Featured Article from Unified Communications Headsets

Company Priorities Shift to Managing Knowledge Workers Effectively

By Tara Seals
Contributing Writer

The U.S. workforce is changing, and not just when it comes to age demographics. Legacy manufacturing and assembly-line production is moving into second- and third-tier world markets, meaning that as much as 65 percent of the developed world’s workforce is made up of what are commonly referred to as knowledge workers. Corporate processes are going to have to change to make the most of this shift---and that means incorporating the right technology.

Knowledge workers are the creatives, the technologists, the ones that are expected to have critical thinking capacities that differentiate them in their positions. These are writers, IT researchers, lawyers, entrepreneurs, doctors, marketing specialists, academics, app developers and so on—and this class of worker thrives when given the leeway to do their thing. Their thing of course is applying their knowledge, vision and unique perspectives to the tasks at hand. The expectation is that they create innovation, differentiation and long-term viability for the companies that employ them. Above all, they’re entrusted to make judgment calls and decisions.

That’s in an ideal world. Unfortunately, management has not necessarily caught up with what knowledge workers need in order to thrive. Forbes has laid out some best practices for herding the cavalcade of cats that knowledge workers represent:

1. Make sure knowledge workers have the software and tech tools to support their efforts….and are using them. Technology is a critical piece of making this situation work for everyone. Thanks to VoIP and IP video implementations, companies of all sizes can enable flexibility for knowledge workers, boosting effective communication and collaboration between employees, partners, suppliers and clients. IP communications offers a path to implementing a reliable and flexible business phone system, mobile extensions allow a truly borderless, productivity-enhancing enterprise, and endpoints tailored for this new reality mean that users can enjoy HD quality, with secure connections. Jabra (News - Alert) headsets, for instance, establish an authenticated connection with the base. This requires a number of “handshakes” and creates a secure link. Once that happens, the headset turns voice into digital data, encrypts it, and passes only the encrypted data back to the base, making the conversation highly secure.

2. Create an environment in which sharing of ideas is encouraged, but also provide space where those ideas can take shape in silence and concentration. This means encouraging collaboration—tech tools are critical here, including videoconferencing and unified communications—but also enabling flexibility like the ability to work from home and concentrate on that big report or presentation.

3. Give workers the freedom to suggest ideas and alternatives to make things better; and treat their ideas with respect. This seems like a no-brainer, but management must have enough respect for the people hired to lead innovation within the company to open the kimono on long-term goals and vision.

4. Remember they are individuals. It’s common to implement processes and workflows within companies in the name of streamlining and operational optimization—but it’s also important to understand that not all high-value activities can flourish within rigid, set processes. Related to this is metrics—measuring “success” for knowledge workers takes a different approach than measuring factory output, and often this should be evaluated on a case-by-case, personalized level.

“The whole idea of generating new ideas and being creative in the first place is to come up with something different, and this takes different kinds of people,” Forbes pointed out.

The column also points out something else: Keep the human element in the fore: “The Internet of Things has made all of us in one way or another, ‘knowledge workers.’ But while these new technological tools are necessary, they do not necessarily make us more creative. The music, after all, is not in the violin.”