Any way you look at it, and at an ever increasing rate, both individual employees and the organizations who employ them are transacting their business on the basis of an intangible currency – novel thoughts and ideas.

The late Peter Drucker first coined the term "Knowledge Worker" in the late 1960's. His view was that the world of business would become less physical, and more intellectual.

This prediction has come true!

Today's excellent and high performing organizations have found the secret and know they have to keep their halls, cubicles and offices filled to the brim with knowledge workers.

Mr. Drucker's second significant and insightful point was that the fate of the world's advanced economies would depend more and more on how organizations and institutions find ways to make the knowledge worker more productive.

It’s in the air

Drucker came to the conclusion that the recipe for success would most likely depend on the quality of the air those organizations and institutions pumped into the lungs of their knowledge workers. In short, and borrowing a principle from economics, he believed the climate (the culture) an organization creates would increasingly determine the willingness of the worker to invest.

The term knowledge worker applies to anyone in a job whose primary purpose is to create, distribute, or apply knowledge.

To be sure, they are cut from a different cloth.

• Knowledge workers enjoy their autonomy
• Knowledge work tends to be unstructured
• Knowledge workers are usually intelligent, and
• Commitment matters to knowledge workers.

Managing them is a daunting task which has been compared to herding cats.

However, the challenge continues to be the same one that Drucker identified and it cannot be ignored any longer. Your employees are filled with knowledge and, somehow, your organization must develop an environment that allows them to fully utilize the very thing they were hired for.

The pendulum has swung from workers as assets to workers as investors. Research has shown that employee engagement, or rather investment, has led to tangible bottom line impact. The future or your organization is in their heads, not in their hands.

Knowledge Worker Spotting

Just about every industry today can claim that their workforce is made up of knowledge workers. The question becomes – how exactly does one measure their "net worth" or contribution?

Considering that most of the work produced by knowledge workers is, in fact, intangible, measuring visible outputs in a "parts per hour" approach does not apply. In the early years of measuring knowledge worker performance, organizations used the only visible output as a benchmark – hours worked. As more and more work moves outside the office environment to places such as airports, home, and coffee shops, a new process must be used.

As the ultimate goal of any work is the actual quality of the final product, many organizations have moved to an effective, yet subjective, method of measurement – feedback from a jury of peers. These "performance analysts" rate the quality of the work (and/or worker) through their own perception of it, similar to the process used in evaluating professors for promotion and tenure.

Curiosity

It appears that curiosity is a key critical competency required of knowledge workers. By understanding how they work, you can remove obstacles and distractions that may detract from their performance.

Orienteering

Apple CEO Steve Jobs said it best when he stated that "it does not make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do. We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do." Knowledge workers work in a compass environment. It cannot be stressed enough that these workers are looking to apply their knowledge to a task. The last thing they want to do is follow your process. They want to show that they can use their smarts, and learn something in the process.

Self Worth

As Thomas Davenport points out in his book "Thinking for a Living", knowledge workers value their knowledge and don't share it very easily. For a knowledge worker, what they know determines how valuable they are in the market place. Some have argued that the shift in the workforce towards the knowledge worker is the key driver behind the silos that plague many organizations. The mentality is that once someone else in the organization knows what you know, you are no longer valued, hence the hording of information. The key is to create an environment that encourages sharing of information, as well as an environment that encourages employees to learn new skills, techniques, and theories, thereby putting all available knowledge to use within the organization.

In Our Opinion
The Beacon Group's Keys to Boosting Knowledge Worker Performance

Keep it personal – Knowledge workers work harder if they're working for a cause they believe in. If they can't relate to the cause they leave. If you can't provide them with a cause to believe in, they won't even grace your door in the first place.

Keep up the pace – Knowledge workers work as fast as their brains let them. They will often develop new methods to shatter pre-determined performance goals based on yesterday's process. If you let them experiment, they will surprise you.

Keep following up – Although Knowledge Workers tend to be somewhat autonomous, they do need feedback. Your job is to provide them with progress check-in points, and then ensure that they are kept on track.

Keep them learning – As Knowledge Workers' value is measured by what they know, it is no wonder that they thrive when they are immersed in a learning environment. To be even more effective, give them a great amount of flexibility in the courses they can choose to attend.

Our Monthly Rant
All New 2006 Model

It's often staggering to us to see what lengths (and what cost) an organization will go to, year after year, decade after decade, to keep their business capital sound. They devote themselves to doing everything they can from tweaking a few product features, right up to completely redesigning their products and services based on new and emerging trends in their markets.

However, when it comes to their human capital (which is derived from the new investment of their knowledge workers), they do not do so well. Despite the fact more and more research and evidence is emerging on the new list of development tools available to drive manager-employee investment, most companies are still using approaches built in the 1950's.

Sure, organizations are still willing to buy new computers and desks, but in many cases, they fall well short of meeting the benchmark set by "Best in Class Organizations" of spending 6% of an employee's base salary on their annual development. The Human Resources and Organizational Development practices that are currently being touted as industry-leading, are unfortunately only found in the very best organizations and yet they should have been long ago adopted and considered by every organization.

They now represent the bare minimum standard for entry in all organizations.

The message is clear – the ability to survive, and indeed thrive as an organization in the coming years, will come down to the level of engagement of your employees and what you are doing to attract their investment.

Spend 6%? Chances are you will get a return on that investment that makes the decision pretty easy.