Manage knowledge workers: Tap into the company's intellectual capital

Author: Francis Heynberry
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2000-07-01
Features: Please see the following text: The driving force of the new economy is knowledge; the demand for knowledge workers is huge and constantly growing; knowledge workers refer to those who use their brains more than their hands when creating wealth; now, about 60% of jobs require a significant amount of knowledge to complete; classifying, defining, managing, and motivating knowledge workers is a crucial task for managers. So, how can companies treat their knowledge workers well? This book provides practical and cost-effective strategies for managing, motivating, and retaining them. Managing knowledge workers not only helps you recognize the importance of knowledge in an organization but also shows you how to manage the intellectual resources within human resources. The content of this book includes: How to attract and retain key employees more effectively than money. Offering immediate suggestions on how to use communication, participation, consultation, and group life to build a positive organizational culture, pointing out that a highly sensitive work environment and development opportunities have an effect that material incentives cannot match. Providing practical secrets for dealing with new challenges: Facing a field you are not very familiar with. How to strategize, how to promote the development of new knowledge, and how to distribute dividends to formal and informal employees in the company. Helping you out of awkward situations with clever tips. Case studies: Exploring the success and failure strategies of organizations when facing management challenges. Excerpt: Secret Rewards Large companies have secret rewards. For the employees they really want to retain, they offer dividends. But only if you are a CEO, you might know about the dividends. Whether they think a certain employee is valuable or whether they are receiving dividends is not transparent to the employees. Anyway, this is the kind of foolish employer trick that I know. First, the company assumes that people live only on money, and they can set barriers to prevent employees from leaving, and these barriers are insurmountable. At the same time, this can only guarantee that employees are present at their workstations, but it cannot determine whether their minds are focused on their work. To maintain the secrecy of these rewards, they have also broken the conventional rules of praise. Others can only know whether you are praised or not. This is just like an old question: If no one is there to hear it, will a tree falling in the forest make a loud noise? Anyway, these secret rewards cannot be kept secret—they can know, even if I am not an employee of the company. Secrets will eventually be revealed. What will happen then? No matter how right the company thinks it is, there will always be two kinds of people: one who truly cares, and the other who does not. In the end, the company cannot even tell people that they value some people more than others. Then, can they expect me to provide my intellectual capital? If you truly respect someone's contribution and want them to stay, whether you reward them with dividends or other ways, you must be open and honest. Yes, you may need to select some individuals, and you need to do so. In your team environment, is it right to reward individuals? How will this affect your mission and values? These are difficult questions, and there are no simple answers. But, avoiding them from conveying that message, no matter what you say, you have not truly recognized the importance of creating an environment where everyone feels they are properly valued.