It’s absolutely critical to ensure that employees have access to the right information at the right time. This is as true for a startup as it is for a large multinational. But in fast-growing, innovation-driven companies, that access to knowledge is arguably even more important—for IT administrators and employees alike. High staff turnover and the need to optimize the productivity of new  hires' productivity make effective knowledge management one of the keys to success.

To find out more, AccessOwl spoke to several IT experts. They shared the following best practices:

1. Documentation is essential as companies scale

Patryk Przepiórkowski, Connexin IT Infrastructure and Security Manager, explains that his current working environment is a small, fast-moving business. In such settings, knowledge sharing can often be done informally, via instant messages. However,  he cautions that this approach quickly becomes infeasible as companies grow.

“From my time in other companies, I know that good documentation wins you so many battles,” he says. “The biggest project that I would do now is carve out time to actually document what we have. That way, if somebody new joins, you have that ability to onboard them and don't have to shadow and split your time between them.”

2. Plan for your obsolescence, and staff turnover

Przepiórkowski argues that IT documentation is also key to managing the challenge of staff leaving and taking critical knowledge with them.

“There's a propensity in technical people to over-complicate solutions because it's a puzzle and people like mental puzzles. But I've also been in situations where people have done that and then they've left the business and nobody knows how the thing works,” he says. “So think of this as much as possible. Where the documentation helps most of all is planning for your own obsolescence.”

Picus Security IT Engineer Emre Kurt agrees:

“I love doing some documentation so that, whenever I leave a company, whoever is replacing me has a better understanding of what to do in a particular area,” he says.

Shane Fritts, IT Senior Manager at Maxio, claims effective documentation and knowledge management can also preserve essential IP—especially if key information is locked away in personal drives and documents.

“Especially in smaller startup companies you have a lot of people with a lot of tribal knowledge,” he says. “And if you start deleting and decommissioning accounts [once they’ve left], the next thing you know it’s: ‘oh, I just took down half the product.’ That will happen.”

3. Make documentation simple and well-ordered

XTB IT Asset Manager Jakub Łączak-Król encourages all team leaders to “write stuff down” to document processes and changes so that new IT starters can hit the ground running. Making this information as easy to digest  as possible is key.

“I usually try to convince people to have some kind of template and checklist of what the documentation should look like, so that whenever you open it, you immediately know where you will find specific information,” he says. “Apart from making things simple, have some kind of order and some simple but strict rules—because then you can make sure that things don’t get too messy.”

4. Don’t neglect employee-facing documentation

As important as IT documentation is for new starters in the tech function, it’s equally vital to share policies with employees to minimize business risk, build corporate culture and improve performance. Airtower Networks IT Manager Derek McGee shares an essential IT guide with new starters which includes:

Acceptable (internet) use policy

• Password policy

• Remote access policy

• Mobile device and BYOD policy

“We break it down into sections so it’s easier to read and also have legal and HR take a look at it to make sure I'm not violating state laws, because we operate in all 50 states,” McGee explains.

5. Use documentation to support self-service

Enhanced knowledge management can benefit not just IT staff but also employees outside of the IT department, according to Picus Security’s Kurt, who previously worked at a managed service company.

“We were doing everything manually, including setting up devices and creating networks, with a very small team of just 8-10 people and hundreds of customers,” he says. “Our idea was to create a documentation space, so that users could do some easy tasks by themselves, like resetting passwords.”

XTB’s Łączak-Król adds that ticketing systems also offer opportunity to support employee self-service.

“If you have some kind of simple problems that happen to people, you can create some documentation around that, and allow the platform to suggest the solution to the employees so they can handle it themselves,” he says.

“But it is tricky to make it clear that they can actually handle it themselves, if it's something very simple. It’s also tricky to write the documentation in a way that would actually convince them to follow those steps.”

6. Consider automation

Khoi Pham, IT and Compliance Lead at Coda, argues that “documentation is king.” But, he’s also keen to eliminate the need for dense tomes of content that IT admins must wade through to extract essential knowledge. This is where automation comes in.

“My focus as someone who does IT, but owns IT and compliance, is to automate away as much of my job as possible so I have time to do other things,” he says. “This means that, if I need to delegate a task to the people that work under me, I can do it easily without needing to really explain and document this whole process.”

Knowledge matters

Knowledge sharing supports a wide range of goals for IT leaders. Ensuring that key technical information is retained as IT staff come and go is just one piece of the puzzle. Sharing important security and acceptable use policies with employees is another. Empowering end users to self-serve is equally critical. Fundamentally, organizations that fail to retain knowledge effectively may eventually face existential challenges.