Don’t call it a handbook: The complete guide to creating a living knowledge base for remote-first companies (part 1)

This is the first article of a 5-part series. Read the full guide on jjreeder.com.

The term “handbook” is misleading.?

A handbook feels like something small, self-contained, static — a little PDF you could print out and put in a binder, read once when you start your job, and then forget about it.

But in fact, it’s impossible to overstate the value of great information for a distributed organization: it impacts efficiency, productivity, culture, security, innovation… and more. The word "handbook" fails to capture the impact.

In the age of digital-first, AI-empowered operations, a living knowledge base is an operational lifeline. Leaders who understand this are already reaping the benefits of rapid scale, efficiency, and improved culture.

Every virtual-first company needs a knowledge base that:

• Is digital, searchable, AI-friendly, and integrated with other tools
• Can be easily updated by internal team members
• Contains SOPs/playbooks to help people work efficiently
• Supports a stronger culture and promotes team engagement
• Has measurable outcome targets and a strategy to hit them.

While there are plenty of templates out there for how to organize your information, I suspect that most orgs don’t need to know how to do it; they need a clearer understanding of why.

Bad information: the $47 million problem

It’s been estimated that the average large business loses $47 million per year due to poor knowledge sharing. If you’re reading this, you may already understand the risk. But most companies have a very limited idea of what a “handbook” is, and they vastly underestimate the impact of a powerful knowledgebase.

To understand how this works, let’s run some scenarios.

Scenario A: I have a question. I search the intranet and find the answer. I move on with my day.

Scenario B: I have a question. There’s no central knowledgebase, so I go looking for the information. First I search Google Drive, and then I send a note to somebody on Slack. They don’t know the answer, so they share the question with more people. Ultimately my question reaches someone who has the information, and they schedule a “quick chat” with me the following day.?

In this scenario, we’ve lost at least a day of real time — plus 30-60 minutes of my working time, 30 minutes for the person who now has to update me, and 5 or so minutes of other people’s time. Not to mention, we’re all a little ticked off.

Scenario B doesn’t happen every day, for everyone — but it happens a lot. A very conservative estimate: at a company with mediocre knowledge management, each person wastes an average of 10 minutes per day just trying to find information they need to do their jobs.

For a team of 100 people, that adds up to 16.67 hours wasted every day — the equivalent of two full-time people. Expand that math further: for a team of 1,000, you could be losing close to 50,000 hours per year. And again, that’s a conservative estimate; at many companies, it’s likely twice that much or more.

Add to that the many difficult-to-measure impacts: frustration, siloing, risks of duplicated or poorly-informed work, slower communication, increased context switching, and overabundance of meetings.

So a company’s approach to knowledge sharing is truly much more than a “handbook.” We’re talking about a cultural practice which affects every person, team, project and function of the company.

An operational lifeline.

In the age of AI, knowledge management is a must-do

As AI makes itself a key element in organizations, we’re going to see a big boost in efficiency for companies that have a searchable, up-to-date knowledgebase. The reason should be obvious: just give an AI access to your information, and it can help answer people’s questions on the fly.

Companies with robust handbooks are already implementing more advanced uses of AI, such as:

• Identifying initiatives that can be aligned or combined for better efficiency
• Automatically sharing updates on key projects and outcomes
• Tracking engagement metrics to understand issues employees need help with

We’re just starting to understand how AI can unblock information and help people work better and faster; but if your company doesn’t have a solid base of information already in place, you’re entering the AI age at a disadvantage.

How to start creating your knowledgebase

Start simple. No need to over-think this: you can get started by pulling together the information that’s already scattered across inboxes and folders throughout your company. No matter where you’re starting from, you’ve already written down a significant amount of useful information. In this phase, you’ll audit your existing written communications and documentation: emails, slide decks, notes, agendas, Slack discussions…

1. Designate an information audit group, objectives, and outcomes. I highly recommend your working group includes someone with an engineering or technical communications background, in addition to communications experts and someone with DEI expertise.
2. Work with your IT team to open up access to information without compromising security or team members’ sense of privacy. Some information can be scraped, but I advise against scraping personal email archives or drives; instead, ask people to share emails and files on specific topics within their purview.
3. Consider incorporating a GenAI tool to help compile and organize information as it’s discovered.
4. Your information architecture will begin to emerge naturally (again, technical communications experts can help here), and you should end up with a functional framework that’s ready to fill in. Stay tuned for more thoughts on building your content.

In the next installment: how to choose the right intranet/handbook tool for your company.

This is the first article of a 5-part series. Read the full guide on jjreeder.com.