Collaborative Wiki

Recently, I had a conversation about developing a collaborative wiki for a company instead of the usual training manual. The company is growing tired of constantly updating the print version of their manual, so recently we created a dynamic PDF document for use on their company servers and VPN. This solved the problem of making sure that hundreds of printed manuals were properly updated each time a revision was necessary and tremendously cut production costs. Moving to the PDF version allows updates to happen instantly in one electronic file, so that every person viewing the updated page is looking at the same information within seconds of saving the new version of the file on the corporate server.

Once we got the initial "emergency" taken care of, we delved further into the revision process, examining what caused changes in the training manual. After some research, we determined that some of the changes came from changes in laws relating to the service provided, but that most of the changes actually came from employee suggestions during streamlining brainstorming sessions. Their employees had great ideas to speed up processes, improve quality, and cut costs along the way.

After discussing the outcome of the research, we talked about developing a training wiki rather than a training manual. The wiki would be a launch pad for all training and, because it was entirely electronic, could include any type of training media all in one location. Printed training documents could be replaced with electronic descriptions and audio and video tutorials further explaining the process, making sure that the learning needs of all employees were met appropriately. At this point, the company is almost sold on the idea and wants to do a beta site for one area of training which is currently a problem area.

For management, the implementation will be much cheaper than the printed manual and revisions will be faster and easier, but there will also be some challenges. Employees have to learn a new technology in order to use the wiki and management will feel the need to control revisions, which cuts down on the autonomy employees have to add their great ideas and feedback. The gap between the employees and management in the decision process will need to narrow for the wiki to be a true success, with employees contributing directly, rather than sitting through process improvement meetings and waiting for a final decision.

For employees trying to start their own wiki to improve processes and cut costs, management will likely feel out of the loop and threatened by employees making too many of their own decisions without examining the true long-term effect of those decisions.

In my opinion, the only way a wiki could work for training is from a top-down approach, with employees adding to a current body of approved knowledge, rather than starting from a non-approved blank page.