How to Facilitate Knowledge Sharing in Remote Work

On a remote team, knowledge moves through chat and then disappears into it. We recommend treating chat as the front door and a knowledge base as the record, joined by one habit: when the same question appears a second time in a channel, whoever answers writes the answer down as a page and replies with the link. The sections below cover the pieces around that rule, from knowledge management tools to meetings. For the culture side, see our tips on facilitating knowledge sharing in any workplace.

Make use of an enterprise social network (ESN)

An enterprise social network is a platform where employees connect, share information and collaborate. Slack, Microsoft Teams and Viva Engage (formerly Yammer) are the common ones. Ask questions in a channel, not in a direct message, so the answer reaches everyone who will have the same question tomorrow. A dedicated channel or hashtag for sharing articles and resources keeps learning visible, and a thank-you in the channel for people who answer well is the simplest recognition.

Encourage questions, then turn repeated ones into pages

Set aside time for Q&A in team meetings or open a specific Slack channel for questions. Then apply a simple rule that cuts through the debate over what is worth documenting: if a question comes up twice in the same channel, the person who answers it the second time writes the answer down as a page and replies with the link, before a third person has to ask. They have just typed most of the answer anyway, so the page is mostly a matter of saving it. To lower the burden of the knowledge experts in your team, you can consider adding our Kipwise Slack auto-answering bot to this specific Slack channel to provide answers to repeated questions automatically.

Implement a knowledge management system

A knowledge management system (KMS), also known as an internal knowledge base, stores and organizes what your team knows so people can find and use it. Most include searchable pages, discussion forums and document libraries. Enterprise options include Confluence, Kipwise and Bloomfire.

Weigh team size, whether it needs to search inside Slack, and how much of your existing documentation you would have to migrate. We recommend putting the Slack question first: a page that cannot be found from the channel where people ask will lose to asking a colleague, however good the page is.

Write for the reader in another time zone

Across time zones, every follow-up question costs a day. We recommend writing questions and answers so that nobody has to ask one: state what you tried, what you need and by when, and link the page or file instead of describing it. A question written that way also makes a better page when it comes up a second time.

Allow for informal interactions

Virtual coffee chats, an internal social group, video check-ins and short recorded clips (for example made with tools to create video clips) help remote colleagues connect, and they partly replace the water-cooler conversations of an office. Check out some fun team building activities ideas for remote teams.

Treat these as a way to build the trust that makes people ask, not as knowledge sharing in themselves: what is said in a call is gone unless someone writes it down. Name one person per session to post the two or three things worth keeping in the channel.

Put a remote working policy in place

A remote working policy does not share knowledge by itself, but it is the right place to write down the rules that make sharing work: which channel to ask in, how quickly people are expected to reply, and where answers get documented. It can also cover work hours, vacation days, data security and the use of company devices.

Create a learning and knowledge focussed culture

Give people reasons and time to teach each other. Mentorship programs, lunch and learns or online courses help, and so does keeping a few slots open in the shared calendar for brown bag lunches, quick presentations or impromptu conversations: official time slots show that taking the time to share is accepted. Recognize the people who contribute to the knowledge base.

Make knowledge sharing an ongoing habit

None of this works as a one-off. A single chat-tool launch or an all-hands about documentation fades unless someone keeps it visible. In your weekly team meeting, look at the questions that were asked twice that week and name who writes each answer.

This week, find the question asked most often in your busiest channel and write that page first.