Knowledge worker

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Knowledge worker
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Introduction

• Knowledge workers are workers whose
  main capital is knowledge.
• Typical examples may include software
  engineers, architects, engineers because they
  "think for a living".
• What differentiates knowledge work from other
  forms of work is its primary task of
  "non-routine" problem solving that requires a
  combination of convergent, divergent, and
  creative thinking. 

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Knowledge Work

• Drucker (1999) focused on the differences between
  manual worker productivity and knowledge
  worker productivity.
• The key enablers of the latter include abstractly
  defined tasks (vs. clearly defined, delineated
  tasks), flexible application of knowledge,
  workers autonomy, continuous innovation and
  learning into job roles, assessment based on
  quality (not just quantity) of output and
  perceiving workers as organisational assets.

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Knowledge Work Types

• Expert thinking
• Includes solving problems outside of rules based
  solutions, with computers assisting but not
  substituting.
• As well as high level research and creative work,
  this might also include the mechanic who is able
  to identify a solution to a problem that computer
  based diagnostics could not.

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• Complex communication
• Includes interacting with other people to acquire
  or convey information and persuading others of
  their implications, with computers assisting but
  unlikely to replace examples might include some
  managers, teachers and salespeople.

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• Routine cognitive includes mental tasks closely
  described by rules such as routine form
  processing and filling, often vulnerable to
  computerisation.
• Routine manual includes physical tasks closely
  described by rules, such as assembly line work
  and packaging, that may be replaced by machines.

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• Non-routine manual includes physical tasks hard
  to define by rules because they require fine
  optical or muscle control such as truck-driving
  and cleaning, and unlikely to be either assisted
  or replaced by computers.

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Who is a knowledge worker?

• Knowledge workers can be defined as employees
  who apply their valuable knowledge and skills
  (developed through experience) to complex, novel
  and abstract problems in environments that
  provide rich collective knowledge and relational
  resources.
• (Swart, 2006)

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Qualities of the definition

• Possession of individual knowledge
• Application of knowledge
• Situations need to be novel and complex
• Collective knowledge and social networks
• Output of knowledge is difficult to judge

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Characteristics of knowledge workers

• Work exceptionally long hours
• Committed more to the nature of the work than the
  organisation
• Strong intrinsic sense of motivation and prefers
  challenging work
• Identify with like-minded professionals and
  therefore have strong interpersonal networks
• Strong bargaining position demand high wages
• Core skills that they rely on
  problem-identification, problem-solving and
  brokerage
• Social skills are important

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Classification of Knowledge Workers

• Leaders and innovators..
• Frequently performed tasks Data and analysis,
  leadership and development, people management.
• Occasionally performed tasks Administrative
  tasks, creative tasks.
• Specific tasks Collaborate with people inside
  organisation on project/programme, analyse
  information to address work-related problems,
  manage people, write reports, provide
  consultation/advice to others.
• Example occupations Production and functional
  managers, financial institution and office
  managers, business and finance associate
  professionals.

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• Experts and Analysts
• Frequently performed tasks Data and analysis,
  people management.
• Occasionally performed tasks Leadership and
  development, administrative tasks.
• Specific tasks Collaborate with people inside
  organisation on project/programme, enter data,
  compile data, analyse information to address
  work-related problems, write reports.
• Example occupations ICT professionals, teaching
  professionals, managers and proprietors in
  service industries, research professionals,
  customer service occupations.

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• Information handlers
• Frequently performed tasks Administrative tasks.
• Occasionally performed tasks People management,
  data and analysis.
• Specific tasks File (physically/electronically),
  sort post, manage diaries, enter data, handle
  complaints, settle disputes and resolve
  grievances.
• Example occupations General administrative
  occupations, secretarial occupations, financial
  institution and office managers, managers and
  proprietors in service industries, financial
  administrative occupations.

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• Care and welfare workers
• Frequently performed tasks Caring for others,
  people management, work with food, products or
  merchandise.
• Occasionally performed tasks Data and analysis,
  administrative tasks, perceptual and precision
  tasks.
• Specific tasks Provide care for others,
  administer first aid, clean/wash, dispense
  medications, expose self to disease/infections,
  write reports.
• Example occupations Care associate
  professionals, care services, childcare services,
  social welfare associate professionals.

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• Servers and sellers
• Frequently performed tasks Work with food,
  products or merchandise, people management,
  administrative tasks.
• Occasionally performed tasks Data and analysis,
  perceptual and precision tasks, leadership and
  development.
• Specific tasks Clean/wash, handle complaints,
  settle disputes and resolve grievances, manage
  people, stock shelves with products or
  merchandise, order merchandise.

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• Maintenance and logistics operators
• Frequently performed tasks Perceptual and
  precision tasks, maintenance, moving and
  repairing.
• Occasionally performed tasks People management,
  work with food, products or merchandise, data and
  analysis, administrative tasks.
• Specific tasks Visually identify objects, know
  location in relation to the environment or know
  where objects are in relation to you, judge
  distances, lift heavy objects, load/ unload
  equipment/materials/luggage.
• Example occupations Protective services,
  security occupations, transport drivers, metal
  machining, fitting and instrument making trades,
  science and engineering technicians, construction
  trades.

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• Assistants and clerks
• Occasionally performed tasks People management,
  data and analysis, work with food, products or
  merchandise, administrative tasks.
• Specific tasks Handle complaints, settle
  disputes and resolve grievances, collaborate with
  people inside organisation on project/programme,
  teach others, clean/wash, coach or develop
  others, provide consultation/advice to others,
  motivate others.
• Example occupations Customer service
  occupations, sales assistants and retail cashiers.

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Competence Mapping of Knowledge Worker

• Transforms corporate and personal experiences
  into knowledge through capturing, assessing,
  applying, sharing, and disseminating it within
  the organization to solve specific problems or to
  create value

Transformation process
IT Tools
Values
KNOWLEDGE WORKER
Organizational Culture
Personal and corporate experience
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Core Competencies

• Thinking skills having a vision how the product
  or the company can be better
• Continuous learning unlearning and relearning
  in tune with fast-changing conditions
• Innovative teams and teamwork via
  collaboration, cooperation, and coordination
• Creativity dreaming new ways to advance the
  firm

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Core Competencies (contd)

• Risk taking and potential success making joint
  decisions with calculated risk
• Decision action taking be willing to embrace
  professional discipline, patience, and
  determination
• Culture of responsibility toward knowledge
  loyalty and commitment to ones manager or leader

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Traditional vs. Smart Managers
Action-oriented Learning-oriented
Spend most time supervising, delegating, controlling and ensuring procedures are complied Focus on organizational learning to ensure operational excellence
Mastered the work of the subordinates because they were once workers Expected not to have mastered the work of the subordinates
A supervisor and an order giver A facilitator and a teacher
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Major Challenges

• Get the organization moving towards achieving
  goals in line with rate of change
• Promote active learning to improve knowledge
  workers capacity to create, produce, and respond
  to change
• Provide opportunities for knowledge workers to
  brainstorm ideas, exchange knowledge, and devise
  new ways of doing business

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Responsibilities of Smart Managers

• Managing knowledge workers
• Searching out, creating, sharing, and using
  knowledge regularly
• Maintaining work motivation among knowledge
  workers

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Responsibilities of Smart Managers (contd)

• Hiring or recruiting bright, knowledge-seeking
  individuals
• Managing collaboration, coordination, and
  concurrent activities among knowledge workers

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Factors Affecting Knowledge Workers Productivity

• Time constraint
• Knowledge workers performing tasks that the firm
  did not hire them to do
• Work schedule mismatch
• De-motivation against knowledge workers
  productivity

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Responsibilities of the CKO

• Maximize returns on investment in knowledge
  people, processes, and technology
• Share best practices and reinforce benefits of
  knowledge sharing among employees
• Promote company innovations and commercialization
  of new ideas
• Minimize knowledge loss at all levels of the
  business

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Role of the CKO (In Summary)

• Agent of change
• Investigator
• Linking pin
• Listener
• Politician

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Key CKO Attributes

• Teaching and selling
• Communicating speaking the language of the
  user, mediate, and working with management at all
  levels
• Understanding e.g., identifying problem areas
  and determining their impact

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Key CKO Attributes (contd)

• Technical Skills
• Broad knowledge of business practice and ability
  to translate technical information at employee
  level
• Making effective use of technical and
  non-technical elements in KM design
• Knowledge of information technology, information
  systems, and how information is transformed into
  knowledge

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CKOs Success Factors

• Focus less on problems and more on successes and
  opportunities
• Adopt an attitude that views challenges as
  opportunities
• Work on creating tomorrows business instead of
  focusing on yesterdays problems

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Incentives and Motivation

• Use monetary awards, bonuses and special prizes
  for teams or individuals for unique contributions
• Flextime allows the team to decide on when to
  work, when to quit, and so forth
• Publicize success throughout the firm

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Knowledge Elicitation evaluation

• Terms are often used interchangeably
• available techniques often applicable to both
• Knowledge elicitation typically includes
  evaluation but also refers to data gathering for
  the purpose of initially informing design
  (requirements capture) and/or surveying
  practice/attitudes etc
• Evaluation is concerned with gathering data
  about the usability of a design or product by a
  specific group of users for a particular activity
  within a specified environment or work context

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Seven Strategic Levers

• Customer Knowledge - the most vital knowledge in
  most organizations
• Knowledge in Processes - applying the best
  know-how while performing core tasks
• Knowledge in Products (and Services) - smarter
  solutions, customized to users' needs
• Knowledge in People - nurturing and harnessing
  brainpower, your most precious asset
• Organizational Memory - drawing on lessons from
  the past or elsewhere in the organization
• Knowledge in Relationships - deep personal
  knowledge that underpins successful collaboration
  
• Knowledge Assets - measuring and managing your
  intellectual capital.

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What is a Knowledge Map Why Use One?

• Navigation aid to explicit and tacit knowledge
• Portrays sources, flows, constraints and sinks of
  knowledge within an organisation
• Encourages re-use and prevents re-invention,
  saves search time
• Highlights expertise, discover communities of
  practice, helps staff to find critical resources
• Improves decision making, problem solving and
  customer response time by providing access to
  information
• Provides an inventory of intellectual and
  intangible assets
• The start of a corporate memory or collective
  mind.

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Active Knowledge Elicitation Techniques

• Formal and informal interviews
• Interviewer asks the expert or end user questions
  relating to the specific topic
• Adv well known, comfortable for interviewees
• DisAdv time consuming, expensive, interviewer
  expertise required, interviewee cooperation
  required
• Verbal Protocol Analysis
• Experts report thought processes involved in
  performing a task or solving a problem
• Adv rigorous
• DisAdv time consuming, hard to analyse

• Group Task Analysis
• A group of experts describes and discusses
  processes pertaining to a specific topic
• Adv multiple viewpoints, concensus building
• DisAdv how to validate
• Narratives, Scenarios, Storytelling
• Expert or end user constructs stories to account
  for a set of observations
• Adv rich insight, good for ill defined problems
• DisAdv reliance on self reports
• Questionnaires
• Users respond to specific questions
• Adv usually quantitative, easy to code
• DisAdv low return rate, responses are difficult
  to validate

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• Focus Groups
• A group discusses different issues
• Adv allows exchange of ideas, good for
  generating complete lists
• DisAdv an individual may dominate, not good for
  discovering specific problems
• Wants Needs Analysis
• Users brainstorm about what they want/need from a
  system
• Adv exchange of ideas, determines areas for
  focus, allows prioritisation
• DisAdv wants and needs may not be realistic
• Observation
• Observe users in their natural environment
• Adv see it as it really is (but not ethnography)
• DisAdv time, depends on observer note taking
  observation skills

• Ethnographic Study
• Users culture and work environment are studied
  via emersion
• Adv see it as it really is over a long time
  period
• DisAdv time consuming, hard to distance yourself
  from the domain
• User Diary
• Users record and evaluate their actions
• Adv real time (almost) tracking
• DisAdv invasive, possible delay in recording
• Concept Sorting
• Users determine relationships between concepts
• Adv helps structure information
• DisAdv grouping is user specified, structure may
  be too elaborate

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Passive Knowledge Elicitation Techniques

• News feeds
• Discussion groups
• Company magazines
• Bulletins.
• Contact addresses
• Organisation charts
• Home pages.
• Network transactions
• Email tags
• Semantic analysis.
• Helpdesks and CRM systems
• Interaction logs
• Process scripts.

• Asset and HR databases (company CVs)
• LAN directory structures
• Who has access to what
• Why do they have access.
• Library record archives
• Process descriptions
• QA documents
• Procedure manuals.
• Meta-data directories
• Standardisation documents
• Meta-tags on electronic data sources.

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what is the benefit associated goals (3)

• goals of knowledge elicitation to assess
• user activity/attitudes/practice
• its implications on introduction of technology
• functional requirements
• what does a system interface need to do?
• non-functional requirements
• what constraints are placed on the
  implementation?
• what benchmarks must be met?

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What is the benefit associated goals (4)

• goals of evaluation to assess
• usability
• what is the effect of the interaction design on
  the user (efficiency, effectiveness,
  satisfaction)?
• functionality
• does the system provide the required
  functionality?
• problems in the design
• what aspects of the design cause unexpected
  results or confusion?

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Types of technique

• Protocol-generation techniquesinclude various
  types of interviews (unstructured,
  semi-structured and structured), reporting
  techniques (such as self-report and shadowing)
  and observational techniques
• Protocol analysis techniquesare used with
  transcripts of interviews or other text-based
  information to identify various types of
  knowledge, such as goals, decisions,
  relationships and attributes. This acts as a
  bridge between the use of protocol-based
  techniques and knowledge modelling techniques.

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• Hierarchy-generation techniquessuch as laddering
  are used to build taxonomies or other
  hierarchical structures such as goal trees and
  decision networks.
• Matrix-based techniquesinvolve the construction
  of grids indicating such things as problems
  encountered against possible solutions. Important
  types include the use of frames for representing
  the properties of concepts and the repertory grid
  technique used to elicit, rate, analyse and
  categorise the properties of concepts.

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• Sorting techniquesare used for capturing the way
  people compare and order concepts, and can lead
  to the revelation of knowledge about classes,
  properties and priorities.
• Limited-information and constrained-processing
  tasksare techniques that either limit the time
  and/or information available to the expert when
  performing tasks. For instance, the
  twenty-questions technique provides an efficient
  way of accessing the key information in a domain
  in a prioritised order.

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• Diagram-based techniquesinclude the generation
  and use of concept maps, state transition
  networks, event diagrams and process maps. The
  use of these is particularly important in
  capturing the "what, how, when, who and why" of
  tasks and events.