This term really hit home for me a few nights ago when I happened to catch an old television rerun of Star Trek: The Next Generation and thought about all the knowledge workers on board the Enterprise.

Coined by Peter Drucker in 1959, the term knowledge worker means someone who works primarily with information or who develops and uses knowledge in the workplace.

As work becomes more knowledge-intensive and service-oriented because of advances in technology, the focus of the average worker is on the precipice of change.
 
Jobs that exist today may be gone tomorrow. Consider some of the changes in technology over the past fifty years and you gain an understanding of what may transpire in the near future.

According to an article at CNN posted in 1997 scientists at Georgia Tech were in the process of developing a computer-guided system for finding defects in textiles.

Today the system is called CATS (Computer-Aided Textile Supervision) and works at speeds up to 120 meters per minute versus the old 10 to 20 meters per minute.

What do knowledge workers do?

According to a 1998 article written by Kim Sits Taylor, knowledge workers find data to produce original knowledge or search and find what has already been produced when this would take less time and then communicate what has been produced or learned. 

This means that creativity, adaptability and the ability to identify and fine turn ideas is key. Not just for the knowledge workers, but for the organizations that employ them.

In a 2006 Newsweek article about a major user of knowledge workers, Google CEO Eric Schmidt reflects on how to get the most out of knowledge workers.

They have identified ten principles to live by.

• Hiring by committee by bringing management and potential colleagues into the interviewing process.
• Catering to employee’s needs by offering not only the standard benefit package but additional perks like laundry rooms, massage rooms, haircuts and car washes.
• Almost all projects are team projects and team members sit with a few feet of each other to make it easier to communicate.
• Along with close physical proximity project status is communicated weekly by email to keep all participants on board.
• Workers use the company’s tools which benefit from being beta tested by in-house knowledge workers.
• A company-wide suggestion box is available for employees to post ideas as well as to comment and rate ideas.
• Instead of a single decision maker, they strive for consensus by committee.
• Though people have opinions, tolerance and respect are stressed.
• Analysis of performance metrics to enable the company to know where they are at any minute.
• Vast dissemination of information through weekly “all-hands” assemblies.

So if you’re wondering how your organization might get better at attracting and retaining the knowledge workers of the future, you might consider Google’s formula for success.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 9th, 2007 at 10:30 am and is filed under Recruiting, Organizational Change. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.