Knowledge workers doing the work of three people

Companies planning not to replace the staff they cut in 2009 may find a decrease in the quality and sustainability of knowledge workers’ performance.

Knowledge workers are buckling under the extra pressure because many companies which reduced staff numbers in 2009 do not plan to rehire, a global research project has revealed.

The research found that 53 per cent of knowledge workers felt they were doing the work of three or more people and 15 per cent felt they were doing the work of five or more people. Many comments revealed the burden of work was increasing radically and at a very high cost of stress, quality and poor sustainability

The research, from Delphi Group and Australian-based Panviva, found that the impact of not replacing employees who were culled is beginning to show. About 60 per cent of workers have at least six separate windows open on their desktop at any one time and an incredible 39 per cent spent at least 25 per cent of their day searching for the information they required to do their jobs.

The report said organisations needed to prepare and ready their workforce if they did not plan to refill the positions that were lost. The CEO of Panviva, David Frenkel, said that in terms of future planning, this research points towards a need for solutions that help understaffed workforces better deal with the basic obstacles of search times, the complexity of desktop and enterprise technologies and the stress of change and uncertainty.