Knowledge sharing affects how quickly people find information, learn from colleagues, and make decisions. The statistics below show uneven training, substantial time spent searching for or recreating information, and strong interest in improving knowledge-sharing capabilities. The figures come from Microsoft Knowledge Sharing in a Changing World and Zoom Global collaboration in the workplace; the supplied findings do not identify a measurement date or geography.
Table of contents
- Training and tool use
- Satisfaction and organizational challenges
- The productivity cost of missing information
- What people want from knowledge sharing tools
- Collaboration obstacles
- Future investment and changing priorities
Training and tool use
Training is one of the clearest dividing lines in the Microsoft findings. Nearly half of respondents, 49%, said they had none or only a few hours of training on knowledge sharing tools. Within the more specific training responses, 21% said they had no training and 28% said they had a little training. Taken together, those figures describe a large group with limited preparation, although the categories should not be added to other overlapping response groupings.
At the other end of the scale, 31% said they had a fair amount of training, while 20% said they had a lot of training. The distribution suggests that tool availability does not necessarily mean that employees have equal confidence or familiarity with the systems intended to support sharing.
The most commonly identified tool feature was internal sharing of information, selected by 53% of respondents. Collaboration with others followed at 44%. Best practices, documentation, and learning were selected by 38%, while 32% identified workflow and task management. Content and version management was selected by 26%.
These results place basic access and cooperation ahead of more specialized functions. They also show that knowledge sharing tools are expected to support both communication and the preservation of reusable organizational knowledge.
Satisfaction and organizational challenges
Overall satisfaction varied by role in the Microsoft findings. Eighty-seven percent of executives were extremely or very satisfied with their current knowledge sharing tools. The corresponding figure was 68% among IT decision makers and 47% among business decision makers.
This gap matters when organizations evaluate a system through different lenses. Executive satisfaction can coexist with lower satisfaction among the people responsible for technology decisions or day-to-day business outcomes. A single overall satisfaction figure could hide those differences.
The extent of knowledge-sharing challenges also varied. Forty-five percent of respondents said only a small portion or less of employees had knowledge sharing challenges, including 3% who said none of the employees had such challenges. In contrast, 43% said half or more of employees had challenges, and 9% said all employees had challenges.
The Microsoft findings identify onboarding and upskilling as a leading challenge for executives and business decision makers. It was selected by 43% of executives and 42% of business decision makers. Knowledge drain from people leaving the team or organization was a top challenge for 38% of IT decision makers and 33% of information workers.
Knowledge loss was also a recurring experience: 33% of respondents said knowledge drain from people leaving their team happened often. This makes retention of practical, experience-based information a central part of knowledge sharing rather than a secondary documentation task.
Information security was viewed positively by 71% of executives and information workers, who said their organization’s information security performance was excellent or good. That result describes perceived performance in the cited findings; it does not establish that knowledge sharing tools themselves caused the assessment.
The productivity cost of missing information
The Microsoft findings quantify the time employees could recover when information is easier to locate and reuse. Employees could save an estimated 4 to 6 hours per week if they did not have to search for or recreate information. This is an estimate of potential saved time, not a measured productivity gain for every organization.
Information workers said 11% of daily productivity was spent searching for or recreating information. For executives, business decision makers, and IT decision makers, the reported share was 14%. The difference indicates that the burden was not limited to frontline information workers; it also affected people responsible for decisions and organizational direction.
The reported annual equivalents make the time cost easier to compare by group. Information workers lost an estimated 5.72 weeks per year of productivity because of searching for or recreating information. The combined executive, business decision maker, and IT decision maker group lost an estimated 7.28 weeks per year for the same reason.
| Group | Daily productivity spent searching or recreating information | Estimated annual productivity lost |
|---|---|---|
| Information workers | 11% | 5.72 weeks |
| Executives, business decision makers, and IT decision makers | 14% | 7.28 weeks |
The figures are estimates reported by Microsoft and should not be treated as a universal time audit. They nevertheless point to a practical measure of knowledge-sharing performance: how often people can retrieve an existing answer instead of rebuilding it.
What people want from knowledge sharing tools
The leading benefit for information workers was finding information faster, selected by 52%. Limiting the need to recreate information was selected by 44%, and having a single source of truth by 43%. These priorities align closely with the reported time spent looking for information or rebuilding work.
Executives emphasized a somewhat different mix of outcomes. Preserving tacit knowledge when team members leave was selected by 45% of executives. Increasing employee efficiency and productivity was selected by 43%, while enabling better and faster decision-making was selected by 37%.
Among IT decision makers and business decision makers, 49% selected increasing employee efficiency and productivity as a benefit. Managing large volumes of information effectively to improve services was selected by 39%, and enabling better and faster decision-making by 35%.
The findings show three connected goals: retrieval, continuity, and action. Information workers focus on reducing friction in daily work. Executives focus on retaining knowledge and improving organizational performance. IT and business decision makers connect knowledge management with service improvement and decision quality.
Collaboration obstacles
The Zoom findings add a collaboration perspective to the Microsoft results. Among leaders, 47% said they spent more time than they wanted to on in-person meetings, 46% said the same about email, and 46% said the same about virtual meetings.
Refocusing between tasks was another reported cost. Thirty-nine percent of leaders said it took 10 to 15 minutes to refocus, while 30% said it took longer than 15 minutes. Among employees, 51% said it took less than 10 minutes to refocus.
Finding time to connect was a challenge for 83% of leaders and 77% of employees. Not receiving timely responses from colleagues was a challenge for 82% of leaders and 81% of employees. Not having enough time between meetings or chats to get work done affected 82% of leaders and 72% of employees.
The reported bad-collaboration outcomes also differed by group. Misunderstandings in communication were selected by 32% of leaders and 41% of employees. Lack of alignment within or between teams was selected by 32% of leaders and 33% of employees. Lack of engagement or inattentiveness from colleagues was selected by 28% of leaders and 34% of employees.
| Collaboration issue or outcome | Leaders | Employees |
|---|---|---|
| Finding time on others’ schedules to connect is a challenge | 83% | 77% |
| Not receiving timely responses is a challenge | 82% | 81% |
| Not enough time between meetings or chats | 82% | 72% |
| Misunderstandings in communication | 32% | 41% |
| Lack of alignment within or between teams | 32% | 33% |
| Lack of engagement or inattentiveness | 28% | 34% |
Time pressure also appeared in daily schedules. Thirty-five percent of leaders said they spent three or more hours a day on in-person meetings and email. Among fully remote leaders, 56% said they spent three or more hours a day on email. These findings describe collaboration patterns in the Zoom report and should not be generalized to every workplace or work arrangement.
Future investment and changing priorities
The Microsoft findings indicate strong future interest in knowledge sharing tools. Ninety-three percent of executives said they were likely to invest in or look for knowledge sharing tools in the next 12 to 24 months. The figures were 84% for IT decision makers and 79% for business decision makers.
Interest in improving existing systems was similarly high. Ninety-three percent of executives said they were likely to improve the functionality and data integration of current knowledge management tools. The corresponding figures were 87% for IT decision makers and 87% for business decision makers.
| Role | Likely to invest in or look for tools in the next 12–24 months | Likely to improve current tools’ functionality and data integration |
|---|---|---|
| Executives | 93% | 93% |
| IT decision makers | 84% | 87% |
| Business decision makers | 79% | 87% |
The supplied Microsoft findings also report that the pandemic increased interest in knowledge sharing tools for 67% of executives, 50% of IT decision makers, and 53% of business decision makers. These are reported perceptions about changed interest, not a forecast of future adoption.
Taken together, the statistics describe a strong demand for better information access, continuity, and coordination. They also show why implementation quality matters: limited training, knowledge drain, meeting load, delayed responses, and fragmented information can all reduce the value of a knowledge-sharing system even when leaders report high satisfaction.