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Knowledge-sharing unlocks the skills, tricks and expertise hidden across your agency. What are the steps to get there?

What Is Knowledge-sharing?

Your agency will contain expertise in every corner of the business – from tips and tricks known used daily by your top-billing recruiter to interesting market information your intern learned during a research project.
Knowledge-sharing is the process of making all the information and expertise within your company accessible to everyone, and ensuring that if someone learns something valuable, everyone else learns it too.

Why Promote Knowledge-sharing?

  • It helps significantly in training , as recruiters ‘self teach’ from hands-on experience, learning live from each others’ successes and failures. If one recruiter has 10% response rates to cold emails while someone across the office has 40%, it’s likely not an issue of ability, but of knowledge-sharing.
  • Actively working together to share best practices also encourages collaboration, bringing teams closer as they exchange ideas on how to improve.
  • Knowledge-sharing also drives performance by placing a spotlight on excellence – creating a desire to become a leader in the organisation, with positive contributions to make and examples of personal successes to share.

How To Foster A Knowledge-sharing Culture

Despite its many benefits, a culture of sharing knowledge is unlikely to develop spontaneously in a defined sense.
Some team members may feel uncomfortable about ‘self promoting’ by sharing their successes or being perceived to be telling others how to do their work. Newer or junior team members may feel it’s not their place to be offering advice to more established colleagues.
Some recruiters may also tend to keep their cards close to their chests, striving to keep their tips and tricks secret to enhance their personal performance and place in the sales rankings.
Creating the right dynamic requires pro-active steps from your agency’s leadership team, built around:
  • Structured sessions – workshops, brainstorming sessions and other training activities expressly focused on sharing ideas and experiences help confirm your agency’s intention to make knowledge-sharing a priority.

    Purpose-built platforms to support the exchange of ideas give recruiters opportunities to see how a more collaborative way of working can benefit them, and helps foster a spirit of common purpose among groups.
  • Collaboration platforms – the use of intranets, chat and collaboration tools and internal email groups can all provide channels for team members to circulate their contributions.

    It’s important that senior leadership be active on these, proposing ideas and responding to input – recruiters are busy people and without the sponsorship of top management making a concerted effort to demonstrate the benefits of collaboration, your channels may soon be gathering dust.
  • Aligned incentives – effective use of team incentives can help encourage all team members to open up to the idea of sharing their personal best practices with their colleagues, creating a collaborative environment pursuing group success.

    Ultimately, your agency only succeeds if your per-head billings reach and maintain a consistent level – having a handful of superstars and a growing roster of under-performers will inhibit growth. Reflecting the need for information and best practices to flow through the business in the form of incentives helps bring your goals and those of your team into better alignment.
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