Managing the careers of professional knowledge workers

A summary of the CIPD Research Report

The management of professional knowledge workers and in particular the conversion by organisations of their knowledge and expertise into marketable products and services was one of the key factors underpinning business success in knowledge-intensive situations. Managing the Careers of Professional Knowledge Workers explores the ways in which people management policies and processes can contribute to the success of knowledge-intensive organisations that rely heavily on their human capital. In particular, it focuses on the key policies and processes associated with managing the careers of professional knowledge workers who are employed by these organisations.

The report builds on earlier CIPD research into people and performance. Understanding the People and Performance Link: Unlocking the black box identified a number of issues as being particularly important to the relationship between how people are managed and the performance of the business. Evidence was provided to show that organisational success depends on having the right mix of HR policies in place. The AMO model (ability, motivation and opportunity) supports the theory that business success is based on the capacity of organisations:

• to recruit people with the right ability
• to motivate them
• to provide them with the opportunities to use their skills in well-designed jobs.

Who are the professional knowledge workers?

The professional knowledge workers were identified as employees whose jobs require high levels of knowledge input in a non-routinised manner where the subsequent output results in a product or service within which their knowledge is embedded. They often have to create new knowledge through the application of highly developed theoretical frameworks to unknown practical problems.

The dilemmas faced

• Retention and employability - Individuals want employability, and for knowledge workers this means having up-to-date skills that make them desirable to employers. But bosses want to retain talent and to offer development and career progression that ties people to a career with their organisation. Many employers are wary of offering development that may make people too attractive to the competition.
• Skills - Employers want to develop organisation-specific skills and the individual has a desire for transferable knowledge.
• Value appropriation - Organisations want to take their employees' knowledge and skills and put them into products and services to sell for a profit. On the other hand, knowledge workers want to hold on to as much of their value as possible to ensure they can trade this at the highest rate.

Our understanding of these dilemmas is improved by adopting an identity perspective. There are four competing sources of identity for professional knowledge workers:

• professional
• organisational
• team
• client.

Multiple sources of identity

Main findings

• Knowledge-intensive organisations and professional knowledge workers have a number of distinct characteristics that make people management issues critical to firm performance.
• The success of knowledge-intensive organisations depends on their ability to convert their human capital - the knowledge, skills and experience of their employees - into intellectual capital ie the products and services that have value in the marketplace.
• The effectiveness of this conversion process depends on the extent to which knowledge-intensive situations and professional knowledge workers are managed successfully.
• There are three key knowledge-intensive situations:
  • the creation and development of knowledge
  • the sharing of knowledge within the organisation
  • the sharing of knowledge between organisations.
• Professional workers have the following, specific characteristics:
  • They need to apply highly structured technical knowledge to ambiguous client demands.
  • They work in an autonomous fashion within fluid leadership structures.
  • They are normally ambitious and upwardly mobile, and their key focus is the development of their own careers.
• Careful attention must be paid to developing people management policies and processes that allow these identities to be managed in ways that are well suited to conditions for the success of these organisations.
• This points to the need for mutually reinforcing processes for managing knowledge-intensive situations and professional knowledge workers within these organisations.

Research methodology

The case study organisations were:

This is a summary of the CIPD executive briefing, Managing the Careers of Professional Knowledge Workers by Juani Swart and Nick Kinnie. For further details visit the CIPD bookstore.

• Go to the CIPD Bookstore

Contact details

• Contact us if you would like to discuss the research on which these findings are based.