What Is a Company Wiki (explained)

Businesses generate and collect a lot of knowledge during their lifetime. It's paramount to effectively organise and catalog the information in one repository. The issue with most businesses is that their knowledge sits on different computers, systems, and servers. The filing can get chaotic, which makes it hard to find information.

A study by McKinsey established that employees spend about 1.8 hours every day searching and gathering information to allow them to perform their job effectively.  

SearchYourCloud found out that it takes  about eight searches on average for employees to find the right documents and information.

Now, creating a company Wiki can help address the need for proper knowledge management. So, let's find out how it works.  

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Company Wiki Explained

A company Wiki is not simply a database for all your files, though that is one of the functions it performs.

If you contribute to Wikipedia or are familiar with how  it works, you may know that one of its key features is allowing collaboration and contributions from users. They can modify pages, with the aim of continuously updating and improving the knowledge.

Your company Wiki should be non-linear, constantly evolving, accessible to multiple users, and highly organized and interlinked to make finding documents faster.

So, what does a company Wiki look like? Different departments can have private Wikis, for instance, an HR Wiki with onboarding processes, employee handbooks, company policies , founding articles, company history, etc. The tech department can have a Wiki that contains a repository of technical documents and manuals.  

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Benefits of having a company wiki

Some of the key advantages you’ll gain by creating a company Wiki include, encouraging documentation of information and making information easily accessible . Additional benefits include:  

• Simplifies collaboration between various contributors;  
• Can make for a smoother onboarding process by making information available to new hires;  
• Employees can solve problems faster by finding information more quickly;  
• Increases the productive time by reducing the time spent looking for information;  
• Encourages regular contributions, which can mitigate institution knowledge loss when employees leave the company;  
• Builds the company’s informational and knowledge competitiveness with a knowledge base that grows  and improves overtime.  
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5 Easy Steps to Create a Company Wiki

It's time to abandon the tedious and hard-to-update employee handbook for a company wiki that fosters collaboration.

Bring employees together in one place to share all their collective knowledge of the organisation by following these steps:
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Step 1: Choose where to build your company Wiki

You can build company Wikis on hosted services, or utilise a Wiki engine to build a self-hosted Wiki.  

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Step 2: Create a logical structure for your company Wiki

Think of how an employee may approach the process of finding information. Do they start their search  with a  department such as marketing or HR? Will they first think of processes, e.g., onboarding or sales?  
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Step 3: Populate the Wiki with content

Begin by adding existing content to the Wiki. You can then reach out to other employees to begin making contributions and creating new articles.  
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Step 4: Encourage the Wiki’s use for referencing  

Make the Wiki easily accessible, and direct employees with pressing questions to the Wiki articles first before asking the same questions to their peers or supervisors.
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Step 5: Update your Wiki

Set a goal such as introducing at least two new articles to the Wiki every month.  

‍Are you looking for a Wiki engine for your business? You can use WorkPilot to build a powerful and searchable wiki where everyone can be a contributor. Learn how it works in our demo!