The interview data were analysed with the help of qualitative analysis by thematisizing (Braun & Clarke, 2006) the transcribed texts in relation to the research questions. The purpose of the analysis was to raise the level of abstraction of the expressions used by the informants in their concrete descriptions to provide more general characterizations of experience sharing in the context of work. The interviews with the employees in both the design company and the horticultural nursery were firstly analysed independently. Secondly, the findings from the two work contexts were compared with each other. Thus, the final categories emerged from the comparison of the similarities and differences between the two different workplace learning contexts.

Focusing on everyday situations of experience sharing, our findings demonstrate that everyday learning and experience sharing in the workplace usually occur routinely. The experience that is shared relates to commonplace work practices and takes place alongside normal routines and tasks. Thus knowledge of organisational processes and procedures as well as products is shared most often. More experienced workers have a decisive role in the dissemination of experience to less experienced workers. The role of experience-based competence is highlighted as something that needs to be shared, but not without updating it for the situations in which it is to be utilized. Also, the importance of a collegial network created inside and outside the working team was emphasised. Despite the natural flow of experience sharing in the two organisations studied, difficulties in diffusing experience were also found. According to our interviewees, one obstacle to experience sharing lies in the individual nature of experience as such. Thus in many cases experience remains, at least partly, individual property.

Our findings lead us to conclude that experience sharing constitutes an important participatory workplace practice that is often neglected. We suggest that experience sharing is an important participatory practice (Billett 2004; 2006) in the workplace. The willingness of individual employees to learn and the possibilities for workplace learning go hand in hand. According to the previous studies (e.g. Smith, 2001; Stenmark, 2001) the prerequisites and challenges of experience-based knowledge sharing relate both to individuals and to several organisational and collective factors. In addition to the individual differences for example in the willingness to share one’s experience with the colleagues, the constraints related to workplace learning have been found to be mainly social or collective by nature (Collin, Paloniemi, Virtanen & Eteläpelto, 2008). For instance, it is not guaranteed that even the most optimal organisational circumstances will enable experience sharing and learning if the employees are not motivated to develop their practices and expertise. And, vice versa, despite dissatisfaction with and a poor atmosphere in the organisation, employees may be highly motivated by their tasks and colleagues. In such cases, it is possible that at the team and group level a new kind of togetherness may be built even though it is not supported by the official organisation (Collin, Paloniemi, Virtanen & Eteläpelto, 2008). The intertwined relationship between workplace learning and experience sharing emerges in how the employees perceive the ways in which the learning of others is supported at the workplace.

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