Monitoring & Measuring Contributions of Knowledge Workers
Changing the way we think and measure Knowledge Workers
As noted in our prior article, Productivity Does Not =” Busyness”, time to change the conversation on how we measure and reward Knowledge Workers.
Who are we talking about? What is a “Knowledge Worker”?
They can be found across industries and job titles: (some examples)
Consultant (IT, Business, Organizational Change, Coaching, etc.)
Information Management, Developer, etc.
Innovation lead, creative manager, etc.
Project, Program, Portfolio, Product Manager
Contributions impact shared goals and objectives, they are masters of communication, influence, collaboration and negotiation. They can develop or follow a vision while understanding the need to balance against delivering continuous value. They can design and implement across a function, organization or countries. They frequently will be at the forefront of change, creating new ways of working, systems and structures. They are comfortable in testing theories using feedback and data while having the courage to think and do things that have not been done before.
Knowledge workers are not created equal…
Skills and abilities vary based on individual life and work experiences, personal characteristics and value system.
Recruiting, empowering and managing knowledge workers is critical for success. We see every day the impact, when talented knowledge workers leave a company. Many of these individuals carry their own “digital street creds”, they’ve developed their own brand identity. The information era has made it easy to publish contributions outside of the employed company. Tech & business news, report the impacts to companies, when critical employees leave, many “re-hiring” a key knowledge worker back to promote confidence in their product and company’s future direction.
How do we measure contributions… performance?
Contribution and value of outcomes are not transparent if tracking to transactional productivity measures (“number of”: features, code hrs., patents, etc.). A shift in thinking on how we measure performance and what does productivity look like, is required. Successful companies, have demonstrated the ability to navigate a dynamic market landscape by focus on a combination of individual and team measures:
OKRs (Objectives & Key Results)
While maintaining some traditional KPIs (Key Performance Measures)
Targeted interaction skills and values
This Requires:
Behavior shifts in organizational thinking and employee/leader relationships. OKR require collaboration, input and ownership from the people who will be held accountable to achieving the success of ORKs. They cannot be dictated or assigned. If the outcomes are not reached within the agreed to target timeframe (typically set quarterly), they need to be adjusted to include learning and insights.
It is important that these measures be managed and monitored with integrity. Going through the motions, is the fastest way to demotivate a person or team. Courage and true leadership are needed to change a published OKR or measure which is not driving the right behavior or accomplishing the desired goal.
How many times have quarterly, or mid-year reviews been conducted, only to see that there has been a shift in company direction due to market/company change and yet, the OKRs or goals set at the beginning of the term are not changed because of optics and fear of how-to message. So employee is held to a measure that they cannot influence, impacting motivation.
Evolution in the leadership-employee relationship, evolves to a collaboration, with clear understanding of decision rights and sphere of influence vs a hierarchical power dynamic.
Evolving to a culture of trust, empowerment and collaboration takes work and is critical to obtain competitive advantage in today fast paced digital world. This is the hard part of change. We as leaders need to put ego and titles aside to coach and collaborate with our teams, partners, stakeholders and vendors. Need to shift activities from monitoring (micromanage) the physical individual and team and focus on interpersonal communications and transparency of outcomes. Building trust to enable open communications between the team.
Without the bidirectional trust, bad behaviors arise. Employees default to not sharing how they feel, they may not share concerns or great ideas. Defaulting to the bare minimum. Examples of these company/leader negative behaviors can be found in RTO and “video on at all times” edicts. These are seen as micromanagement of individuals vs performance enhancement. This tells employees they are not valued and easily replaceable. Unlike the days of assembly and manufacturing work…knowledge workers are not equal and costly to replace.
Managing the fear of letting go of control…
In addition to a shift in how knowledge workers are measured, how we measure managers and leaders’ effectiveness must change.
The digital global era has changed the caliber of workers, and increased the number of knowledge workers, resulting in friction between knowledge workers, manager and leaders. Leaders and managers are struggling to find their footing, and many are feeling a loss of control and value in the workplace.
The digital knowledge worker does not require the level of traditional industrial oversight, that B schools and companies have been structured around for a century. New organizational models and measures are evolving to reduce stress and improve overall trust, cost effectiveness and improved value delivery.
“Work is not linear.”
“Teams need more coaching and mentorship vs oversight.”
The shift to digital mix model teams located in globally and in multiple sites, requires less supervision as measures shift from monitoring people to monitoring results. Time to think, collaborate, research, experiment and learn are necessary to innovate, adopt and provide competitive customer solutions. Transactional productive metrics do not accomplish value delivery.
About the Author:
Cat Collins has been a pioneer in business digital transformation for 30 years. Her focus is on organizational, service, functional and experience design, enabled by emerging digital technology. She has held executive positions in global companies and consulting firms. Her background in psychology/business and hands-on digital transformation experience, have guided her to an innovative human-centric approach to successfully develop solutions and products while helping people transition to new ways of working.