakes they’ve made when sharing their learnings, or that their successes may be taken by somebody else as their own, they will be less likely to shout about them.

It goes without saying if you want workers to share with your HR department, you’ll need to build trust there too. And that comes with transparent regular communication at your end, as well as the consistent, predictable following of company procedures and best practice.

Opportunity

Another obstacle for getting this working in your business is that employees may struggle to know the best time and place to share this information. This can be solved with education, i.e. building an understanding of workplace etiquette of how share the right information in the right way, at the right time. It can also be helped by providing designated platforms to share freely.

There are ways to introduce sharing opportunities into working life – so let’s get into them.

How to develop information sharing in your workplace

Here are some ways businesses can encourage knowledge sharing internally. The best news? Each method is accessible to all and will likely to come naturally to most staff.

The ‘shout-up’

It’s important to create a culture where ‘shout-ups’ are encouraged. That means, if someone suddenly discovers a brilliant new technique or crucial piece of industry news, they feel empowered to stand up (sometimes, literally) and tell the relevant colleagues.

Often this works well in regular team meetings. Saving a five-minute slot at the end for this purpose and encouraging team members to share any updates is a simple and effective way to get this into your cadence. The benefits of this is it can be off-the-cuff, heard by everyone there (not ignored), and the individual can get feedback on the spot.

Note that the confident among your team will have no scruples with this, but you may have to work harder to get quieter members of your team involved.

The team newsfeed

For smaller updates, and to increase the number of contributions from your less outspoken team members, a team newsfeed is a great idea. Digital messaging boards work great for this – whether you’re using Slack, Microsoft Teams, or more advanced employee engagement platforms as part of your HR Software.

Digital platforms help reduce inhibitions as they enable team members to post their findings in a place that feels more casual, whilst giving them the functionality to support what they’re saying with visuals, links and further reading. It also has the benefit that colleagues can access it at their own time and pace.

Setting up a designated channel for information sharing may be useful, or you could encourage group chats between peers with cross-over responsibilities or interests.

Lead from the top

“Do as I say, not as I do” just doesn’t cut it these days. You need to lead from the top if information sharing is to become second-nature to employees across your organisation.

Whether you’re an HR manager, director or team leader, you need to demonstrate a desire to share information yourself. That means giving employees access to your own findings and non-confidential information that may benefit your employees (as tempting as it may be to keep it to yourself).

The importance of recognition

One of the primary reasons people keep their cards close to their chest is because of the overriding fear that someone else may steal the limelight.

Imagine a manager has found a brilliant new way to boost productivity in their team that could earn them a promotion. Why give the game away and allow others to take the credit – or even nab that promotion for themselves? It’s natural to protect one’s own interests. But by sharing knowledge gained, the individual can make a far bigger impact on the organisation – and should be rewarded for it.

To encourage this, recognition is vitally important. It’s essential that employees are rightfully credited when a piece of information or knowledge is shared that helps the company. So keep an eye on where the ‘original source’ of information is, and ensure that recognition (and any rewards that comes along with it) is fairly spread across contributing team members.

Final thoughts

As we’ve discussed, information and knowledge sharing is invaluable. It can reduce a company’s reliance on expensive training schemes and create that all-important sense of community within the organisation. With these simple steps above, you can encourage more contributions from your team members and help hone your company culture into a nurturing space for all.