Frontline employees are bombarded with a ton of new information on a daily basis. They’re faced with a steady stream of new products, offers and discounts—not to mention new safety policies, processes and even new teammates to get to know.

Teams in fast-paced customer service environments have very little time to absorb this knowledge before needing to immediately put it into practice. That means knowledge sharing—the process of transferring valuable information, skills and insights between people, teams and systems—has to be quick and effective.

When your information is locked into informal channels (ex. “just ask so-and-so”) important details end up slipping through the cracks. All that knowledge loss has a real cost, even if it’s not obvious on a balance sheet. By one estimate, inefficient knowledge management practices directly impact, on average, 25% of a business’s annual revenue—for a Fortune 500 company generating $9 billion annually, this translates to approximately $2.4 billion in enterprise value at stake each year.

That’s why it’s so essential for frontline organizations to design systems that not only collect and centralize their key knowledge but also let it flow seamlessly to everyone who needs it. In this article, we’ll explore how modern teams are doing exactly that.

Don’t just store knowledge—let it flow

Knowledge management first emerged as a practice in the 1970s and 1980s as the economy shifted from manufacturing to desk work, and new information technologies hit the scene.

By the 1990s, teams were building the first internal wikis and dedicated knowledge management systems (KMS) software soon followed. These tools allowed teams to centralize knowledge in a way that had never been possible in the era of paper documents.

While KMS revolutionized knowledge management in its time, static resources can only take you so far. Having a centralized location to store knowledge is the first step, but today’s frontline teams don’t have the luxury of sitting at a desk and scrolling through pages of resources to find what they need.

That’s why modern frontline teams are moving to dynamic, AI-supported knowledge ecosystems that are accessible from their mobile devices, so they can share key knowledge and get answers, fast.

Here are some of the innovations that these tools enable:

1. Moving from hoarding knowledge to sharing it

Despite all our technical advances, too many companies still end up with information silos. Sure, the knowledge may be theoretically accessible to anyone—but if finding it requires re-watching old training videos or digging through the PDF employee handbook, how accessible is it, really?

AI-enabled knowledge-sharing tools, on the other hand, allow teams to quickly surface insights using conversational search.

2. Connecting learning, doing, and improving

Today’s knowledge ecosystems emphasize constant, incremental improvement—within the flow of work, not just in a dedicated training session. By turning learning and testing modules into something staff can complete in a few minutes a day, teams can constantly review and test their knowledge. So, whether they need to follow critical safety guidelines or learn a great story about saison beer to tell restaurant patrons, they’re always ready.

3. Making tacit knowledge explicit

There are two key types of knowledge in a workplace—explicit and tacit:

• Explicit knowledge: Documented information, standard operating procedures (SOPs), processes, and formal training manuals.
• Tacit knowledge: Skills, experiences, and intuition that live in people’s heads.

Most of what staff learn in training is the explicit kind. But tacit knowledge is just as, and sometimes even more critical, for performance. For example, a recipe is an example of explicit knowledge, but a chef’s instincts on when exactly a dish is done is tacit.

Tacit skills can be taught, but they’re usually passed from person to person rather than formalized. By creating living knowledge systems that allow staff to contribute their own best practices, everyone can benefit.

4. Continuously reinforcing your knowledge base

Many frontline industries are affected by seasonal spikes and slumps, leading to high turnover as teams scale up or down to meet demand. Embedding knowledge into processes, workflows, and technologies that everyone uses helps preserve your institutional memory, so critical information doesn’t leave when staff move on to new opportunities. In turn, new team members are able to quickly get up to speed by accessing the entire team’s knowledge in one place.

Levels of knowledge sharing

Knowledge sharing looks different at different levels of an organization. Let’s break it down.

Individual knowledge sharing: One-on-one sharing between team members. This might include formal or informal mentorship, communities of practice, and social learning.

Team knowledge sharing: Disseminating knowledge within a team. This might include collaborative tools for knowledge transfer, team messaging apps, and daily check-ins.

Organizational-level knowledge sharing: Sharing knowledge within an organization. This might include formal training seminars, enterprise knowledge systems, and ongoing cultural reinforcement, such as through PSA posters or all-hands meetings.

Ecosystem-level knowledge sharing: Sharing knowledge across locations, franchises, brands and/or partnerships. This might include formal training seminars involving staff from multiple locations, standardized training materials, enterprise knowledge systems or a company-wide newsletter.

Methods and modern channels

Over the years, organizations have developed many different approaches to impart key knowledge to their teams. These include:

Traditional methods

Historically, businesses had two ways to impart knowledge: through in-person training or static documents. These methods still exist today and can provide a helpful learning foundation—but are best when also supplemented with other approaches to improve retention.

Examples: Formalized training programs, documentation of key processes and procedures, employee handbooks, team meetings and town halls.

Digital and social tools

The rise of the internet and new digital communication technologies gave teams the ability to communicate asynchronously, easily share knowledge across teams and locations and keep living documents that can be continuously updated and improved.

Examples: Internal wikis, Slack channels, Microsoft Teams and digital knowledge bases (such as SCORM and LMS).

AI and automation

When generative AI arrived on the scene, it allowed for the development of specialized AI assistants that make a company’s knowledge searchable in real time. This allows for smart content extraction from legacy knowledge base systems.

Examples: Dedicated AI assistants, like Max, and other conversational AI features that allow you to search your team’s knowledge base in plain text.

Microlearning and continuous reinforcement

To get the most out of training, teams need to keep practicing and testing their skills—ideally on a daily basis. This is something that could be done manually (for example, by a team leader reviewing key information and quizzing their team at a daily check-in meeting) or with a learning platform like Axonify that tailors the learning experience to each user, with daily microlearning sessions of 3-5 minutes.

Examples: Daily review sessions in team meetings, bite-sized learning and testing through a learning platform.

An important note: there’s not one right way to share knowledge. Rather, the most effective teams pull together a variety of complementary approaches to promote learning and reinforcement. For instance, their staff may engage in formal training sessions, get important updates through digital channels, be able to search their knowledge base using AI when they face a question they don’t know the answer to, and complete daily practice sessions to help their knowledge stick.

Building an organizational culture of knowledge sharing

Knowledge sharing doesn’t just happen. It’s something you have to cultivate. A culture of trust and collaboration rewards team members for sharing what they know—and doesn’t penalize them when they express questions. Companies with a strong organizational culture of knowledge sharing are able to more easily break down silos and accelerate innovation.

Here’s how to cultivate a culture where knowledge sharing is encouraged and celebrated.

Leadership

Leaders must model the kinds of sharing behaviors and transparency they want their employees to practice. This might look like inviting questions, admitting when they don’t know the answer, and encouraging their team to share new ideas and ways of working.

Incentivizing participation

Recognition, rewards and visible impact can all encourage your team to share more openly. If someone makes a suggestion that improves a process, make sure that they’re recognized for their contribution in front of the team. You might also consider implementing tangible rewards (like gift cards or other small treats) for those who make a difference.

Integrate sharing into your existing workflows

To integrate knowledge sharing effectively, make it part of your team’s daily routines—not extra work. This might mean adding a question and answer period to a daily team meeting, scheduling a monthly professional development session, or using a learning platform like Axonify to reinforce key skills in just a few minutes a day.

Psychological safety

Employees need to feel secure enough to share mistakes, lessons learned and best practices. That means welcoming questions, inviting suggestions, and treating errors (within reason) as learning opportunities. Research shows that teams with high psychological safety are much better able to promote team learning and as a consequence are more effective.

The benefits of knowledge sharing

Creating an organization where knowledge sharing is supported and celebrated takes some effort, but the rewards are more than worth it. These include:

Faster onboarding for new hires

When institutional knowledge becomes instantly accessible, the period for onboarding new hires gets shorter. When they have questions, they can instantly look up the right answers.

Increased employee engagement and retention

People who feel valued for what they know are more likely to stay engaged at work and stick around longer.

Improved teamwork and cross-department collaboration

When knowledge flows freely and circulates easily between teams, you can eliminate knowledge silos.

More creative problem-solving

Collective intelligence leads to better solutions. By combining perspectives and knowledge from different disciplines, teams can design more innovative, holistic approaches.

Enhanced decision-making

Access to up-to-date insights improves team agility and makes it easier to see the bigger picture.

Reduced risk and training costs

Effective knowledge sharing leads to fewer errors overall, less rework, and faster time to proficiency when staff are learning new skills.

Overcoming common barriers to knowledge sharing

If knowledge sharing were easy, every frontline organization would have mastered it by now. There are often very real barriers that teams need to overcome. Luckily, these are solvable—they just take some dedicated effort. Here’s how to overcome these common issues.

Knowledge silos

Create transparent communication channels to break down departmental isolation.

Knowledge hoarding

Design incentive structures that reward sharing, not ownership.

Organization and searchability issues

Implement unified knowledge systems with search, tagging and analytics.

Time constraints

Embed sharing into existing workflows like shift huddles or app-based check-ins.

Low trust or unclear benefits

Collect and circulate success stories that show real business impact to build trust over time.

Strategies to strengthen knowledge flow

Once you’ve built your knowledge-sharing culture, how do you keep it strong? Here are strategies you can use to continuously reinforce good knowledge sharing habits and keep information flowing smoothly.

Create a single source of truth

Use a centralized, searchable knowledge base or AI assistant as employees’ first port of call. That way, when they have questions, they know exactly where to look.

Capture tacit knowledge before it walks out the door

Establish pathways for staff to share what they know. You can do this through setting up mentoring relationships, creating videos featuring staff sharing their best practices, and designating Q&A threads where employees can chime in with their tips and ideas.

Encourage cross-functional collaboration

Use group projects to transfer knowledge between different disciplines and teams. These kinds of projects give members the chance to interact, share their specific domain knowledge, and learn how their work all fits together as part of a larger whole.

Empower frontline experts

Let experienced employees take the lead on sharing knowledge by offering their best tips and lessons from real scenarios. Allow them to lead a training workshop, or interview them about their firsthand experience for a training video.

Practice reinforcement

Ensure critical knowledge doesn’t fade with continuous microlearning and testing, so employees review key skills and information on a regular (ideally daily) basis. Using a tool like Axonify can automate this process and tailor learning content to individual strengths and weaknesses.

How to measure knowledge sharing success

Once you’ve put all this effort into improving knowledge sharing, how do you know it’s working? Here are some key metrics to consider tracking, so you can see how your team’s knowledge sharing improves over time.

Pro tip: Make sure to benchmark your stats before starting a new intervention, so you can see the impact of the change.

• Participation and engagement rates: See what percentage of your staff is contributing to and accessing information.
• Time-to-competence: How quickly are new hires and staff who have transitioned roles able to act independently? Compare across different training methodologies to what’s most effective.
• Error reduction / productivity lift: Look at error rates and/or productivity outputs before and after implementing different knowledge sharing interventions to see what’s most effective.
• Employee retention and satisfaction: Compare retention rates and the results of employee satisfaction surveys before and after implementing any new knowledge sharing practices to see what makes a difference.
• Business KPIs: Track key business metrics like sales, safety, service consistency and tie these numbers to any changes made within your knowledge sharing systems. Can you notice a difference before and after implementation?

The future of knowledge sharing: From intranets to intelligence

From paper employee handbooks, to internal wikis and intranets, to modern app-based learning solutions—we’ve come a long way from the early days of knowledge sharing. Here’s how we predict knowledge sharing will to continue to evolve over the next few years:

AI will become the new knowledge partner

Smart assistants like Axonify’s Max will become indispensable as they continue to make information easily discoverable in the flow of work for frontline workers.

Knowledge ecosystems will grow more sophisticated

Teams will use interconnected systems that tie learning, communication and performance data together so that training, team comms, and tracking all live in the same place.

Teams will establish continuous feedback loops

Learning and development, HR, and compliance teams will invest in frontline-to-HQ insights. They’ll be able to easily see and understand the impact of their knowledge-sharing interventions, and drive new operational improvements.

Human-AI collaboration will be the norm

Teams will combine human expertise with machine efficiency to be able to make better decisions and drive outcomes in the moment. AI will continue to be used for adaptive learning—allowing staff to follow tailored and individualized learning plans.

From information to impact

Today, it’s not enough for teams to store information. It’s about leveraging the knowledge sources that you have to empower every employee, at every level, to act with clarity and confidence. When knowledge flows freely, your team is equipped to execute consistently, share their innovative ideas and deliver a consistently excellent customer experience.

Learn how Axonify helps frontline teams share knowledge that actually sticks.