One of the things a business owner or a manager can do to make a huge overall improvement to their company is to encourage employees to share information with each other, preferably information about themselves.

Depending on the morale surrounding your workplace, employees may not really communicate with one another. And, if they do, it’s oftentimes superficial, surface-level conversations.

Depending on how competitive your workplace is, employees may feel like withholding information will give them some sort of “edge.” This simply isn’t true. Withholding information will not give employees any competitive edge. So, for starters, try and make sure your employees don’t feel like they’re in some sort of cut-throat match-up.

Companies will benefit greatly from improved creativity when employees share their expertise with others. Even though there are a lot of employees with similar backgrounds and similar education and training, that doesn’t mean they all hold the same levels of creativity and innovation.

Some employees may feel they will be criticized for sharing information. As a business owner or a manager, it is in your best interest to make them feel as comfortable as possible with opening up. Employees should never fear any sort of retribution for sharing their thoughts and knowledge with other employees.

Use Intranet to Connect Employees

A suggestion we see from HR professionals over and over again is to make use of the company intranet in various ways in order to encourage employees to share information about themselves:

• Let employees make regular guest posts on company blogs. You can tell them that these posts will make customers and clients think of the company as one that’s more personable. In reality, you simply want them to practice sharing information.

• Company or Staff Profiles on the website are another great way to encourage employees to open up. Having a web-based profile for each employee where you encourage them to speak about their personal lives is a great first step. Many people love talking about their families, what they do on their days off, and any big accomplishments they’ve made)

• Good morale in a company means people are happy. When people are happy, they like to talk. When people talk, they share information. It’s just that simple.

Find a way to get employees to open up and share information about themselves. Get Creative. Find some way to make it fun.