Discussion of Motivation of Knowledge Workers
--Case Study on the Brain Drain of Shanda Entertainment Group Inc www.6park.com

Knowledge worker, a term coined by Peter Drucker in 1959, is one who works primarily with information or one who develops and uses knowledge in the workplace. Knowledge workers form a new type of work group, such as IT technology industry and services, whose job and personality have obvious contemporary peculiarity. Only apply traditional methods of motivation are not suitable to manage knowledge workers of modern corporation, is often make it in trouble. Therefore, it is necessary to research how to motivate knowledge workers effectively by modern methods of motivation and tools of theory. www.6park.com

Due to the rapid development of High-tech industries, especially in IT technology, growth in China and East Asia, there is increasing demand for professional and technical workforce. In direct response to this, Knowledge Workers are getting more and more payment from their boss than before. All Human Resource Departments of High-tech industries are enhancing their individual incentive systems to face the problem of brain drain of Knowledge worker now. www.6park.com

In fact, knowledge workers did not get any sufficient attention and specific privileges in long-term, all these changes are caused by the broken up of the management problems with a famous IT enterprises in China. From then on, the Scarcity and unique value of knowledge workers were highlighted. www.6park.com

Shanda Entertainment Group Inc（NASDAQ：SNDA，http://www.snda.com/en/index.jsp）　
Is the biggest online game company in China before 2004. However, the situation changed in 2004. A super powerful competitor which called Zhengtu Network had set up. A well-known capitalist who called Mr. Yuzhu Shi in China tried to persuade the R&D team of Shanda Entertainment Group Inc to join his new online game. And he promised generous treatment for this team.　This is a bad new to Shanda Entertainment Group Inc. This core team ---R&D team try to find a good developing platform and get more income from their job, but they have not find a good boss before Mr. Yuzhu Shi came out.
In fact, this R&D team is a professional online game development team indeed. After they reached an agreement, the Zhengtu Network was founded on the 18th of November in 2004. Two years later, Zhengtu Network announced that the profit of their product which is a hot online game called 《Zhengtu oneline》was $ 8,500,000 per month on news conference. And on the 20th of May in 2007, they announced that the number of accounts online at the same time of 《Zhengtu online》 was 1,055,287, and this data is the 3rd rank of online games in the world. In fact, the number of players online at the same time is the most important data to the online game company. This remarkable achievement brings millions of dollar to this new online game company and also the R&D team. All members of the game R & D team　became millionaires when Zhengtu Network announced to list in NYSE.
In September of 2007, Mr. Yuzhu Shi who is the CEO of Zhengtu Network announced that Zhengtu Network changed its name to Giant Interactive Group Inc (Public, NYSE:GA，http://www.ztgame.com)　which is becoming the largest online game company in China after 2007.
On the other hand, the operating conditions of Shanda Entertainment Group Inc. was deteriorating. The Senior management of Shanda Entertainment Group Inc. examined their operation problems and made a quick decision to face brain drain of technical workers. Shanda was announced that all technical employees got an increase in their salary at about more than 20% in July of 2007. And after that, all online game companies in China realized the importance to prevent brain drain. This directly causing all online game companies increased the overall salary to the technical workers. www.6park.com

Mr. Yuzhu Shi is the frist big boss to realize the aspirations of these programmers in their creative working, as himself once a computer program designer. On the treatment of game designers, Mr. Yuzhu Shi is quite generous to technical staff. He put emphasis on focusing on treatment and technical personnel with no ceiling, as long as the technical capacity to be, we are not afraid to pay high salary. www.6park.com

Knowledge workers always engaged in challenging and creative work. Therefore, compared to the ordinary work, the evaluation of their work performance is totally different and it is a new problem the enterprise faced. Firstly, it is hard to monitor the process of the work of the knowledge-oriented worker. As the work content of a knowledge-based staff is very creative, the work process is often invisible, with no established processes and procedures, and there are no fixed rules. This brought a problem to the human resources management: how to monitor and evaluate the process of knowledge-oriented workers, and how to help companies and employees to keep abreast of the problems occurred in the work. Secondly, it is difficult to measure their result of creative work. To evaluate the outcome of knowledge-oriented worker, people usually put more emphasis on the quality of its work rather than quantity. How to conduct a fair and reasonable quantitative assessment to the work finished by knowledge-based staff is a difficult problem. Furthermore, in view of the complexity, the uncertainty, and the risk of the work, it won’t allow making mistakes in their work to some extend. However, what kind of mistakes, to what extent the errors are allowed? Thirdly, it is difficult to assess the individual performance. The outcome of knowledge-oriented workers is usually the crystallization of a whole team’s wisdom. Their work is dependent more on teamwork rather than individual strength, such as the R&D team of the online game company. It makes it difficult to evaluate the individual performance in their cooperation, so how to separate assessment of each person in team become problems in the process of evaluation. Finally, it is difficult to set appraisal standards. The work for knowledge-oriented workers is full of creation and challenge. It is required a long term to complete one project. It is difficult to reflect the result of their teamwork in a short term. Therefore, how to examine the phased assessment and how to set up appraisal standards become a tough problem. Looking at the work of the online game R&D team in Shanda Entertainment Group Inc. and Giant Interactive Group Inc, we find the differences. Before the R&D team joining Giant Interactive Group Inc, they have a project called 《hero times online》. This game did not give a good market reflection in the beginning. While the R&D team suffered snubbed from management of Shanda Entertainment Group Inc., they did not obtain an enough time to enhance their online game product. At this time, shrewd capital- Mr. Yuzhu Shi got this R&D team from Shanda Entertainment Group Inc.. In that new online game company, it cost 2 years for this team to develop a good market-reflection of the product 《Zhengtu online》. The big success from the online game market shows that Mr. Yuzhu Shi is a nice boss and the R&D team is a capable team, but certain time is required to evaluate the final result as well. www.6park.com

In the new economic era, different contributions of different employees to the company caused different desires in value in return. Although the salaries become the fundamental desire to people in the new century, but it is still a sign of social prestige, and a kind of satisfaction in achievement level. Compared with other employees, knowledge-oriented workers consider more in the potential of personal development and a feeling of achievement, and acquiring a fair and reasonable compensation matching to their contribution. To the compensation of knowledge-oriented staff, many enterprises use the method of a basic salary plus bonuses or a basic salary plus commission; obviously this method can not meet the diversified needs of these knowledge-oriented staff, and it is also unable to meet their long-term development needs of retaining talent.Unreasonable salary system can not help to play the right role of incentive payment system.
In the team of knowledge-oriented workers, the boundaries of leadership and the leadership is fuzzy, both parties are a kind of interaction relationship, also they are a kind of relationship of the role of replacement. Such as the work of R&D team in the online game company, sometimes they have much stronger right to affect the design rather than the senior management group. Many important decision-making is reflected from R&D team. Because they are very professional to design a successful game rather than the management group, and they know how to adjust the online timely from the market reflection. At this time, they are the real masters in game designing. www.6park.com

As their own characteristics and personality characteristics of knowledge-oriented staff, these caused impact on traditional working environment, interpersonal relationship, and cooperation environment. Therefore some high-tech enterprises adopted innovative means to motivate employees, such as: differences of the payment system, the preparation of a knowledge-oriented worker career design.Although the company cannot neglect the importance of money to the staffs, if the company can meet the staff’s demand in the individual growth of their abilities, the freedom of their work and the feeling of achievement in work, then it would be more effective to incent the employees. The factors affecting the completion of work include: open compensation, the actual payment, psychology of staff. The gap between the actual payment the expected reward, will affect the realization of the reward for an individual employee and affect the employee’s initiative to the work. For a knowledge-oriented worker, the psychology of the success in his career determined its reward value preference.It requires enterprises to set up a individual staff’s payment system based on the staff’s real need. With the setting target, it can effectively stimulate the staff’s enthusiasm and creativity. www.6park.com

To incent knowledge-oriented staff, the company cannot stimulate them mainly with money but to incent them with their developments, achievements and growth.
To set up an incentive strategy, the company should combine their psychological needs, organizational environment, work tasks and objectives and other factors. A comprehensive analysis is needed. And try to incent knowledge-oriented workers scientifically, achieve a long-term strategic goal.
A modern enterprise needs two kinds of knowledge-oriented workers: professional talent workers and potential talent workers.
Therefore, the development of human resources should include two meanings: First, the rational use and management of the existing scientific personnel; second one is the development of potential talent, and nurture a future talent. The ever-changing modern enterprise environment and the establishment of the long-term goal of the existing enterprises require workers to update their knowledge, to explore the potential of the existing talent in order to maintain the development momentum. Therefore, the importance of developing human resources is obvious. However, there is a larger gap between the investment and development of human resources ,and hard to quantify the effects. At present, in the development of human resources, many enterprises exist the problem of “short-sighted” in some degree. And they have no corresponding personnel education and training mechanisms, when necessary, cut the ground from under other company’s feet, euphemistically called "talent introduction." This will not only give a blow to the enthusiasm of the original talent in the enterprise, but have also hindered the development of internal talent. www.6park.com

In the modern enterprises, the senior management group should consider how to put its staff first and respect their staff . And try to emphasize more to people than the final goal of management –increasing the economic result of the enterprise.Management behavior is no longer a cold-mandatory type, but imbued with the encouragement, trust, care, emotion, and embodied a high degree of managers’ understanding of human nature and attention.Especially in the high-tech enterprises, the knowledge-oriented workers occupy most of positions.The employees cannot be regarded as purely workforce and the manager cannot only consider the employees’ fundamental demands, such as their needs for survival and material interests. The senior management group should pay attention to some senior spiritual demand such as showing respect to the employees, helping to realize the self-realization and so on. The management should try to provide creative work environment and to encourage the enthusiasm of the staff. With the fair guidance and equal communication, the employers try to establish proper operational concept. External control will be transformed into self-control, thus the staff can spontaneously understand their own interests closely relating to organizational development, and therefore, it can help to establish a strong sense of responsibility and sense of loyalty. www.6park.com

If the enterprise can offer good Personal development opportunities to their staffs, it can be maximized to incentive their staffs. It will help employees achieve better performance and enhance the loyalty of them. A good manager should design an individual career development plan to each knowledge-oriented worker, linking individual work in the enterprise closely to individual development plan. Therefore the employees can make unremitting efforts for self-motivation. If employees can not get rid of "wage consciousness", the enterprise will be difficult to form the absolute loyalty. Therefore, enterprises should not only provide them with a reward commensurate with their contributions, but also need to fully understand the staff's personal demands and career development tendencies. The company should help employees develop reasonable development plans and combine it with prospects of individual development and the development plan of the organization. The company should provide staff with information about job vacancies, work with challenge and career counseling, making employees clearly understand their own prospects in the organization. The company should let knowledge-oriented staff obtain opportunities of equal chances for getting a promotion or facing a certain challenge, eventually enterprises and employees gaining a two-way-win result. www.6park.com

In the era of knowledge-based economy, the employees’ salaries are no longer a distribution problem, but a form to realize one’s value for a Knowledge-oriented worker. The satisfied salary of a staff does not simply mean that the high level of income, but also includes many items beyond the content of money. To meet the payment demands of knowledge-oriented staff, enterprises in developed countries put forward a new payment method called "comprehensive payment strategy ".The so-called "comprehensive payment strategy," that is, the company will pay the salaries to the employees dividing into "external" and "internal" parts, a combination of the two is called"full payment." "External remuneration" mainly refers to provide staff with the quantifiable monetary value.Such as, basic salaries, bonuses and other short-term incentive payment; stock options, stock awards and other long-term incentive pay; pension, medical insurance and other monetary benefits of the companies and other currencies to pay expenses, such as housing allowance, the company assigned vehicles. "Internal payment" refers to various kind of rewards to workers which cannot be quantified in monetary. For instance, job satisfaction, training opportunities, attractive corporate culture, good interpersonal relationships.External and internal payments of the salaries have different incentive functions. They are interrelated and complementary,composing a complete system of remuneration. Practice has proved that, knowledge-oriented staff’s desire and needs to the enterprise are very comprehensive. And they include material needs, moreover a high degree of spiritual needs.Therefore, the implementation of the "comprehensive payment strategy” is a useful model to achieve the comprehensive incentive to Knowledge-oriented workers. www.6park.com

Knowledge-oriented workers are mainly engaged in thinking work, and there’s no sense to them for some rigid work rules. Knowledge-oriented workers prefer the work full of autonomy and challenge, like work with more tension in work arrangements. Therefore, the work design of organizations should consider the wishes of the individual employees and the value of the staff, creating a safe and comfortable working environment as far as possible. The company should expand the scope of work, enrich contents of the work, while making the work quantified and integrated, progressively introducing flexible working system, including flexible working hours, work at home, and some other forms. With the development of modern information and network technology, it is provided favorable conditions to realize and develop the flexible working system. It is not only to meet the working features of knowledge-oriented employers, but also for enterprises to save the cost of management when staffs are using the Internet terminals at home to work. Increased flexibility of working hours and working places and the establishment of friendship to a team-style enterprise can make employees feel the enjoyment from work itself. www.6park.com

It has been suggested that the highest state for management is "to govern by doing nothing that goes against nature". That is through employers’ inherent control to stimulate their work enthusiasm. In the outdated concept, many enterprises consider the “controlling" as a basic human resource management functions, subordinate only obey the arrangement, subject to necessary, but to knowledge-oriented workers, relying solely on strict management can not reach expected result. Thus, enterprises should abandon the traditional stereotype management, breakthrough original thinking mode, making management methods more diversified, humane, flexible, and to encourage them to take the initiative to devote themselves to the work and the spirit of innovation. Mainly include: In the organization, try to establish an equitable, fair and transparent "race" mechanism for all employees in the established, all-agreeable rules, holding a fair and open competition in the full development of space, achieving survival of the fittest.On the other hand, we must set up a interpersonal communication system.Between managers and staffs, it is very important to set up a two-way communication mechanism through understanding and respecting each other. In the establishment of interaction and communication, through this spiritual and emotional recognition, the managers try to make the staff take the initiative and display their potential creativity. www.6park.com

In the modern enterprise, the importance of incentive mechanism in the human resources management is clearly to see.As a manager, only through truly understanding and grasping the demands of staffs, can encourage staffs to embark on the right track. In that case, it can stimulate the enthusiasm of the staff to work hard. The incentive mechanism to knowledge-oriented staff is an important management issue that every enterprise must face , which matters whether the enterprise have the ability to compete in the market ,whether it can last long in the market competition.To incent knowledge-oriented workers, the enterprise should not only need advanced scientific theory, but also need artistry. As a knowledge-oriented worker have his own independence, creativity, achievement, mobility, complexity, and proud of the work and personality characteristics, in the way to incent them, the enterprise need to take these characteristics into consideration. The practice of incentive mechanism to a knowledge-oriented worker will be developed in the scientific, standardized, efficient direction, in order to incent them to a maximum degree. www.6park.com

Re:
Stephen P．Robbins:Organizational Behavior
DFBeattie & FMKTampoe：Human resource planning for ICL.Long Range Planning
Frances Horibe : Managing Knowledge Workers
Peter Drucker : Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New 'Post-Modern' World

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