Social learning, or how each employee's knowledge can benefit the whole company
Nowadays, most people, when they come across a problem, search for it in their favourite search engine - Google - and consult the queries that deal with it. Collective intelligence is structured and made freely available to every individual. What if, in your company, employees could benefit in the same way from each other's knowledge? Read all our tips on corporate social networks.
The benefits of social learning for your company
Face-to-face training has its limits
When an employee encounters a problem in their work, they can refer it to the HR (Human Resources) department to request training. But if the training is face-to-face, it will not be immediate. At best, it will be scheduled. And there is no guarantee that it will provide a perfect response to the problem encountered. In some cases, an external speaker may not be able to provide a satisfactory response, or at least not from the outset.
E-learning for customised content
E-learning is a good way of countering the disadvantages of face-to-face training. E-learning is quicker to implement and the content can be customised. With software such as EasyTeachR from We Are Learning, companies can create their own training modules or online exercises. The social learning space dedicated to e-learning then enables the learning community to be promoted through exchanges. The aim is to provide learners with a learning context that is as close as possible to their day-to-day working environment.
Social learning to capitalise on experience
Face-to-face and online training have their merits. However, they do not take advantage of the knowledge community that forms the company. The problem faced by employees is one that others have faced before them. How did they solve it? And how can their experience be passed on to the next generation? That's what forums are all about:
- The first person to ask a question
- Someone answers it
- A third person asks the same question one day. He searches the forum and immediately gets the answer he needs.
Launch a useful and rich forum
Timely information
For the company, the benefits are real. Employees are able to find more immediate answers to their problems. And the system is a kind of self-service. Everyone can pick and choose what they need at any given moment. This is often more effective than transmitting content too far in advance. Let's say the company anticipates and offers training for problems that employees might encounter later. As the employees have not yet faced these problems themselves, they are unlikely to be receptive to it. And the training effort will be in vain.
Reliability indices to corroborate content
The social aspect of the forum makes it more reliable. Those who take the floor are aware that they will be read by their peers. Conversely, the responses or comments made by others can supplement or correct the information exchanged. A rating system can serve as an indicator of reliability. Or, like Wikipedia, the software can indicate when content has not yet been validated by a third party.
Game mechanics to encourage discussion
The more entries the forum receives, the more answers it has to offer. If nobody asks questions, answers or comments, the forum will be useless. Gamification is an excellent way of encouraging participation. The company can reward the most active participants, by awarding virtual badges for example. Scores can also be marked, to highlight the relative performance of each participant and provide a collective stimulus.
The solution for capitalising on company knowledge
Beyond the practical and operational aspects, social learning makes it possible to collect and pass on individual skills within the organisation.
The importance of transmission
A company's greatest asset is its human capital: the body of knowledge and know-how acquired by its employees. Passing on these skills is a key factor in the company's development. But transitions are difficult to orchestrate, whatever the situation:
- retirement: to avoid a loss of know-how for the company
- maternity leave: to make it easier to train the replacement, leaving him or her with all the elements required
- a new employee: to ensure a smooth handover to the previous employee.
In the eyes of the customer or external contacts, these problems will detract from the company's credibility if they are visible.
More collaborative media
Tutorials or " topos " are often the subject of hours of work. Concocted upstream by the person leaving, they are discovered downstream by the person in charge. This time lag is far from optimal. And the successor rarely dares to contact his predecessor when he encounters a problem. What's more, procedures can sometimes be rigid and not regularly updated. They have been drawn up and passed on unilaterally. There is too little encouragement for those who use it to contribute with an annotation, a comment, etc.
Social learning tools
Using the right collaborative tools is a sine qua non for effective social learning in the workplace.
Electronic document management (EDM)
To make information sharing more interactive, your EDM needs to be dynamic. Your employees need to be able to exchange information in a contextualised way, so that they can work together more effectively. During a handover, with document management software such as Jalios Document System, it is much easier to leave annotations on documents than to draw up a single, long document covering everything.
The Corporate Social Network (CSN)
The forum-type system can be translated into a corporate social network. The aim is to centralise internal exchanges within your company, and even external exchanges with customers and suppliers, within a digital platform. The Jalios Digital Platform CSR application is even better suited to these collaborative and social methods thanks to its exceptional functional coverage. More dynamic than an intranet, the aim is to encourage interaction. This Digital Workplace makes collaborative working more fluid, and it is in this sense that social learning contributes to your company's individual and collective effectiveness.
A company is a pool of knowledge that social learning can help to develop and maintain. Both CSR and EDM systems are essential collaborative tools for harnessing collective intelligence to drive your company's development.
Article translated from French