The End of Jobs: Rise of On-Demand Workers and Agile Corporations (interview with Jeff Wald)
Petra
Now I truly believe that being able to thrive in this fast changing world of work, you need to be able to look around the corners. And look what kind of trends are impacting how we live, we work, we act, and we interact.
And we are now at the beginning of the year, we're recording this at the beginning of 2021. And everyone is interested, what's ahead this year? What are the trends?
What do I need to know in order to prepare for work and to thrive in this work, but today, I'm so excited to be joined by a special guest, who is not just looking around the corner what's happening this year, but has a longer term vision as to what the future of work looks like.
Today we are joined by Jeff Wald, who is also the author of the end of jobs. And we're super excited to dig in as to what is the future of work?
What does it mean for us as individual contributor, but also from an HR perspective and organizational perspective? What do we need to prepare for?
And what can we do straightaway to strive in this fast changing world of work?
Now with no further ado, welcome, Jeff.
Jeff:
Thank you so much for having me.
Petra
I'm so excited to have you here. Now, can you give us a little bit of a background as to who are you? What are you doing? And how did you get to where you're that?
Jeff:
Well, I guess the Who am I? That's a deep question. Deep, deep, I think I'll just stick with some professional stuff. And you know, maybe as the conversation evolve, we'll get down to some deeper things about who is Jeff Wald, I have started a few tech companies, the most recent is a company called work market, which is enterprise software that enables companies to manage their freelance population as the on demand workforce continues to grow. Our software was increasingly important for companies around the world in managing this important part of their labor force.
And so three years ago, we were fortunate enough to sell the company to ADP. And in the sale to ADP, I was able to get some of the space that I needed to finally finish this book that I had been writing for seven years about the future of work.
And the point of the book, is to look at history is to look at data is to look at how companies actually engage workers and deploy capital in order to have a framework for making a prediction about the future of work.
Because people that are out there saying, oh, the workforce is going to be this are going to be that and this number of years of that number of years that don't look at history that don't look at data and don't think about how companies actually engage workers. Those predictions are kind of meaningless - In my in my view.
Petra:
I love this approach to also look backwards, because there's always something that we can learn from it. And I didn't realize you've been writing this book for seven years. And the book got published mid 2020s, in the midst of a pandemic, and all of those predictions, quote, unquote, that you've seen coming. It's actually nothing new.
Now, can you talk us through a little bit about your findings? And what exactly is the future of work?
Jeff:
Well, I'll tell you, it's as with anything in the world of work, it is just incredibly complex. And any simple explanation, any simple statement believes the massive complexity that goes into it. What I'll tell you we can learn from history is that we have been here before, companies, workers and society have had to adjust to huge technological changes in the production of goods and services.
And it's important that we study this, because we're in the early stages of what some are calling the fourth industrial revolution with robots in AI. So how do we not look at how companies’ workers and societies adapted in the first three, I'm not saying it's gonna happen exactly the same.
But history tells us that it's got a pretty darn good chance of rhyming.
So one of the things are one of the big takeaways just to put a statement around it is we start off with everyone freaking out and saying, Oh, my God, all the jobs are gonna go, we end up with a very difficult transition period where a lot of jobs are lost, and a lot of people are displaced.
And there's a lot of societal unrest, we end up with a period of more jobs, with people working fewer hours, and a higher standard of living for all of society.
We've gone through three times to think that it's going to be different this time. It's possible. But we are clearly in the beginning of the freak-out period where everyone says, Oh, my God, all the jobs are going to go and we are about to enter in some countries certainly have entered the societal disruption phase, where we have a lot of workers starting to get displaced and those workers tend to become very nationalistic tend to become very populist and history shows us that the results of those things are very bad.
And I look forward to maybe 20 years from now, to the period where we have more jobs, people working fewer hours, and all of society having a higher standard of living.
Petra:
Great predictions and I also love that your title is “the end of jobs”. But then there's this little catchphrase, “but not as you think it might be”, because you're right, everyone is freaking out robotics, AI, everyone is taking our jobs.
But it's actually not the case. Now, what have you seen in terms of the last probably nine to 12 months since COVID-19? Hit? What has been the biggest changes? And what do you think will that mean for 2021? And beyond?
Jeff:
It's such a great question, the short answer and the one that nobody gives, by the way, but everybody should is, we don't know. There's not enough data yet.
For people to say, oh, everyone's gonna go remote. No, they're not all going to go to remote, we're clearly not going to go back to where we were, in terms of remote workforce. But we're in the middle, where we end we have what a lot of people are calling this tech acceleration, the increased adoption by consumers by companies of digital work, digital currencies, digital payments, and a host of other things.
But then when we get to a post COVID world, God willing, soon, there'll be a snap back. And we don't know how far back, I am highly, highly confident to say we're not going to go back fully to where we work. But I'm also equally confident saying we're not going to stay where we are.
So that's kind of the wishy washy answer when we talk about the adoption of robots and AI systems when we think about on demand labour when we think about remote work.
Now that said, surprising, like nobody else, I will start with history. And let's just zero in on remote work, because that's what we have the most data 10 years ago, one and a half percent of the US workforce worked remotely.
And these definitions are super important here, because the definition of a remote worker is more than 50% of the time they don't go to that office.
And then more than 50% is very important from a tax standpoint, where you're going to pay tax. And from an office infrastructure standpoint, right?
If you're not coming in, you're only coming in 20% of the time, I'm going to hot desk, you or hotel desk, you I'm not going to allocate infrastructure to you. So very important definitions and one and a half percent of the US workforce and pretty confident that that was about the level in other industrialized countries.
And over a 10 year period, we had 100% increase; it went up to 3%. What's fascinating is in the world of labour statistics, for those of us that spend their free time looking at labour statistics and reading outputs from, you know, different countries, or labour organizations, Labour Statistics move really slow. And so to see something double is unusual, but it did double and a double because of zoom, or WebEx or a host of other video conferencing technologies doubled because of JIRA, or Basecamp, or Monday or other project management software's that made it easier to work with a disparate team.
And so those things enabled a push towards greater work. And it was held back by antiquated mindsets. We all know the manager that says, Oh, I don't I don't care. All the studies tell me that remote workers are happier, healthier, more productive, more engaged, I think people need to be in the office, I think productivity equals presence.
So we all know that that's the first impediment mindset.
The second is infrastructure policies and procedures.
It's one thing to say you can work remotely, it's another to really enable your employee to be successful to make sure that there's always a remote option for every meeting, to make sure they can access all of the company's systems, even outside of the company's four walls. So those are the things kind of holding it back in in the pandemic, both of those things had to change immediately.
March of 2020, everybody had to change their mindset. Everybody had to change their policies, procedures, and put in place the infrastructure to enable remote work.
And so at the height of the pandemic, most countries were at their natural limit for the people that can work remote. And it's important to remember what a natural limit is. In Australia, I believe the natural limits about 37%. In the EU, it's about 38 39%. In the United States, it's 42%.
That is the percent of the workforce that can work remotely. Because clearly people in manufacturing and extraction industries in transportation and logistics, you know, I can't be a coal miner from my house actually have to go to the coal mine.
And so, most countries were near their natural limit. But we think about post pandemic. And we look at the surveys of managers and we look at surveys of workers. And we start to get a sense that maybe 8% of the workforce is going to work remotely.
Again, remembering definitions are important here remote only meaning more than 50% of the time. If you ask me how many people have a flexible work arrangement, it starts to look like 30 to 33% of the workforce. And again, these are both in the US and keep in mind 42% is the most that can work remote, so you're talking about upwards of 75% of people having a flexible work arrangement.
Those are huge shifts, those are clearly driven by COVID. If we had not had this pandemic, these things would not have occurred. So I don't think we're staying at the 40%, I don't think we're going back to the 3% to 8% for fully remote workers 30 to 33%, for flexible work arrangements.
Petra:
That's such an interesting approach on how to look at it. And this is also what fascinates me so much about the future of work. It's not one thing, there's not one prediction, it's just constantly evolves and changes.
But at the same time, there's ongoing change of not quite knowing what's next is also what scares people, and they're not sure what to do next. We've seen over the last 12 months; a lot of companies have reduced their staff have reduced their office space. And a lot of people have lost their jobs, and they had to transition. And you're also talking about reskilling and upskilling.
Now, whether you see in terms of the way how we learn how we can see what's next, what's an important skill? How can we prepare ourselves for what's next when we don't know what's next?
Jeff:
Well, first, there are a few thoughts here first is you need to be thoughtful in thinking about what's next. Right?
You can't just take someone's prediction and go, Oh, my gosh, that's what's going to happen because most predictions aren't thoughtful, they're not looking at history, they're not looking at data, they're not looking at how companies actually engage workers. So be mindful of what predictions you're reacting to.
That said to your point, retraining and reskilling are key here. They're absolutely key. And I will tell you, there's a phrase that a lot of people are kind of getting sick of they're like, Oh, God, people are saying that too much.
And I would make the argument, we're not saying it nearly enough. And that is, everyone needs to be a lifelong learner. Because regardless of what that change is, what we know, is the amount of time in which a skill abates which is still becomes non monetizable has shrunk.
We now think it's four to six years, that if you do know, our mental training within four to six years, you're no longer competitive in that marketplace. So to the extent that everybody is not upskilling, everybody's not reskilling, people are going to have a problem regardless of whether or not your job is at a substantive risk of being completely automated away. So it's not a a upskill in that industry, because that industry in that job functions dead, it is a complete rescale into another industry.
So even if you don't have to do a complete reskill, you're always going to have to do an upskill.
And so those are things for everyone to be thoughtful of and everyone to look at what is happening in your industry. Think about is this prediction, a real prediction. But regardless, whether you're upskilling and rescaling, you are skilling again in some way.
Petra:
Absolutely. In four to six years, it actually seems like a very long time given in marketing world, every two seconds is a new social media platform popping out. Like a few weeks ago, TikTok and the reels being a big thing.
Now everyone is on a Clubhouse, and nobody talks about reels and TikTok anymore, even though it's still a trend. So that's a really interesting insight.
And also be more mindful, because I feel that a future of work is more self-initiated, self driven. And you need to take control over your own growth, you can't rely on a manager or HR teams to give you the path because there's no one linear path.
And also, the gig economy has been, quote on quote, a “trend” for the last few years. What do you think about that? Is that something that we see more often that people are more entrepreneurial from their own business? Or is it still we've got full time employees?
Jeff:
Such a great question. And I love the way you framed it because you are referencing something that is a main point of the book. And let's start with this. The gig economy or let's the gig economy is a subset of the on demand economy on demand economy, meaning everyone doing a job for you, that is not your W2 employees.
So it could be a temp, it could be a freelancer, a contractor, consultant, whatever you want to call that has not been growing that much. Everyone's like, Oh, my God, the on demand economy. It's gonna be half the labour force. No, it isn't.
That's a ridiculous statement, stop making it and yet people still continue to make it. People made it 10 years ago, and they said by 2020 50% of the workforce is going to be on demand.
It was at the time between 25 and 27%. In the EU in the US. It is now somewhere between 27 and 30% in the EU in the US, and I would include Australia in that. And so it's grown. And you know, just to grow 1% of the labour force the size of the EU or the US or the industrialized countries. That's huge, huge, huge, huge change.
But it's not doubling in a 10 year period that is full stop not going to happen. So okay, we've had some slow and steady growth. But here's why I named the book ‘The end of jobs’, right?
On Demand workers, the rise of the on demand worker is not to say that we're all going to be an on demand worker, the data is very clear, there might be there will be some slow and steady continued growth of on demand work over the next 10 years, maybe another percent or two of the labour force. That's it.
That's what the data, that's what history and that's what companies how companies actually engage workers would tell us. But the things that the on demand worker deals with, to your point, having to own their own training, their own development, their own retirement their own health care, right?
If I am a Uber driver, I know Uber is not looking out for me. Uber is not retraining me for another job. Uber is not worried about me marketing, my skills, Ubers not worried about my retirement or my health care, I have to worry about that. I have to deal with the fact that I get work in tasks, right work comes in one little assignment at a time. That's what a freelancer deals with, or an Uber driver, I have to deal with the fact that algorithms allocate my work, there's no boss to go out to lunch with and be like, I really want to work more on this type of stuff versus that an algorithm tells me if I get a job or not, I have data driven HR, everything that I do is tracked.
And all of those data points, tell me if we're informed if I get another job. And so all of those things that the freelancer the Uber driver has to deal with every single day. Those are all permeating the full time workforce.
And so while I don't think everyone's going to become an Uber driver, or a freelancer or consultant, or contingent worker, or whatever, I think they all will have to deal with increased or total personal responsibility for training, development, healthcare, retirement marketing of skills. I think everyone's got to deal with task based labour.
I think everyone's got to deal with data driven HR, I think everybody's got to do with algorithms, allocating work.
Not today, but over the next decade or two, that will become a standard for every worker. And that's what I mean, by rise of on demand workers.
Petra:
This is such a great explanation. I've actually never heard it like that. But this is exactly what people are seeing already. Because especially the younger workforce, they want to have the cake and eat it too, meaning they want to have flexible work environments, they want to work from home, they want to work on their terms, and so forth.
But at the same time, that also means that you have to take the responsibilities that come with all the flexibilities, their freedom, and you need to invest in yourself.
No HR person, no boss is in charge of your development. So you need to think more entrepreneurial, and also being able to be agile with your career, and shift maybe within the corporation saying my job, or my skill set is not relevant anymore, simply because there is no demand.
So what else can I use my skill set and my experience my dedication for? Or where do I need to upskill to create value to stay relevant in the organization
Jeff:
Completely! And every Freelancer in the world knows that, right? They know, if they're not out there, hustling and doing something, the work is gonna dry up. And so thankfully, everybody's got to have that mindset. Everybody, everybody, everybody.
Petra:
And maybe it's a good time not to shift gears and look at it from the corporation side of things. So you also have the second part of the title ‘agile corporations’.
What does that mean?
What kind of changes would we see in organizations based on those web trends?
Jeff:
So what we're seeing is companies understanding that there's convergence and starting to manage their workforce, with data driven HR with algorithms to allocate work and things like that.
And they are starting to break work down into its component tasks, so they can break it up, that allows them to think, what are all the different resources that can do work for me.
And so companies are starting to take a view of what we'll call total talent management, where they're thinking about their full time employees, their part time employees, their temp employees, their freelance employees, their vendors, their robots, their AI systems, their drones, anybody or anything that can complete a task.
And they want all of those things in one system. And they want to have the work broken down into tasks. They want an AI engine to allocate work across their entire labour plane to any of those labour resources we just walked through.
They want data captured on that task, so that the AI system knows the next time do I send that same task to that same people or should we adjust. And so that is how you build an agile Corporation by taking an entire view of your labour force, and slowly over time, allocating more to on demand resources, where possible from a business process standpoint, and from a regulatory standpoint.
That's what the Agile Corporation means.
Petra:
It's a good view on also looking into every resource there is it's not just human resources, technology, resources, whatever other resources that can do the job to look at that and Now what does it mean in terms of HR? Will it be an obsolete profession? Will it change? What's your predictions?
Jeff:
I don't think HR ever becomes obsolete. HR is actually one of the many job functions. When we look at all the studies that break down granular job functions, and what the predictions are based on technologies based on industry trends.
HR is one of the job functions that you always see job growth, and just always, always, always, every single study that I've seen in the going forward.
So I'm not concerned about the HR professional.
But to your point, what does that job start to look like? Well, when I think about total talent management, now, all of a sudden, I have to have HR become an important strategic partner in planning my entire labour resource world, they used to really just be focused on full time and a little bit on part time.
But the HR departments gonna have to start owning temp, gonna have to start owning freelance going to have to start owning parts of a supply chain, because we're gonna have to start taking the view that these are all my team members, I want them aligned with my mission, I want them aligned with my values.
And I want to know: Are they producing? And if they're alive on mission, they're aligned with my values, and they're producing effectively and efficiently, I want to get them more work.
And so HR is going to have to become partner in that point, 1.2 Hr is going to have to look at that total talent management landscape, they're gonna have to look and say:
“Where do I have skills gaps?” and
“Where do I need to use recruiting resources to fill the skills gaps?”
“Where should I use training and development resources to fill the skills gaps?”
Because you're suddenly in this total talent management world, going to have a very, very robust view of the entire skills capabilities, overlaid with the geographic capabilities overlaid with the availability of all of your labour resources.
And so you'll in real time be able to know Do we have enough resources to take on this new client, this new project, this new, whatever?
And the answer to that question is going to be: Do we have the human resources to handle the demand that we have over the next quarter? Over the next year over the next five years? And if not, HR, how are we going to fill it?
Are we going to fill it with full time workers, part time workers with temps with freelancers? Are we going to fill it by upskilling our workforce? Are we going to fill it by reskilling? Are we going to fill it with more recruiting, those the kinds of things that HR is going to need to be thoughtful about
Petra:
It's actually taking a much bigger look and also more strategic look, rather than just being a payroll assistant. HR needs to take more responsibility in terms of how can we grow the organisation sustainably with our human resources and maximize that in terms of upskilling and reskilling over the last few months, especially because of COVID.
A lot of organizations have gotten rid of their internal learning and development teams, because they're not a core function. And it's a bit of a luxury quote on quote, to have that internally. What do you see in terms of how we actually train our teams and also our selves? He said, Where do you see the future of learning going to be?
Jeff:
Such an interesting thing to think through. Because the short answer is: We don't know.
We know what history and data would tell us history and data would tell us that the average number of dollars spent per employee for training and development has massively decreased.
It has continued to decrease. You hear about some great examples of some great companies that are doing wonderful things with their employees. But their stories because they're anomalous. The fact that Starbucks might be doing X, Y, or Z, or Walmart's doing X, Y, or Z, Zappos doing X, Y or Z. They're great stories and those companies doing well by their people, but their stories because they're so rare.
So where that goes is so interesting. It’s one of my favorite parts of the book, or quotes in the book is a joke. And the joke is:
The CFO says to the CEO: “Well, what if we train all these people and they leave?” And the CEO says “What if we don't, and they stay?”
And so you need to be mindful of it. I'm hopeful that training and development budgets will go back up. But I'm more hopeful in emerging technologies, like VR headsets that enable people to do training and development and skills attainment at a massively reduced costs and a massively reduced amount of time. And so that leaves me incredibly hopeful.
Petra:
And I hope so too, because one of the biggest motivators and reasons why employees join an organization is because of their learning and development opportunities and their growth in their own role.
Everyone takes a current role for the next step. Nobody is literally thinking of what's in it for me right now. What's in it for me down the track, and where can this experience and this exposure get me to and this is what so many organizations don't realize
And as you said, Yeah, I love this quote. So what if we stand still and we've become a stagnant labour organization who is not thinking forward.
The world is not stopping! Clearly, if we're stopping, you know, the game is over. Now everyone needs to get your book. But Jeff, what's next for you? But what have you could plan for 2021?
Jeff:
What am I gonna plan for 21?
Well, I had the great fortune of being purchased by one of the great companies in the world ADP, I gave my word that I would say, for a certain period of time post acquisition, that period of time just ended a few months ago, I'm going to, for the first time, do nothing, I do nothing for a while, I'm going to think through what I want my next company to be worth market was, was my third startup.
And so I am going to do another, and it's going to take me some time to not only think about it, but to get past the noncompete that I have with ADP, which doesn't allow me to do really anything in HR tech, which I'm more than happy to do. Because the and I remain an advisor to the team at ADP, they're not only, you know, the best company in HR, the biggest human capital management software provider, but they're like the nicest people in the world. And so I look forward to working with them as partners in my next company.
Petra:
Well, I'm sure you're not getting bored with all the projects that you have going on, and you're always forward thinking approach. So I'm really looking forward to following your journey. Now to wrap up, what advice would you give us in terms of how can we future proof ourselves? You already said that we need to look around did we need to look into where does the data come from? And the predictions?
How, what kind of tangible practical advice could you give us as to where do we start to realize what are those changes?
Jeff:
Well, I would say you need to start by thinking about history, about data, about how companies engage workers, instead of just reacting.
I think a lot of people react to headlines, and oh, my God, 50% of jobs are going to go No, they're not. And that's the place to start is to engage your critical thinking skills, when thinking about the future of work the future of anything.
The next place to go is where are the training organizations within your industry within your job function. Because and you made this point earlier, you can't rely on your manager, you can't rely on your company, it's great if they do if your company is great at training and development, if your manager is the kind of manager that sits with you and talks about your professional development goals, quarter by quarter, that is amazing. You're in the vast minority of workers, for workers to sit there and not be proactive about it to not join the different industry organizations, functional organizations, and get that training and develop and be up on new technologies, you're doing yourself a disservice.
So the functional and the practical advice, find out what those organizations are, join them, and start reading and start listening and start getting ready for a future that is going to look very different than the present.
Petra:
It's such a great approach. And you know, in the end, it comes back to being curious about it. And not just letting everything happen to you. But it's asking those questions, putting yourself out there. And then also what you mentioned critical thinking, not just taking one statistic, one number totally out of context for the truth, the one and only truth, but actually questioned it.
· What does it mean for me?
· Does it have any impact?
· And if so, what can I do?
And this is also coming back to taking the driver's seat of your career and your future? No one else does it. And if you leave it up to somebody else, well, don't be upset if it's not going the right direction.
Jeff:
No question like if you leave the driving up to somebody else, don't be surprised as to where you end up.
Petra:
Exactly. So I'm super excited about what the future of work brings, because it's in our hands. And we are really excited to dig deeper into it your work? Definitely I put the details to the book into the show notes. Everyone can check that out. And also, where's the best way to connect with you and follow what's next for Jeff?
Jeff:
Well, you know, I will say Twitter is the only place where I go by Jeffrey. I just I didn't get down there early enough to get Jeff Wald. But LinkedIn is always is always going to be the best place to connect. I'm a huge fan of LinkedIn is the one social network that I actually spend time on.
Petra:
Now. That's a new question: Are you in clubhouse?
Jeff:
I am on cCubhouse and I started a thread on clubhouse the other day and I forgot to check back to see if anybody's picked it up and is talking about it. I have been on clubhouse for some time, but much like I'm on signal and I am on Instagram and I'm on all these things. It is not something that I spent a lot of time on yet anyway.
Ptra:
Yes. I totally got hooked there because of those incredible minds and conversations. And what I love about this innovation of a social media platform is that it's actually through social, it's not curated, it's not looking at pretty pictures and have no message there. You can't hide because it's all voice only, and people are listening.
So they are even more alert as to what you say rather than getting distracted or where it looks like in those pre pictures. So I'm definitely going to follow you. And hopefully we can even have a bit of a chat there as to what the future of work looks like and share your message with more people.
Jeff:
I would do that anytime you want. And that would be my first clubhouse chat. So you tell me when I'll be there.
Petra:
You will love it. You'll get hooked, I promise. Well, thanks so much for being here. And I can't wait to seeing what's next for you.
Jeff:
Thank you so much for having me. This was super fun.
Thank you.
