Today’s headlines are dominated by news of high turnover rates and waves of layoffs, which can severely impact an organization’s institutional memory. When employees leave, not only do they walk out the door with knowledge in their heads, but they also leave behind lots of valuable documents and information in their email inboxes and on their computer hard drives.  With this in mind, it becomes more crucial that an organization appropriately and efficiently document its procedures and shared knowledge.  

The ability to capture critical information and documents makes collaboration tools a valuable asset to any organization. Team collaboration tools make it simpler to collect and access information down the road.  Encouraging employees to adopt and use online project management tools that provide a web-based alternative to storing institutional knowledge in email inboxes and hard drives are especially useful, providing users the ability to retrieve information when and where they need it.

Document Management

Online document management allows individuals to maintain an archive of important files.  Maintaining a collection of numerous versions of a document proves to be a tedious and chaotic process.  Why not take advantage of the most effective way to streamline your document management process?  Use an online workspace.   Storing these files in one central location makes staying organized an effortless task.

Task Management Tools

Task management tools are another way to get organized.  Instead of verbally allocating tasks to individuals, submit them to an online workplan.  These task management tools offer the ability to assign tasks to different members of a project, setup a hierarchical task list, and track progress.

Sharing Information

Oftentimes, outside clients do not have the ability to access an organizations internal outlook calendars.  However, subscribing to an online workspace allows an organization to share calendars, workplans, documents, announcements, and other information with anybody they choose.  The ability to easily communicate deadlines and deliverable dates can save time and energy companywide.

Adopting an online project management tool can also help facilitate communication in other ways.  Commenting on documents, maintaining lists of important information as shared documents, and using listserv features are all valuable elements of online workspaces.

Let’s say, for example, that your team has a meeting coming up.  Files are typically kept on multiple computers, CDs, floppy disks, USB drives, and folders.   By centralizing all relevant information and materials in one team collaboration tool, you would essentially eliminate any chance of losing them.

As you can see, enabling online collaborative tools can benefit an organization’s institutional memory in a multitude of ways.  Isn’t it time you got on board?