Organizational learning and Knowledge management practice: a fast guide

You may be wondering how to best foster a learning environment within your organization. The bad news is that studying and learning are sometimes difficult. The good news is that technology can help! To help share some knowledge, here are some of Joyjet’s most interesting ideas about organizational learning.

As the global workforce has changed in recent years due to different factors such as increasing business competition and the digitization of industries and technology, not investing in knowledge is no longer an option. 

Having an organizational learning strategy helps a company learn from past failures to improve its existing strengths and weaknesses. Organizational learning and knowledge management are necessary for all companies.

An example: Your sales are down 2% this year since you started selling 25 years ago.It doesn’t make sense to you and you know that something is wrong. But how do you find out what it is? A team that thinks together can help find the solution.

What is Knowledge Management?

Knowledge Management is a discipline that promotes, with an integrated vision, the management and sharing of all information assets owned by the company. This information can be in a database, documents, and procedures. It is also passed through people themselves, through their experiences and skills.

• It is not a technology, but uses technology;

• It is a methodology, not a product;

• It doesn't work without cultural and managerial changes;

• The great difficulty is to transform tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge

“The art of creating value from the organization’s intangible assets” – Karl Eric Sveiby

Human Capital is at the heart of everything

Human Capital refers to the knowledge, skills and experiences of high performing employees that are linked to the key processes of the company. .

Human capital refers to the individuals and their competences. Examples of such competencies include skills, education, experience, value, know-how, and social networks. 

Management actions that draw on human capital:

• Discussion forums

• Communities of practice

• Creation of a pleasant and stimulating work environment

• Stimulate participatory management

• Implement profit sharing programs

“The sum of everything that the people of a company know that gives that company a competitive advantage in the market” - Thomas Stewart

What is organizational learning?

Organizational learning involves learning and imparting information about yourself within your organization that helps you improve your strategy. A company needs to incorporate new learnings into its overall work processes as it grows.

Organizational learning is learning the skills that are already well developed in organizations. It is important to be careful that the information does not disappear from your hands. It should be a requirement for knowledge management.

• You can implement knowledge retention through video, visuals or documentation or through a dedicated team working to support learning.

• You can also create internal knowledge database tools for your organization to maintain and transfer knowledge, such as GitHub, Nuclino, and GNOME.

• Using hybrid or remote models can improve productivity over other face-to-face teams by implementing remote work best practices.

The famous training...

When we talk about organizational learning, many think of trainings, which usually cover broad topics such as innovative product development, leadership, and management tools.

However, the challenge often lies in measuring the results. For example, consultancies report that even executives have very little visible learning outcomes when it comes to organizational learning.

The implementation of a systematic organizational learning program and the creation of a culture of permanent learning are perhaps more important than the training topics themselves.

The organization's learning strategy must provide a strong framework that helps its team build knowledge together.

The combination of knowledge retention and knowledge transfer should help meet the needs of sustainable development and should reach the customer positively, as a way of delivering added value.

What would be the point of having excellent professionals, if you don't have a structural minimum? So, invest in infrastructure and make your team less stressed.

Interaction is a source of wealth!

Integrating organizational learning into Joyjet's corporate culture

At Joyjet Digital, the challenge was to create an educational environment and culture within our organization that is (almost) 100% remote.

What we did and what we continue to do:

·   We have established a workforce development program with the aim of ensuring effective and sustainable development for all.

·   The investment included offering continuous updating at a corporate university, with external partners linked to technology, education and marketing.

·   We created participation in quarterly results and dedication to technical courses and foreign language development.

The organizational learning mantra should be:

- Leadership encourages learning;

- The company is a space for dreams and experimentation;

- The company only exists with constant collaboration.

Do you experience any challenges in this space? Tell us about it!

The importance of organizational learning in your culture

Why is learning important for companies? Organizational culture describes how work is done. The first association with corporate learning is the collection of boxed training documents. Occasional formalized instruction cannot make learning the most natural aspect of everyday life.

In fact, Mary K. Winkler of the Urban Institute argues that companies must shift to a culture of learning. Companies with a culture of compliance use data to follow rules. These records are collected at specific intervals, isolated and rarely used to make decisions.

Align your organizational learning strategy with your business strategy

For organizations in all industries to be successful, it is a priority for them to implement a strategic strategy. Your company's strategy should be geared towards helping the company increase its sales by a certain amount in the new market.

Once you've decided on an action plan, share this information with the organization in hopes that it can be implemented. Whenever developing organizational learning strategies, companies should work closely with the human resources department.

They can also ensure that organizations are employing learning and a learning-based approach to creating and utilizing new knowledge.

Integrate organizational learning into your corporate culture

It allows you to hire and retain people capable of learning, improving and innovating to enhance their skills and knowledge.

A learning culture is important for any successful organization. Student learning enables your team to understand and evaluate employee and team performance.

In the HBR articles entitled Knowledge Management, there is an organizational culture that emphasizes learning: the supportive environment, concrete learning and leadership processes and procedures that encourage learning. It requires the development of three areas.

Create an educational environment within your organization and establish an excellent workforce development program that will ensure effective development.

The results are subsequently useful for organizations to improve themselves.

What is an example of organizational learning?

Many companies employ organizational skills to increase sales and increase revenue. We could take Disney as a good example.

Almost everyone is known for Disney princess movies or theme parks. The Disney organization learns new forms of entertainment, however. They also created music and entered the streaming services industry through Disney+.

Earlier this year, Disney launched its first streaming service in Britain. Known as Disney Life, it was Disney's first streaming service product.

How to use knowledge bases for organizational learning?

When you encourage an educational culture in companies, your technology infrastructure needs to be strong. Deloitte revealed two main issues facing businesses and technology infrastructure. A knowledge base provides optimal flexibility and optimal value in reducing this problem to an essential level.

A knowledge base allows the organization to store information about its employees in a central location. Once learning is complete, it will help facilitate all elements of organizational learning: creating documents, writing insights, developing training processes, and coordinating policy documents.

A knowledge base facilitates micro and macro learning

The internal information base becomes useful in both microlearning and macrolearning. Helpjuice offers an intuitive Google search feature that helps employees quickly find answers to their questions.

When employees aren't sure how to properly do their jobs, they can access the Knowledge Base and search their documents for answers in a matter of seconds.

In the case of macro learning knowledge bases, we can support specialized training or integration solutions such as images, graphic materials or video. Do you show how you manage your projects?

A knowledge base makes it easy to update information

The other big benefit of using the Knowledgebase is the simplicity and flexibility of customization. Successful organizational learning requires regular workflows and adjustments on a routine basis.

Therefore, you should select one that includes an easy editor feature. The Help Juice tool makes updating information as easy as editing Word documents. You are not afraid to tolerate change, so you will never need to make changes.

Leadership that encourages learning

If education were intended for a culturally integrated culture, leaders should lead by talking and acting as much as one person can... Unfortunately, the Deloitte report shows that learning rarely correlates with promotion.

Yes, there are many reasons why learning is so important. But to make employees more aware of learning, they need rewards. Think about how much value your knowledge and initiatives are in improving your job prospects.

How can I improve the communication between my actions and the ones I have been carrying out? Recognize and encourage new solutions and ideas, even in the unlikely event of their effectiveness.

From HR Business Partner to CHRO

Do the best job in Human Resources. Test the needs calculator and decide how far to go based on your HR career goals and skills.

Work on your knowledge management skills

Organizational learning is learning the skills in organizations that are already well developed. It is important to be careful that the information does not disappear from your hands. It should be a requirement for knowledge management.

You can implement knowledge retention through video, visuals, or documentation, or through a dedicated team working to support learning.

You can also create internal knowledge database tools for your organization to maintain and transfer knowledge, such as GitHub, Nuclino, and GNOME.

Consider remote/hybrid configuration

Your strategy will be based on the virtual environments under which your company operates. Researchers have found that using hybrid or remote models can improve productivity over other face-to-face teams when implementing remote work best practices.

When the team is still working from home across multiple time zones, they have tools to help them align synchronously and drive innovation and continuous learning.

Make it easy to experiment

Experiments involve the acquisition of knowledge. For example, you may be asked to try to introduce a new product into your business strategy. By using experimental methods, your team is testing hypotheses to learn new knowledge and collect data.

Of course, experimentation can cause a lot of problems with ideas, but failure is essential. If you fail, you don't know how you can improve in a future exercise.

encourage collaboration

To learn effectiveness, people must learn constantly. Salesforce reported that 72% cited poor communication and collaboration between organizations and 76% cited a lack of coordination. You can also encourage collaboration through meetings and brainstorms that encourage teamwork and help build a knowledge-sharing mindset among colleagues and clients.

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