Corporate Wiki Best Practices - 10 Actionable Tips

A corporate wiki, or enterprise wiki, is a knowledge management database that acts as a real-time, updatable resource for internal employees to find and share information. Unlike a traditional knowledge base maintained by one team, a wiki is built for everyone to edit.

Every organization juggles a handful of core functions at once, administrative, operational and management tasks, spread across departments such as product development, research and development, sales and marketing, human resources and finance.

That much complexity creates a lot of places for information to get lost. A corporate wiki gives employees one place to search instead of tracking down whoever remembers the answer, which is what actually saves time day to day.

Incorporating a corporate wiki is the first step, but the practices below are what make it actually stick.

Here are 10 actionable tips for corporate wiki best practices.

1. Use a wiki tool with intuitive interface and up-to-date design

Having an easy-to-use and modern design can facilitate the implementation and onboarding stage of a company wiki. This will eliminate potential issues such as confusion, which is something that happens with many new softwares in the office. To ensure that users have a smooth experience, make sure that it aligns with the web browser and organizational standards of your company.

2. Make sure your wiki is mobile-friendly

Today’s corporations have a diverse and dispersed staff body, thanks to factors like globalization and remote work. It is essential to accommodate employees that are living in a separate country or are unable to come to work because of physical restrictions. Maybe your organization has just implemented a remote work model. Having a mobile-friendly wiki will allow access to all employees and promote collaboration, regardless of geographical location.

3. Use keywords and tags to facilitate search

Corporate wikis have to focus on one thing: searchability. After all, if employees are scrambling to find loose documents all the time, it can defeat the purpose of having the software. Encouraging employees to use specific keywords and tags for storing important files can allow them to be found easily by others and facilitate quicker search.

4. Encourage team collaboration in adding content to your team wiki

The way that content is built is a significant factor in how users interact with it. Use highly engaging forms of content, such as visual and interactive content, or boost efficiency by simplifying tasks through useful templates.

5. Integrate your corporate wiki with the other tools your team uses

A knowledge database that serves multiple functions or integrates with other tools can lead to a smoother, more productive workflow. One of the major benefits of a corporate wiki is that it helps to cut down on time. By integrating with other softwares, all content is constantly in sync and can be easily linked.

6. Make sure content are always up-to-date

One of the pitfalls of working in silos is that team members may end up working on different versions of a single document as they’re doing it concurrently. A corporate wiki can bridge this gap by having a secure way to update and modify files in real time.

7. Set the right permissions

Have permissions and access rights management so that information is only displayed to the right people. Some of the questions you could ask are:

• What information should be public to all employees and what should be private?
• How much access should be given? Are team members able to edit, or just have viewing rights?
• Is there sensitive information (e.g. performance reviews, invoices) that needs to only be shown to some employees?
  

On the flip side, having a loose policy on information access may lead to tension or data breaches.

8. Use analytics to keep improve your knowledge base

Performance tracking from a corporate wiki perspective is used for analyzing your best performing pages, most commonly-accessed files and other search statistics. This will give insight into the general health of the wiki. Kipwise allows users to view performance analytics, pinpointing areas of improvement and the helpfulness of content.

9. Reward contribution to your team wiki

Organizations can support their employee’s growth and development through a rewards system. This motivates them to constantly work together on the team wiki, contributing to business success. By having a rewards system, such as an acknowledgement badge for highest participation, managers are essentially spurring on and encouraging this behavior.

10. Managers should lead by example

Change always begins from the top. Senior leaders and managers within an organization can lead the way by setting an example for their respective teams. Start by communicating the importance and benefits of a corporate wiki, and also displaying this through company wiki best practices. This builds a culture of better collaboration, knowledge transfer and networking.

Do you need a dedicated wiki yet?

One thing worth checking before working through all ten of these: does your team actually need dedicated wiki software right now? A five-person team can often get by with pinned docs in Slack or a shared drive. The real signal to move to a proper wiki is not headcount or a fixed page count, it is the moment people start asking a colleague a question instead of searching, because they have learned search will not find the answer.

Want to build up your company's knowledge hub easily and efficiently? Kipwise is a modern business tool for organizations to take their knowledge management to the next level. With integration of tools, an intuitive interface and more useful features, teams can now collaborate in real-time and share information anytime and anywhere. Find out more about our solutions today.

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