Economics. Section 5. Human Resource Management

Shatyrko Alina, P'yanov Alexander

North-Caucasian Federal University

Features of the organization of activity of knowledge workers

At the present stage of development of the theory of management is undergoing significant changes. The staff is not treated as a cost to be minimized, and how the assets that should be enhanced. Workers need to competently manage, create favorable conditions for their development, including through the use of effective methods of motivation.

Management theory and practice, it is recognized that knowledge is the most important source of creating and maintaining a competitive advantage of the organization. Because of this special role played by knowledge workers, whose mental abilities and the ability to operate properly with this knowledge directly to create the product of labor.

Today there are a large number of methods of motivation of staff, and their range is increasing rapidly. However, in practice, do not emit specific methods of motivating employees of mental activities.

It should be noted that the structure of the motives of the intellectual and manual workers varies considerably. The need to explore incentives and motivation of labor activity of knowledge workers is due to the little-studied the issue of management theory and expressed the need to highlight key criteria influencing the motivation to work of this category of workers. The latter is necessary to increase the level of comfort of intellectual labor activities, and has a direct impact on the productivity growth of workers in this category.

For the most part, it is ideas, projects, judgment and reasoning knowledge workers provide sustainable existence of business, economic organizations and society in general, forced to evolve. They come up with new products, develop new strategies, negotiating, and help the company to be one step ahead of the competition.

The science of management has come a long way since then, as a management expert Peter Drucker in the late 1950s ushered in the scientific revolution, the term “knowledge worker”. While only just begun the process of transition from manual labor to research his organization requiring a high level of knowledge, education and experience. Today, between 25 % and 50 % of jobs require people to create, use and share knowledge [2].

How to quantify the cost of production of the products of intellectual labor? The process of this kind of work and produced with the help of the product is not materialized, not tangible. It is difficult to count the number of judgments and inferences man posing on a working day. Also, there are other problems. Managers often think that if these employees have a high level of intelligence, they themselves must know what and when to do it. In addition, managers can refer to knowledge workers, as well as to all other employees, applying the rules that prevent their full potential and are detrimental to their performance.

How can you manage knowledge workers productive? Before answering this question, it is necessary to define the category in question.

The term “knowledge worker” is controversial. Some people are uncomfortable to say that part of the workers use their knowledge, while others are not – for example, the marketing department employees are knowledge workers, and production staff – not. Such statements may give the impression that some jobs (and people) are better than others. On the other hand, it can be said that all personnel uses its intelligence in work to a greater or lesser extent.

Thomas Davenport, who has studied the features of the use of intelligence professionals over a decade, offers the following definition of the term “knowledge workers have a high degree of competence, education and experience, and the main purpose of their activity involves the creation, dissemination and application of their knowledge” [2].

Usually workers intellect is a source of innovation. So to get the most from their knowledge, and to create an environment in which new ideas can be freely distributed and flourish, should be directed to the basic leadership and management practices. They will help to build trust and improve communication between knowledge workers that will lead the organization to success and create additional competitive advantages.

There is a huge amount of knowledge, which also continues every day to develop and improve. Knowledge workers to use certain technologies to keep track of what they need. They do not have to create it yourself and spend a lot of time to search for information that may not even exist. So the leader should make sure that the staff category has access to the appropriate information channels. It can be something as simple as giving them a PC with Internet access. However, not enough just to provide technology. It is necessary to train the personnel of its use. For example, it is pointless to buy software that automatically searches the web of new information on specific subjects, but let employees still spend hours making their own web searches.

Find ways to provide the right technology to obtain information and ensure that the relevant employees use it is an important feature of labor productivity management knowledge workers.

The nature of mental activity in the work varies according to each profession. However, most of the staff of mental labor has a certain level of autonomy. There usually is not acceptable close supervision and complete control of their work. Instead, they prefer to head created all conditions for productive work. In order to maintain the level of knowledge of employees, trust and respect, the manager still must be aware of what they do, and teach them as needed.

Knowledge workers often need to know the “why” so much and no more or less. No need to ask such staff suggestions for improving product design, without saying why he needs to be improved and how it will benefit the company. When this category of staff understands the “why”, the probability of innovative solutions from them will be much higher.

This deep understanding often leads to an increase in the collective relationships. The more knowledge workers are connected to the project activities and feel comfortable in the team, the more they will be motivated. This means more general knowledge to be shared, to make the project successful.

In order to guarantee a high level of motivation, it is necessary to identify and target projects intended for this category of workers. Need to find out their interests, and then seek to direct the work of each organization to achieve the main goal [3].

As already mentioned, the intellectual labor has not materialized in nature, and therefore it is virtually impossible to quantify. But the time spent on such activities as well as the creation of a physical, tangible product. Therefore, it is practically impossible to evaluate the product in and out, and decide which results are most important to the organization. For example, a marketing company can assume that the employee received awards for his work achievements are the most appropriate measurement performance of his work. Obtaining a patent can be an indicator of the company's product. But here you need to be careful to avoid the increase of quantitative indicators at the expense of quality. Also, it should be flexible when setting the regulatory parameters that ultimately did not come to motivate the wrong behaviors.

Despite the complexity of evaluation of intellectual work, you can try to experiment with the conditions of employment of comfort to increase productivity. For example, to introduce new technologies and to assess their impact on the work. Or change the layout of the work area, to improve collaboration among knowledge workers, and then compare the results before and after the change to determine how successful the change.

It is important to note that different people use their knowledge in different ways. Some employees prefer to work alone in silence, while others would like to generate ideas together. Fairness in the workplace can be construed as committing the same things to everyone. But when the methods of work with this category of personnel averaged and applied generally, there is a risk to miss the opportunity to discover what motivates each employee individually, as well as understand what you need to do to work each of them was a creative and productive.

All can be personalized – the technology, working conditions, work schedule. Knowledge workers get the results implemented in order, rather than the traditional workers, so you should be open and flexible with their product of labor, resources, terms and conditions.

Thus, we can conclude that knowledge workers are usually responsible for the study and development of new ideas, and not the implementation and management of existing processes. New products, new designs, new business models are the typical areas of their work. Therefore, this category of staff should produce results that differ from traditional workers, as well as the head must manage and measure their performance in different ways. Be flexible, to recognize the different needs and exercise motivation of knowledge workers based on their satisfaction will allow much easier to find creative and effective ways to maintain and increase their productivity.

References

[1] Alexey Tebekin, “Human Resource Management”, (Moscow: Publishing house “Delo”, 2009), 623.

[2] Takhir Bazarov, Boris Eremenko, “Human Resource Management” (Moscow: Publishing House “UNITI”, 2009), 560.

[3] Viktor Travin, Vladimir Dyatlov, “Fundamentals of personnel management” (Moscow: Publishing house “Delo”, 2009), 230.