Evaluation and Ranking of Knowledge WorkersExperience of Pakshoo
GIG Business Excellence Manager, Iran
ir.excellence@excellence
&
Azizeh TeimouriPakshoo QC Manager, Iranazizeht@yahoo.com
Abstracts:
This paper presents performance appraisal of knowledge workers in R&D department. A survey wasdeployed to determine if organization structure is in conformity with world class standards. The resultsshowed that leadership and systems and methods in GIG compatible with world class standards but thereis a gap between GIG HR Systems and world class organizations.One of the most important requirements was compiling appraisal of knowledge workers. In this system byusing evaluating theory, competency models, and experiences of managers has been developed newapproach. In this paper presents performance measurements, relationship between performancemeasurements and job position and payments and performance measurements techniques and objectives.Pay attention to knowledge workers causes empowerment of people in knowledge and skills and finallyprofitability of organization.
Knowledge worker definition
Knowledge worker, a term coined by Peter Drucker in 1959, is one who works primarily with informationor one who develops and uses knowledge in the workplace.
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Due to the constant industrial growth inNorth America and globally, there is increasing need for an academically capable workforce. In directresponse to this, Knowledge Workers are now estimated to outnumber all other workers in North Americaby at least a four to one margin
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. A Knowledge Worker's benefit to a company could be in the form of developing business intelligence, increasing the value of intellectual capital, gaining insight into customerpreferences, or a variety of other important gains in knowledge that aid the business.It has been further defined as work that involves analyzing information and applying specialized expertiseto solve problems, generate ideas, teach others, or create new products and services.
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It is difficult todefine knowledge work in more detail because knowledge work is primarily invisible. It is hidden in thehead of the knowledge worker. Because of the difficulty of measuring knowledge worker production,dissatisfied knowledge workers may take advantage of the situation. This dissatisfaction may producebehavior in which personnel seek more financial satisfaction by giving themselves a "stealth raise", i.e.,cutting back the effective hours in which they perform knowledge work at the office. They may dedicatemore mental effort to another activity that is not job-related that brings them more satisfaction
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. Thiscontradicts Frederick Taylor's main philosophy of a fair day's work for a fair day's pay. Even though thereshould be no expectation of blind company loyalty as was expected in the past, companies should expectgood work and some form of commitment to productivity from their knowledge workers while they areon the job.
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Knowledge workers work in an environment described as a knowledge network. There is always anincreasing need for knowledge to grow and progress continually, whether tacit or explicit. Knowledgegrows like organisms, with data serving as food to be assimilated rather than merely stored. Allknowledge workers, particularly R&D project managers, need to easily access and search internal andexternal knowledge bases.Toffler observed that typical knowledge workers in the age of knowledge economy and knowledgesociety must have some system at their disposal to create process and enhance their own technologicalknowledge.Knowledge workers are believed to produce more when empowered to make the most of their deepestskills; they can often work on many projects at the same time; they know how to allocate their time; andthey can multiply the results of their efforts through soft factors such as emotional intelligence and trust.Organizations designed around the knowledge worker (instead of just machine capital) are thought tointegrate the best of hierarchy, self-organization and networking rather than the worst. Each dictates adifferent communications and rewards system, and requires activation of knowledge-sharing and actionlearning. A basic pattern rule of human systems is that when you mix them you will get the worst of eachunless you contextually and carefully attend to connecting the best
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.In the Knowledge Age, 2% of the working population will work on the land, 10% will work in Industryand the rest will be Knowledge Workers.
Classes of Knowledge workers
Knowledge work, ranges from tasks performed by individual knowledge workers to global socialnetworks. This framework spans every class of knowledge work that is being or is likely to beundertaken. There are seven levels or scales of knowledge work.1.
Knowledge work, (e.g., writing, analyzing, advising) is performed by subject-matter specialistsin all areas of an organization.2.
Knowledge functions (e.g., capturing, organizing, and providing access to knowledge) areperformed by technical staff, to support knowledge processes projects.3.
Knowledge processes (preserving, sharing, and integration) are performed by professionalgroups, as part of a knowledge management program.4.
Knowledge management programs link the generation of knowledge (e.g., from science,synthesis, or learning) with its use (e.g., policy analysis, reporting, program management) aswell as facilitating organizational learning and adaptation in a knowledge organization.5.
Knowledge organizations transfer outputs (content, products, services, and solutions), in theform of knowledge services, to enable external use.6.
Knowledge services support other organizational services, yield sector outcomes, and result inbenefits for citizens in the context of knowledge markets.
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Social networks enable knowledge organizations to co-produce knowledge outputs by leveragingtheir internal capacity with massive social networks.
Productivity Measurement History
Measurement requires collecting data. Categorizes three basic ways to collect data about a givenphenomenon or organizational system: inquiry, observation, and collecting system data or documentation.This data gathering is the essential part of measurement. It is the process by which productivitybenchmarks are established. In the simplest form, the outputs are evaluated against the inputs, but even atthis simple level terminology may be a problem. Some writers include no quantitative indicators such asquality in their definition of "output," but others confine the discussion of productivity to I/O. Thedefinition affects the type and amount of data gathered.USACERL has identified the need to measure productivity among knowledge workers to recognize anygains that can be attributed to implementation of KWS. They developed a measuring knowledge workerproductivity model, and discussed which methodologies may work best in specific knowledge work environments
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. An extensive search of work measurement literature was conducted. More than 100 journal articles, papers, and books were reviewed. Topical areas reviewed included work measurement,productivity, organizations, psychology, decision theory, and quality improvement. Severalmethodologies were examined for applicability to the kinds of environments in which Army knowledgeworkers operate, and the most promising were identified.There is a distinct difference in the productivity of an organization and the productivity of a single work unit of that organization. A research group indicated this difference by use of its third objective-toestablish measures that reflect an organization's degree of success in meeting its established goals. Thegoals for each level of the organization should differ to represent the contribution that specific levelexpects to make toward overall organizational goals. Therefore, each level's productivity evaluationshould be different, reflecting its unique goals.Historically, work has been separated into blue-collar and white-collar categories. This view can beexpanded to include knowledge work as a third category. Knowledge work is all work whose output ismainly intangible, whose input is not clearly definable, and that allows a high degree of individualdiscretion in the task. This difference in work content requires different approaches to productivityevaluation. The difficulty of measuring something that is not clearly defined has been noted. An expandeddefinition of work that includes a category for knowledge work is a first step in the evaluation of knowledge worker productivity. Other models can be fined in the same reference.Some writers offer several suggestions to make measurement simpler and acceptable to the KW:
The KWs must participate in the establishment and evaluation of the measures of theirproductivity. The more they are involved, the less likely they will feel threatened.
Any process that seems too complex to measure is likely to have less complex sub processes,which are more practical to measure.
Always use the best measure for the job, even if several different measures must be pursued fordifferent processes.
Do not expect absolute accuracy, but try for the best that is economical.
Regardless of the shortcomings, measuring is better than not measuring.The literature review shows that productivity measurement is discussed from a wide variety of viewpoints. A variety of implementation methodologies have been developed for different applications.What is lacking is a concept that unifies these diverse views. This section discusses several aspects of such a unifying concept. In addition, productivity measurement is most valuable as a dynamic measure,not as a static measure.The authors propose categorizing work by eight components, as detailed in Table 1. Figures 1-4 show thecomponents of work arrayed on a horizontal scale. Each characteristic is represented by a horizontal line,and is scaled from high to low.The graph is set up so inversely related components are at opposite ends and strongly related componentsare grouped together. For example, "Decision making" and "Knowledge Use" are directly related to"Complexity" by definition. "Structured" is inversely related to "Complexity," so these two componentsare at opposite ends of the graph. There is not a lot of "Complexity," as defined, in a very structured job-the amount of decision making and the knowledge used is low. This means that "Structured" is alsoinversely related to "Knowledge Use" and "Decision making." "Volume" is directly related to "Time per
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Evaluation and Ranking of Knowledge Workers Pakshoo Experience
This paper presents performance appraisal of knowledge workers in R&D department. A survey was deployed to determine if organization structure is in conformity with world cl...
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