The literature on the subject refers to them as knowledgeable workers, and even calls them knowmads, or knowledge nomads referring to their high labor mobility.
However, regardless of how often they change companies, we could actually consider these professionals we call knowledge workers as workers of the mind. More specifically, these would be workers in whom the ability to imagine, analyze and structure is both the result and the process of their work, regardless of whether they belong to the millennial generation, have a high level of digitalization or are not committed to a particular company for a long time.
Explained in a very basic way, knowledge workers are characterized by thinking, analyzing, connecting ideas and imagining possible solutions to respond to current and future problems of a company. This turns knowmads into strategists who advise rather than executors who produce. In reality, they also produce, but the result of their work is very abstract and sometimes takes a long time to materialize.
In addition, one of the characteristics of their way of working is the panoramic vision: their analysis works with retrospective vision, present vision and prospective vision, which helps them take into account many variables of different signs and not only those factors that follow the foreseeable logic. This way of reasoning is related to the so-called “lateral thinking”.
To understand what role this profile plays in today’s business reality, especially in the wake of the remote working boom, we need to know how the skills of knowledge workers meet the needs of their company.
5 characteristics of knowledge workers
You can find a lot of information on the Internet about the different skills, qualities and competencies that characterize knowmads or the so-called nomadic knowledge workers. To make your work easier, we have summarized some points below that describe the figure of this particular type of professional.
1. High level of specialization in the content of their area of work and proficiency or high competence in new information technologies as a methodology to carry it out or, at least, to communicate it to their supervisors.
2. High ability to concentrate on the task at hand, without being distracted by distractions (interruptions from colleagues, checking social networks, spending time on superfluous tasks, attention to e-mail, attending unproductive meetings, etc.).
3. High level of organization between elements of their task (what it consists of), the reason for their task (why doing it is important) and the added value of their work (why it is important for them to do).
4. Openness to experience, flexibility (high tolerance to change) and good command of different thinking strategies and analysis of situations to facilitate decision making and problem solving.
5. Great capacity to work autonomously but, at the same time, interconnected with other members of the company. They do not see the flow of information between different professionals as a threat to their status but as a useful tool to develop their work. This makes them versatile workers and, thanks to their IT skills, they are well suited to work in distributed teams.
Ifeel has created an emotional wellbeing program for companies, designed by its team of expert psychologists to help companies attract, develop and retain the talent of the best knowledge workers available in their corporate ecosystem.
Thanks to this partnership, HR managers are provided with personalized, data-driven advice on how to get the most out of the teams they are in charge of and generate the most suitable working conditions for knowmads to boost team building.
In addition, ifeel‘s emotional well-being program for companies provides employees with a mental health care service structured at different levels according to their needs at any given time through ifeel‘s app. They can also receive emotional support through a chat with one of our platform’s licensed psychologists. If additional help is required, they can access the third level of the program: online psychological therapy with a psychologist specializing in the issue the employee is going through.
