Joe's original question was how to *attract* and retain knowledge workers.
There have been many good answers on the retention side of the formula; I
would only add that I have come to believe that the key to retaining all
types of workers is to learn what is important to the individual worker
and to the extent that it is feasible, give it to her/him. Don't assume
that because Sally is an engineer, she values the same work conditions as
your preconceived notion of engineers.
The issue of how to attract knowledge (or any other) workers is quite a
different matter. Money seems to be a key factor, perhaps the key factor,
in convincing a person to leave an organization, which while perhaps
unsatisfactory in many regards, is a known situation. The new job and the
new company may sound wonderful, but most of us understand that it's easy
to be fooled in interviews. Another very important factor is the
reputation of the hiring company.
--Roxanne Abbas 75263.3305@compuserve.com
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>