The Hidden Costs of Inefficiency: How Knowledge Gaps and Poor Communication Add Up

Having a team with first-class industry knowledge, who are effective communicators is essential to ensure an organization has a competitive edge. Knowledge gaps and ineffective communication can bring an organization to its knees. To ensure that these inefficiencies do not cause your organization to suffer, it is important to take stock and look out for these gaps and communication issues and create solutions to overcome them. This article will help you understand how knowledge gaps in poor communication can affect your organization and how to take care of knowledge gaps.

Knowledge is an organization's greatest tool. Knowledge gaps in the workplace are gaps that hinder productivity as they are areas where employees lack the necessary skills, knowledge, and information to perform their duties effectively. In addition, effective communication across teams is a key team-building tool that contributes to swift conflict resolution, employee satisfaction, and high employee retention while sustaining a positive working environment. Possessing industry knowledge is becoming a key element in the future of business competitiveness. 

Having knowledge is one thing, but how organizations utilize their data and information is what sets an organization apart, ensuring a competitive advantage. Making sure that knowledge is available and easily accessible will ensure that an organization's knowledge base does not become worthless. 

How do Knowledge Gaps and Ineffective communication occur?

Knowledge and effective communication are the bedrock of any organization but their effectiveness is highly dependent upon acquiring the necessary skills and knowledge to produce high-quality work and to effectively communicate with key team members to ensure a highly effective working environment. Knowledge gaps can occur at any time in an organization. This is especially true if there is a lack of skills development. Regular training and upskilling are the cornerstone of an organization's growth and development. Thus, if there is a lack of skills development, it can lead to complacency, stagnation, and knowledge gaps. Additionally, an organization needs to conduct regular organizational team assessments from the bottom up. If this is not done, an organization will be unaware of what knowledge gaps exist and this can lead to ineffective communication. 

Ineffective communication in the workplace can occur when the leadership does not set clear expectations for its employees. Leading to key information being lost in translation. A commonly unnoticed cause for ineffective communication is employees conforming to their individual biases. This may cause workers to form biased-based conclusions on a particular issue leading to miscommunication, conflict, and a tense working environment. Moreover, in this technologically advanced era, new skills are constantly needed to help employees adapt to a rapidly changing working environment. Some workers struggle to adapt to new technological changes. Not because they are struggling to wrap their heads around these new concepts, it can be because they are inflexible and refuse to adapt to change.  

Despite an organization's best efforts, sometimes knowledge gaps will occur. This can happen when a highly skilled and knowledgeable employee leaves the company. This leads to a company's unwritten knowledge, referred to as “tribal knowledge” usually shared through word of mouth, to be lost when an employee leaves the organization. Tribal knowledge is acquired through experience. This is seemingly harmless until a worker hands in their notice. To prevent this kind of knowledge gap, managers need to create a tribal knowledge database where information is stored and easily accessible to avoid knowledge gaps arising when workers leave.

Knowledge Gaps and how they affect your organization

In some cases, if left unchecked, knowledge gaps negatively affect productivity, leading to reduced productivity or poor performance. When there are knowledge gaps employees lack vital skills necessary for them to perform at their full potential. Employees lacking vital industry knowledge may cost an organization major clients current or potential. These gaps can lead to poor quality work, and multiple missed deadlines and it can create an unhealthy environment of stress and frustration.  

Because employees will be feeling inadequate, they will be constantly stressed and frustrated about not performing well. This will in turn negatively affect an organization's capacity for growth and success, as employees may be wasting time and repeating tasks that did not meet the organization's standards, as they lack information that would help them complete these tasks effectively and timeously.  Furthermore, these gaps can hurt an organization financially as management to close knowledge gaps will be forced to spend huge sums of money on costly training programs, and if these knowledge gaps are not filled it will lead to an organization losing its competitive edge, leading to stagnation.

Management and leadership structures need to look out for the following types of knowledge gaps to ensure that their organizations are not negatively impacted; 

• Technical-  Occurs when employees lack the required skills or expertise to utilize certain tools and software required for them to perform their jobs effectively. For example, for a growing number of companies, knowing about SEO is a great way to ensure that companies can gather information about local SEO statistics online. This is a great way to ensure that companies have accurate data about SEO trends, have an understanding of what local SEO strategies their competitors may be using, and be able to have the technical skills to utilize SEO to increase their online visibility. 
• Soft Skills-  In many instances, employees take soft skills for granted. However, these are essential to ensure effective productivity. Skills such as communication, problem-solving, and teamwork are important. Lacking knowledge about soft skills may hinder a team's ability to collaborate harmoniously. According to a report by Women For Hire, a well-established job board for women, nearly 75% of employers emphasize the need for soft skills in their employees. Often underestimated, these non-tangible skills play a significant role in productivity. Skills like communication, problem-solving, and teamwork stand out as necessary for any functional workspace. Lacking these skills can disrupt the team's ability to effectively collaborate and may result in an unhealthy work environment.
• Industry- Some employees may lack in-depth knowledge of their industry, industry trends, and best practices. This can cause glaring knowledge gaps. Companies need to encourage employees to keep up to date with industry development and for employees themselves to be self-starters and actively seek out industry knowledge.
• Process- Organizations have unique processes, work cultures, and workflows that employees need to be familiar with to ensure productivity. Employees lacking knowledge about these processes can lead to delays, increase the chances for error and lead to a chaotic and stressful environment.
• Organizational-  It is important to ensure that new hires have a clear understanding of an organization's culture, values, mission, and vision. If they lack a comprehensive understanding of such it can hinder their ability to integrate successfully into the company, causing them to struggle with fulfilling their duties.

These are just a few of the types of knowledge gaps that can occur that organizations need to look out for to ensure that knowledge gaps do not become a major issue causing setbacks and challenges that may cost them for years to come.

The value of closing Knowledge Gaps in the workplace

There is great value to be found in ensuring that there are little to no gaps in knowledge in the workplace. Limiting knowledge gaps contributes to improved employee performance, and enhanced effectiveness. It also improves employee participation as employees who possess knowledge are confident of their ability to do their job well. This further enhances job satisfaction and reduces the chances of employees jumping ship and seeking greener pastures. When employees have knowledge they become better decision makers as they are making decisions from a highly informed perspective. Closing knowledge gaps has many benefits and has a trickle-down effect. 

Well-informed employees are highly flexible and adapt faster to changes in the workplace. Closing knowledge gaps reduces the chances for errors to occur. Finally, it contributes to a healthier and well-rounded workplace culture and environment ensuring that team members feel included, and boosting productivity, collaboration, and workplace participation.

It is vital to ensure that the channels of communication are open from the bottom up in any organization. Managers need to convey detailed messages to employees and also ensure that they keep communication channels open for employees to openly and confidently share their insights or any trouble they may be experiencing.  If channels of communication are not clear and open, it can lead to stagnation and little to no company growth. 

How ineffective comms affect the workplace

Ineffective communication negatively affects an organization in many ways. It can lead to problematic client/stakeholder relationships damaging an organization's reputation. If there is poor communication it can lead to employee distrust as employees will not feel heard nor guided by the leadership structures reducing the chances of employees raising any workplace issues they may have. Poor communication can also slow a team down. A failure in communication can cause employees to lack important information needed to perform their tasks effectively, decreasing the quality of their work and increasing the chances for error.

Collaboration is an important element of workplace communication, but if ineffective communication occurs, it can hinder effective collaboration. This can lead to chaotic and highly ineffective collaboration as instructions are constantly being misunderstood and it is highly unlikely that there will be effective collaboration. Inclusivity and diversity are also important elements in the workplace. For inclusivity and diversity to thrive, communication is of the utmost importance. A lack of communication may cause people to shy away from sharing their thoughts, opinions, creativity, and valuable information. Impacting a team's ability to ensure quality output. Bad communication will affect employee confidence leading to feelings of inadequacy, further impacting productivity.

The Value of Great Communication in the Workplace

Effective communication in the workplace aims to foster an understanding of key concepts, ensuring inclusivity and transparency at all times. It is also a great way to make sure that employees are consistently producing high-quality work and making sure that they have the right tools at their disposal to do their jobs well. A great thing about effective communication is that it boosts a team's morale, guarantees quality and consistent output, and entrenches a healthy and respectful working environment. 

How to remedy Knowledge Gaps and Ineffective Comms

Knowledge gaps and ineffective communication can be dealt with by implementing the following strategies: 

• Staying informed about industry trends. This is a great preventative measure to ensure that you plan for any further training that your team may need to avoid the occurrence of knowledge gaps and issues with communication. 
• Creating and maintaining channels for regular and consistent employee feedback, ensuring that accurate employee insights drive an organization's decision-making and growth. When employees notice changes implemented within the organization based on their feedback, they will be more inclined to contribute to office polls and surveys and provide feedback. Increasing effective communication and decreasing the existence of knowledge gaps.
• Conducting regular assessments of organizational culture, and training needs, to note where improvements can be made. This ensures that an organization has on-the-nose data that can be used to foster effective communication and avoid gaps in knowledge.
• Conducting in-depth exit interviews. This is a great way to find out what is working well, and which areas need to be improved.
• Providing employees with skills development and conducting regular up-skilling. This is a great way to ensure high employee retention while keeping employees' skills up to date, and ensuring that the organization's knowledge base is up to par with industry standards.

Knowledge gaps and ineffective communication can cause a variety of problems if they are not addressed immediately. The danger in organizational gaps and ineffective communication is that their negative effects mostly go unseen until it is too late. If you ensure to conduct regular organizational assessments, you will have key insights into how your organization can remain a key player with a competitive edge like no other.