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Jack’s first day at his new remote job started with excitement, but quickly turned into confusion. His laptop was ready, but nobody reached out to help him get started. So while waiting, he started exploring the company’s shared drive. That’s where he discovered something surprising: buried in the employee handbook was information about onboarding courses on the company’s training platform. Nobody had told him about it. The training materials were there all along, just hidden in plain sight (TalentLMS).
Jack’s experience isn’t unique. According to a 2022 Coveo study, employees spend 3.6 hours each day searching for information, up from 2.6 hours the previous year. That’s 45% of the workday lost to information hunting (!). The challenge isn’t that information doesn’t exist, it’s that organizations don’t know where it’s hiding or how to surface it when people need it most.
Here’s the surprising truth: most organizations probably already have most of the training materials they need. They’re just scattered across email threads, meeting recordings, shared drives, and in the heads of experienced employees. Probably, also you are sitting on a goldmine of knowledge. You just need to know where to dig.
The obvious suspects (but often overlooked)
Start with the most visible sources, but look at them through fresh eyes. If you have
- process documentation,
- Standard Operating Procedures,
- work method wikis, or
- how-to documents,
these are your most obvious starting points.
But most organizations stop there and miss the real treasure.
Email archive
Your email archives are a knowledge goldmine hiding in plain sight. The average office worker receives 121 emails and sends about 40 emails each day (cloudHQ). That’s thousands of emails per employee per year, and buried within them are explanations that are sometimes better that the formal training document.
- Look for customer complaint responses where someone patiently explained your invoicing process.
- Find those “reply all” chains where a veteran employee walked through a complex procedure step by step.
- Even out-of-office messages often contain delegation instructions that reveal how work actually gets done.
G-drive, dropbox, NAS
Your shared drives hold more than just project files. Old project folders often contain process documentation created for specific initiatives.
- Budget justification documents explain not just the numbers, but why things are done certain ways.
- Performance review folders include detailed role descriptions that outline exactly what success looks like.
- Internal or customer training manuals often have detailed instructions on how to do things.
The key is recognizing that
"knowledge doesn't always come packaged as "official documentation."
Some of your best training materials were never intended to be training materials at all. They were simply people helping other people understand how to get work done.
The unexpected treasure troves
Now let’s explore the sources you’ve probably never considered mining for training content.
Voice recordings
- Recorded meetings and calls are knowledge vaults most companies completely ignore. Those Zoom recordings of onboarding sessions from last quarter? They’re ready-made training videos. Customer service call recordings (used with permission) capture real problem-solving cases.
- Voice memos from field staff explaining procedures while in the moment provide authentic, context-rich explanations.
- Even WhatsApp voice messages between team members troubleshooting issues contain step-by-step walkthroughs of solving real problems.
Customer-facing materials
- The sections of Sales proposals that explain your processes to potential clients are actually excellent training documents. After all, if it’s clear enough for an outsider, it’s perfect for a new hire.
- RFP responses detail your methodologies in precise terms.
- Customer FAQs answer questions that internal team members have too.
- Support ticket histories reveal patterns in problem-solving that experienced staff use instinctively but rarely document formally.
Get creative with your search.
- Screenshots in Slack showing how to use software are mini tutorials.
- LinkedIn posts where employees explained their work to their professional network are testimonials of expertise.
- Internal newsletter archives often contain process updates and explanations.
- Even complaint logs reveal what NOT to do, as negative examples are powerful teaching tools.
Remember this principle: short, specific, actionable information is more valuable than lengthy, general documents. A two-paragraph email explaining exactly how to handle a vendor dispute is worth more than a 50-page policy manual. The five-minute recording of someone demonstrating how to run the end-of-month report beats an outdated written procedure any day. Your treasure hunt should prioritize high-density knowledge, content that packs maximum insight into minimum words.
The human knowledge banks
Your most valuable training information isn’t in any system, it’s still in people’s heads. The challenge is extracting it efficiently before it walks out the door.
Try the “15-minute brain dump” technique.
Have your experts record themselves explaining a process while actually doing it. Use speech-to-text technology to capture stream-of-consciousness knowledge. For example, have your warehouse manager wear a headset for one morning and narrate everything they do. You’ll capture dozens of micro-decisions and unwritten rules that formal documentation always misses.
Today's AI-powered transcription tools can turn these recordings into searchable, organized text with minimal effort, something that would have been prohibitively expensive just a few years ago.
Don’t overlook shadow documentation
These are the unofficial guides people create to actually get their work done.
- Personal cheat sheets employees have created are often more practical than official documentation.
- Sticky notes around workstations reveal the most frequently needed information.
- Personal Excel files with formulas and shortcuts demonstrate problem-solving approaches.
- Even browser bookmarks reveal the go-to resources that experienced employees rely on daily.
The exit interview
This is a goldmine opportunity most companies waste. When employees leave, they take years of knowledge with them. Capture their handover notes systematically. Ask for their personal documentation stash, as most departing employees have files they never shared. Most valuable of all, ask them to recall the questions they had when they first started. These questions reveal the gaps in your onboarding process that only become visible in hindsight.
The technology available today makes knowledge extraction dramatically easier. AI can transcribe verbal explanations, organize scattered notes, and even identify patterns across multiple sources. This capability is new. Just a few years ago, processing unstructured information at scale was impractical for most organizations. Now it's accessible to companies of any size.
The priority pyramid: What to tackle first
Once you start discovering hidden training information, you’ll quickly feel overwhelmed by the volume. Not all information is equally valuable. Here’s how to prioritize.
| Priority Level | Content Types | Why This Matters | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| Top Priority | Short, specific, problem-solving documents | Immediate utility; gets referenced repeatedly | SOPs, onboarding guides, faq’s, that directly answer “how do I do this task?” |
| 2nd Tier | Email explanations, FAQ answers, troubleshooting guides | Responses to real questions from real people; proven useful | Customer complaint resolutions, “reply all” chains with step-by-step procedures |
| 3rd Tier | Process documentation | Provides valuable context; helps understand the broader picture | Recorded demonstrations, step-by-step guides, workflow descriptions |
| 4th Tier | Context and culture materials | Important for long-term success but rarely addresses immediate needs | Company history, strategic documents, explanations of “why we do things this way” |
| Lower Priority | Generic, lengthy documents without actionable information | Low reference rate; people don’t actually use them | Forty-page manuals that nobody reads, theoretical overviews |
Why this matters
This order matters because people typically need immediate answers to specific questions. When a new hire is stuck, they’re looking for “how do I submit an expense report,” not “the philosophy of our financial management approach.” Specific beats general every time. Short documents are more likely to contain focused, actionable information. A three-paragraph email is more likely to be useful than a ten-page overview.
Apply the “5-minute rule”
If it takes longer than five minutes to find the answer to a common question, that answer needs to be captured and organized. This rule helps you identify your highest-priority knowledge gaps.
Your action plan: The information inventory
Ready to start your treasure hunt? Here’s a practical framework you can begin this week.
Launch a “Discovery Sprint” over four weeks:
| Week | Topic | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Formal documentation and email archaeology | Search your email system for threads containing phrases like “here’s how to,” “the process is,” or “step by step.” Identify the most forwarded or referenced emails, as these are your informal training documents. |
| 2 | Shared drive excavation | Look beyond obvious folders. Check old project directories, archived files, and personal folders (with permission). Look for file types beyond documents. Spreadsheets, presentations, and even images often contain valuable process information. |
| 3 | Human knowledge extraction | Schedule 30-minute sessions with veteran employees to capture their expertise. Use the “narrate your work” technique. Ask them to share their personal documentation, shortcuts, and go-to resources. |
| 4 | Organization and prioritization | Sort discoveries using the priority pyramid. Tag information by topic, role, and urgency. Identify gaps where information should exist but doesn’t, as these become your content creation priorities. |
Your inventory template
Create a simple inventory template to track your discoveries. Remember that most of this grunt work can now be handled by AI agents, technology that can process documents, transcribe recordings, and organize information at scale.
See an example below:
| Source Location | Type of Information | Relevance Score (1-5) | Action Needed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Email thread: Sales team folder, 2024-03 | Step-by-step invoicing process | 5 | Organize |
| Shared drive: /Projects/Archive/ClientX | Budget justification with process details | 4 | Organize |
| Zoom recording: March 15 onboarding call | New hire orientation walkthrough | 5 | Transcribe |
| Sticky note on warehouse desk | Shipping label shortcut codes | 3 | Digitize |
| WhatsApp voice memo from field tech | Equipment troubleshooting procedure | 4 | Transcribe |
| Old policy manual (printed) | Outdated HR procedures | 1 | Discard |
Action needed options:
- Digitize: For physical documents that need to be scanned
- Transcribe: For audio/video content that needs text conversion
- Organize: For existing digital files that need categorization
- Discard: For outdated or irrelevant material
Get your team onboard
Delegate the discovery work strategically. Assign each department head to audit their area, as they know what knowledge matters most in their domain. Have new hires document questions they couldn’t find answers to. This “confusion log” reveals exactly what’s missing from your knowledge base. Create an “information bounty” program where you reward employees who surface valuable hidden documentation. Make treasure hunting a team sport.
Use AI tools to accelerate the process. Eanis scans email archives, transcribed meeting recordings, extracts information from videos, youtube tutorials, documents, and organizes findings into searchable knowledge bases. What would have taken months manually can now happen in weeks with the right tools supporting your team's efforts.
Start digging, your treasure awaits
You’re not starting from zero. You’re already 80% there. The training information your team needs already exists in email threads, meeting recordings, veteran employees’ heads, and forgotten folders on shared drives. Your challenge isn’t creating everything from scratch. It’s discovering, organizing, and surfacing what you already have.
You can start tomorrow with the information that’s already there. Don’t wait until “all” the documentation is collected. Begin with one high-priority area, organize what you find, and make it accessible to your team. Each piece of hidden knowledge you uncover immediately helps someone work more effectively.
The dream scenario
| Imagine |
| :————————————————————————————————————————————————– |
| new hires finding answers in minutes, not days |
| experienced employees spending their time on high-value work
instead of answering the same questions repeatedly |
| productivity gains when people can access institutional knowledge instantly
instead of recreating it from scratch or guessing at best practices |
OK, now what?
To start, spend just one hour exploring your email archives with fresh eyes. Search for phrases like “here’s how” or “the way we handle this.” You’ll be amazed at the training gold you discover. That single hour could uncover dozens of ready-made training documents you didn’t know you had.
Once you’ve discovered your hidden knowledge, modern tools can help you organize and deliver it exactly when your team needs it. The treasure hunt is just the beginning. The real value comes from turning information chaos into competitive advantage: faster onboarding, fewer repeated questions, better decision-making, and institutional knowledge that doesn’t walk out the door when employees leave.
The goldmine is already there. You just need to start digging.
References
- Spooky Employee Training Stories - TalentLMS
- Report: Employees Spend 3.6 Hours Each Day Searching for Info - VentureBeat
- Workplace Email Statistics - cloudHQ