I don’t necessarily know the answer, but I don’t find any of the explanations compelling. In my experience as a manager of ~10 employees, some of whom are young knowledge workers:
The knowledge workers reporting to me and also on my broader team are putting in long hours, doing grunt work in the lab, developing scientific processes, and writing them up. This is in R&D, where the value comes from expected value of future products.
Some people are less than fully utilized, but between 25% and 75% utilization at worst, and varying from week to week. Having the capacity available is probably enough reason to keep them aboard. For example, Alice is trained on a set of tasks. Her utilization might be low some weeks, but it would strain Bob to learn her tasks and be available to fulfill them even though Bob isn’t fully utilized every week either. Bob would have to keep track of too much, and would also have to work overtime some weeks. These are not necessarily knowledge workers though.
For the underutilized people, the impact that each person has in maintaining the company’s ability to continue production / expected value of new products being developed is far higher than their cost to keep around.
Overall, I expect that the answer is that under-utilization is not as extreme as indicated in the article, and that the value of the knowledge and skill sets of the under-utilized people is valuable enough to keep around.
Slack is certainly a factor and having contextually-aware competent people you can call at a moment’s notice is important. I would counter by saying the utilization rate is far below an equilibrium that people are capable of working at for sustained periods of time.
Overall, I expect that the answer is that under-utilization is not as extreme as indicated in the article, and that the value of the knowledge and skill sets of the under-utilized people is valuable enough to keep around.
In an R&D context, I would attribute a sizable amount of being “valuable enough to keep around” to (3) talent is finite and firms are paying everyone so someone doesn’t start or join a competitor.
I don’t necessarily know the answer, but I don’t find any of the explanations compelling. In my experience as a manager of ~10 employees, some of whom are young knowledge workers:
The knowledge workers reporting to me and also on my broader team are putting in long hours, doing grunt work in the lab, developing scientific processes, and writing them up. This is in R&D, where the value comes from expected value of future products.
Some people are less than fully utilized, but between 25% and 75% utilization at worst, and varying from week to week. Having the capacity available is probably enough reason to keep them aboard. For example, Alice is trained on a set of tasks. Her utilization might be low some weeks, but it would strain Bob to learn her tasks and be available to fulfill them even though Bob isn’t fully utilized every week either. Bob would have to keep track of too much, and would also have to work overtime some weeks. These are not necessarily knowledge workers though.
For the underutilized people, the impact that each person has in maintaining the company’s ability to continue production / expected value of new products being developed is far higher than their cost to keep around.
Overall, I expect that the answer is that under-utilization is not as extreme as indicated in the article, and that the value of the knowledge and skill sets of the under-utilized people is valuable enough to keep around.
Slack is certainly a factor and having contextually-aware competent people you can call at a moment’s notice is important. I would counter by saying the utilization rate is far below an equilibrium that people are capable of working at for sustained periods of time.
In an R&D context, I would attribute a sizable amount of being “valuable enough to keep around” to (3) talent is finite and firms are paying everyone so someone doesn’t start or join a competitor.