Visual performance indicators for knowledge workers

I think it was Peter Drucker who first coined the term “knowledge worker”. It is now a term we know and understand well. At least, we understand vaguely what we mean by a knowledge worker – someone who does something that we don’t quite understand. Knowledge workers are a difficult group to manage, as their output is often long term, difficult to measure and not totally understood by whoever is “managing” them. I say “managing” them, because so much has to be done on trust and on outcomes, some of which will be influenced by a myriad of different factors.

However, employee engagement and job satisfaction has been shown to rise when people clearly understand the organisation’s mission, and are actively involved in improving performance: whatever level in the organisation, and whatever the work.

So the key is to ensure that appropriate and visual performance indicators are displayed for people to see, challenge, discuss and use in their work. Without that engagement it is too easy to allow people to slip into thinking that no-one cares, no-one is watching and no-one is interested, which is mostly very far from the truth.

Of course, creating good visual performance indicators requires careful thinking, but it can and is done very successfully by many companies who understand how important it is to keep everyone engaged.