How to Manage an Empty Office: Disruption and the Future of Labor

28 min readJun 20, 2021

First Publish Date: December 1, 2019 (Pre-COVID!!)

The growing gig economy offers unparalleled flexibility for businesses as well as independent workers, yet also presents considerable new challenges for both sides. To maintain a viable business culture for executing strategy, while also sharing information and ensuring quality performance, a new way of coordinating workflow will need to be developed — and fast.

Abstract

This paper examines the rising trend towards on-demand work, as well as its implications for independent workers and the businesses that hire them. Temporary employees can now be recruited directly through online platforms, tasked with performing discrete jobs from remote locations with the help of AI assistants. As this micro-employment practice increases in popularity, the benefits will prove to be irresistible on all sides. Yet such a shift will also lead to significant externalities, as well as major technical and cultural hurdles that remain to be addressed. Finding the way forward in such an environment means embracing new strategic directions, management initiatives, and methods of preserving brand identity.

Predicting the Future — A Note of Humility

Making detailed predictions is a fool’s game, as accidents of history will play a large role in impacting the shape of things to come. The order in which new technologies are introduced, the priorities of governments and companies that steward their integration into society, the regulatory decisions made on “edge” cases, the values of the corporate leaders who drive new innovation, the potential for unprecedented advances in AI and biotechnology — tweaking any of these variables can bring about great swings in the predicted outcomes.

And yet an extrapolation of present-day trends, in combination with predictable incentives across industries, can produce a compelling outline of the types of challenges that businesses can expect to face over the coming decade. From issues surrounding recruitment and automation, all the way to quality control, brand identity and complex personnel management, we are approaching new horizons in the logistics of strategic workforce management.

Our aim here is not to predict what marvels the 2020s or 2030s will produce, but rather the methods by which innovative companies will produce them. The necessary technology is already in use, just waiting to be combined and implemented at scale. The die has been cast. How we respond is up to us.

Independents’ Day — An Idea Whose Time Has Come

The rise of the platform economy has left an indelible mark on the business world in recent years. When given the ability to bypass traditional brick and mortar in favor of fast, customizable digital alternatives, customers all around the world eagerly made the switch. Shopping malls have therefore been partially displaced by Amazon, taxis by Uber, hotels by Airbnb, cinemas by Netflix, and so on. [For more on this trend and its implications for future innovation, see my recent white paper, The New Rules of Engagement: Why Agility Paves the Path Forward for Your Business (2019).]

However, the very same incentives which led customers to prefer platform-based consumption will also prompt businesses to acquire new employees in the very same manner.

Consider the expense of traditional personnel recruitment, along with its associated costs: a fulltime salary with complete benefits, a comfortable and well-decorated office in a central location with access to sufficient parking space, occupational training and upskilling, effective managers, on-site safety requirements, social events for employees, and more. Employees also pay a cost to participate in this arrangement, as their days may be filled with repetitive work in an unchanging environment.

Now consider the alternative. Through independent contracting, businesses can sidestep every one of the above obligations. Platforms allow employers to browse through lists of available workers, whose skills and ratings are displayed online in an easily searchable format. Adding a widget to a website or inaugurating a marketing campaign can suddenly be done effortlessly and almost instantly.

Businesses will simply need to post an online notice about the task needing to be completed, and employee candidates on the platform will attempt to outbid each other on the price and speed with which it can be done.

Rather than hiring experts to work in-house on a permanent basis, companies can instead post a work request at 4pm, choose a candidate before the end of the work-day, and in many cases return to work in the morning to find the task already completed. A few clicks can settle the payment and give a rating for the worker, who may well be doing a similar task for another company already. 2 [2. Advanced prototypes for this kind of workflow model have been around for a few years already. See the ‘flash teams’ system created by Michael Bernstein and others, as described in Forget the On-Demand Worker: Stanford Researchers Built an Entire On-Demand Organization (Quartz, July 2017).]

Despite the great potential of such a system, there is plenty of room for things to go wrong. A fundamental change in the relationship between businesses and their employees is bound to have ripple effects that must be carefully accounted for. Gains in flexibility and convenience could be more than offset by losses in team cohesion, information sharing capability, company identity, and dependability — with real consequences for the company’s ability to meet its strategic goals and preserve its reputation in the eyes of customers. Platforms can quickly turn into trapdoors, absent a new and effective paradigm for managing business operations.

As we will see, an effective approach to personnel management must therefore become a key priority for forward-looking businesses, as they adapt to a brand new employment culture that is more diverse, fluid, and chameleonic than ever before.

Project-based hiring allows businesses to lower wage costs (often below minimum wage, as with companies like Uber) 3. [3. See ‘I made $3.75 an hour’: Lyft and Uber Drivers Push to Unionize for Better Pay (The Guardian, 2019).] When employees are allowed to work from a distance, cost-of-living allowances need not be considered; a New York-based company doesn’t need to pay New York wages if their workers live elsewhere and have no need to commute.

In such a system, office space can be reduced and location becomes far less important. For these and other reasons, the cost of running a business can be dramatically lower, allowing for greater flexibility as well as a lower barrier for entry among small companies looking to establish themselves in an industry.

Trends toward automation only magnify the types of employment shifts we are likely to see in the coming years. The most recent Future of Jobs Report by the World Economic Forum found that 50% of surveyed companies planned to reduce their current workforce by 2022, while 48% expected to expand their use of contractors doing task-specialized work.4 [4. See p10 of The Future of Jobs Report 2018 (World Economic Forum).]

Similar levels of enthusiasm for the gig economy appear on the labor side of the equation. Surveys show that people from younger age groups (18–34 years old) are more likely to take freelance work than their older counterparts, and that 74% of freelancers in the US started performing this type of work within the last five years. Moreover, the onus for training remains with the employees themselves, as organizations need only hire those who have already learned the skills needed for completion of the task. Current trends in the world of independent contracting confirm this hypothesis; 70% of full-time freelancers updated their skills in the last six months, while just 49% of permanent employees have done the same.5

Indeed, some estimates suggest that half of the entire US workforce could be made up of contractors and freelancers within a decade.6 Productivity among independent workers is already considerable, generating “roughly $1.28 trillion of revenue for the U.S. economy — equal to about 6.2% of U.S. GDP (2018), or the entire economic output of Spain.”7

A similar story is emerging in Europe, where “the number of freelancers in the European Union doubled between 2000 and 2014, making them the fastest growing group in the EU labor market.”8 In Asia, trends vary considerably: Approximately 14% of the total Singaporean workforce is self-employed according to government figures 9; while 53% of Thailand’s workforce fall under the same category (although this includes non-freelancers such as independent farmers, food vendors, shop owners, and others)10. Yet increasing investment in digital technology and modern business practices across the region is likely to boost the numbers of online workers as new opportunities become available throughout ASEAN.

Moreover, these trends are quite separate from the parallel phenomenon of automation, which will cause further disruption to the workplace status quo. A 2017 study found that “50% of current work activities are technically automatable by adapting currently demonstrated technologies”11 — and AI has only improved since then.

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5 Freelancing in America: 2018 (Edelman Intelligence, commissioned by Upwork and Freelancers Union, October 2018).

6 Freelanced: The Rise of the Contract Workforce (NPR).

7 The State of Independence in America (MBO Partners, 2019).

8 The Gig Economy Goes Global (Morgan Stanley, June 2018).

9 Labor Force in Singapore 2018.

10 Thailand — Self-employed; total (% of total employed) (Trading Economics).

11 Jobs Lost, Jobs Gained: What the Future of Work Will Mean for Jobs, Skills, and Wages (McKinsey & Company, November 2017).

More Money, More Problems — Why the Bottom Line Isn’t the Story

A June 2019 study by the Canadian Government examined the extent to which businesses and workers have already switched to this new type of employment market. Among its findings:

According to economists Alan Krueger and Lawrence Katz, the percentage of people engaged in ‘alternative work arrangements’ (freelancers, contractors, on-call workers and temp agency workers) grew from 10.1% in 2005 to 15.8% in 2015. Their report found that almost all — or 94% — of net jobs created from 2005 to 2015 were these sorts of impermanent jobs … [therefore] a barista job offering a secure $15 per hour in Canada could be a more attractive career than a junior paralegal gig worker performing piecework online at a rate that yields an effective rate of $10 per hour.12

That ‘effective rate’ refers to the total time spent on employment-related tasks, which includes searching and applying for projects, and performing work that is ultimately rejected or unpaid for various reasons. A 2018 study of the Amazon Mechanical Turk service in the US found that when these time-sinks and the phenomenon of underbidding were accounted for, the median hourly wage for active workers on the platform was just $2/hr, and just 4% made more than the minimum wage of $7.25/hr. 13

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12 The Future of Work: Five Game Changers (June 2019).

13 A Data-Driven Analysis of Workers’ Earnings on Amazon Mechanical Turk (April 2018).

Employees are not the only ones who should be alarmed at such figures. A recent study found a negative correlation between companies guided by a ‘bottom-line mentality’ (BLM), and the productivity of employees who work for them:

“Supervisors who focus only on profits to the exclusion of caring about other important outcomes, such as employee well-being or environmental or ethical concerns, turn out to be detrimental to employees,” said lead researcher Matthew Quade, Ph.D., assistant professor of management in Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business. “This results in relationships that are marked by distrust, dissatisfaction and lack of affection for the supervisor. And ultimately, that leads to employees who are less likely to complete tasks at a high level and less likely to go above and beyond the call of duty.” 14

The study moreover found that “ negative performance” outcomes remain present “when both supervisor and employee BLM are high”. In other words, even when employees share the same view as their employers on the primacy of financial benefit, output remains weakened. Money is simply not an ideal motivator, even though it is by far the most accessible basis for the types of temporary employer-employee relationships that are arranged via online platforms.

This disconnect between the priorities for both businesses and their workers, relative to the actual employment structure which is increasingly shaping the bond that unites them, is a very real problem for businesses as they enter the coming decade. A company’s ability to harness the full power of the independent workforce depends in large part on its way of communicating with each temporary employee — in terms of general messaging, workflow, incentives, and strategic vision.

14 Supervisors Driven by Bottom Line Fail to Get Top Performance from Employees (Baylor University, July 2019).

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs (for Machines) — Understanding the Employee of the Future

In order to accurately prepare for a new generation of employment, businesses must first understand how tomorrow’s offices and factories are going to look. Automation will cause major disruption to the workforce, as many of the most common jobs in the economy are precisely the ones most prone to partial or full automation.15

Even complex tasks can be broken down into simpler ones, and the simpler ones then automated. The job losses will be difficult to replace; truck drivers and cashiers are unlikely to become effective software engineers, despite earnest attempts at re-training them for the job market of tomorrow.

Sooner or later, government may need to step in to maintain social cohesion, if popular resentment over artificial intelligence begins to boil over.

Yet automation will also bring benefits to workers, even as it redraws the employment map into uncharted territory. Unsafe and undesirable jobs can be done by machines, protecting workers from injury. Disaster area cleanup, hazardous oil & gas projects, logging, medical attention in response to a virus outbreak — these are the types of automated jobs that represent genuine progress, with few downsides. Where necessary, VR goggles and AR tele-control software can let humans take charge of operations, allowing for personal control without the associated risk of direct involvement in dangerous situations.

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15. Automation and Artificial Intelligence: How Machines are Affecting People and Places (Brookings Institution, 2019).

Improved speed and accuracy in other tasks will also provide ample justification for the switch to automation. Document scanning and examination, accounting and bookkeeping, medical diagnostics and other forms of data analysis, and virtually any other kind of closed, rule-based process can be performed with greater speed, accuracy, and consistency by a machine.

Two Heads are Better Than One — The Rise of the Centaur Worker

Yet even the most advanced software suffers from a key weakness: It has no sense of the situation and does not understand the underlying goals of its operators. Moreover, as the aforementioned Canadian study points out, “AI still struggles with more general tasks, and can get confused when trying to differentiate a Chihuahua puppy from a blueberry muffin, for example. Humans working with AIs could process more volume while avoiding AI-specific errors.”16

Indeed, the availability of smart software by no means implies the removal of humans from the workflow process — just their repurposing. In practice, experts will need to work hard in order to keep up with tech-based advances even in their own fields, so they can get the most value out of the newest breakthroughs. A computer may be able to do your accounting or HR work for you, but only an expert can run that computer effectively.

Many companies will not have the resources needed to coordinate such training — or to make such efforts financially worthwhile. As a result, businesses will increasingly outsource certain tasks which they do not specialize in. An increased reliance on outsourcing could help solve a persistent issue related to the furtherance of technological development: The lack of qualified specialists in any given knowledge-based field. If companies rent their specialists rather than buying them, then these specialists will be able to effectively share their expertise among many clients, thereby fixing the talent shortage problem.

At present, the most productive employee is neither human nor computer, but both of them working in tandem. This duo (colloquially referred to as a Centaur) relies on the unique strengths of each partner to compensate for the other’s weaknesses. Cognitive neuroscientist Sam Harris summarized the issue in the context of medicine, in his recent conversation with digital medicine expert Eric Topol:

Our machines [are] likely to just supersede human intelligence. And then the formerly well-compensated, much-esteemed medical specialist gets reduced to somebody who’s just servicing the robot. In that case, you could actually select for a very different skill set in a doctor, where the doctor has to be less of a medical expert, and more of a good person with a great bedside manner and the relevant skills to navigate the decision tree in response to the information that the machine is spitting out.17

Such an arrangement — where software is left to carry out data processing tasks, and human specialists can devote themselves to higher level decision-making — is likely to be the standard in the years to come. Computers can read x-rays, while doctors consult with patients; AI can scan contracts and legislation, letting lawyers think more creatively about solutions; robots can take food orders, while servers personalize the experience; software can manage record-keeping, while accountants interpret the data to advise on policy. In these and other cases, granular knowledge of closed processes gives way to big-picture thinking about strategic innovation and other open-ended ideas.

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16 The Future of Work: Five Game Changers (June 2019).

17 Sam Harris: Making Sense podcast, July 3, 2019.

Atomized Citizens, Connected Consumers — The Age of the Direct Transaction

This revolution in work structures is occurring alongside a continuing shift in consumer expectations as well as societal norms, each of which plays a significant role in defining the prevailing mentality that businesses will need to acknowledge as they move forward. In fact, the very same advances in data collection and processing that enable recent progress in artificial intelligence are also fueling the personalization of information among internet consumers.

In some environments, this trend toward personalized tailored content functions as a social divider, with each person receiving a stream of content designed to appeal to (or at least generate engagement from) them. The upshot is that citizens are exposed to not only separate worldviews depending on their internet histories, but also separate sets of facts from which these views are drawn. Common ground recedes as each user’s unique online experience is solidified and reinforced over time.

In other circumstances, however, data collection reliably produces a stronger connection between internet users and their preferred consumer outcomes. Direct, customized transactions are likely to be the major purchasing trend in the coming years, as algorithms steer internet users toward the particular types of products that are well suited to their needs — and then steer them further, toward specific modifications for those products.

3D printing will play a significant role in such customization, re-creating the effect of traditional arts and crafts, even as manufacturing processes move further and further away from such methods of production. Through it all, the programmers and operators of the necessary devices and automated tools will find themselves in great demand throughout the employment market.

Other types of efforts will similarly connect consumers with their goals. Universities may start to run without classrooms, as all teaching can be performed online and at the convenience of the student. Automated bidding for the purchase and sale of goods — as well as automated logistics and production — could become widespread throughout society. In all such pursuits, the common denominator is the consumer’s expectation of instantly and automatically personalized service, of precisely the type that teams of centaurs are ideally positioned to provide.

A Republic, If We Can Keep It — Towards a Society in Balance

Anytime a foundational system undergoes fast and dramatic change, many people find themselves left behind. The coming transition to a world of platform-based employment and rising automation is bound to create conflict and resentment among many — even if the overall trajectory is a positive one. The quality and clarity of the response, from both the public and private sectors, will ultimately determine how smooth (and therefore effective) this transition will be.

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” as the saying goes, underscoring the importance of maintaining a contented and focused workforce as we enter a new era.18 Despite widespread fears about howtechnological trends are affecting employment, however, several of the early signs are positive. A recent poll in the US found that 87% of independent contractors were optimistic about the future of freelancing — a significant increase over previous polling results.19

Moreover, job loss from automation is likely to be countered by a rise in freelancing. Telepresence and the remote operation of machinery can provide relief from urban congestion and a lack of affordable housing in cities20, both of which would otherwise increase in severity as automation leads to the phasing out of rural employment.21

Yet many obstacles remain. If left unchecked, businesses will use internet-based employment platforms to hire their workers from parts of the world where the cost of living is low. A Singaporebased IT worker may need to charge $1000 to complete a project, simply to keep up with expenses; while a programmer based in India or the Philippines can bid just $300 and still turn a profit.

Regulation will be needed to prevent this type of labor arbitrage, which would otherwise create the digital equivalent of sending factories overseas. Updated and adapted rules for taxation would likewise be necessary, as businesses and their employees may find themselves in different jurisdictions as often as not.

With employees no longer having to report to central workspaces, governments can take the opportunity to further guide their populations toward areas with adequate infrastructure for living. As the Canadian government study discovered, such moves are already taking place in forwardlooking areas: “At least 10 jurisdictions have announced incentive programs to attract workers,” the report says. “Vermont is offering up to $10,000 to teleworkers who relocate there. Tofino is looking to be an innovation hub and build coworking infrastructure to attract workers.”22

Others are calling for a more comprehensive approach. US presidential candidate Andrew Yang has proposed a Universal Basic Income of $1000 per person per month, in an attempt to cushion the blow from job losses and other externalities that are likely to come from widespread automation.

Whether or not Mr. Yang’s solution is the right one, outside-the-box thinking of this sort will be needed to placate a generation of disaffected citizens. A survey of over 13,000 millennials across 42 countries offered little reason for optimism on our current course. 73% of respondents felt that “political leaders are failing to have a positive impact on the world”, two-thirds said the same about faith leaders, and 45% reported having “absolutely no trust in either set of leaders as sources of reliable and accurate information.” Attitudes toward the mass media were only marginally better.23

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18. Quote from Peter Drucker. See Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast (=mc).

19 Freelancing in America: 2018 (Edelman Intelligence, October 2018).

20 The Next Digital Economy (Policy Horizons Canada, June 2019).

21 The Future of Work in America: People and Places, Today and Tomorrow (McKinsey & Company, July 2019).

22 The Future of Work: Five Game Changers (June 2019).

23 The Deloitte Global Millennial Survey 2019: Societal discord and technological transformation create a “generation disrupted” (Deloitte, 2019).

The socioeconomic challenge of the coming decade is already known to us, at least in terms of its broad outlines. Education and skills training will be needed across whole societies, tax incentives and regulatory measures can counter-balance shifting comparative advantages in labor, welfare systems should be strengthened to support those left behind by new business models, and effective leadership is necessary to guide populations forward during a time of potential confusion.

Our collective ability to carry out the necessary initiatives, however, should not be assumed. The challenges now upon us as a result of AI-based disruption are curiously similar to the warnings raised decades ago about global warming. Both situations require massive collective action to counteract future, slow-moving events that have already been set into motion. Efforts to counteract the forces of global warming have come at a glacial pace (no pun intended), suggesting that the private sector may not be able to count on robust and proactive adaptations emerging from government.

Everything Old is New Again — Going Back to the Fundamentals

The coming wave of automation is expected to forever change the nature of office administration, production, transportation, and food preparation work — among other sectors of employment — elbowing out workers at all levels of skill and experience.24 Task-based contracting is likely to bring in short-term freelancers who are geographically disparate, and untutored regarding the brand identity and internal culture of their new and temporary employers.

Recent survey data suggests the extent of adaptation needed to handle such changes internally. Among more than 1,600 executives of large companies, spread out over 19 countries, clear majorities stated that they foresee trends toward “contractual, temporary, and/or ad hoc employees”; that a “complete rethinking of social/labor contracts” will soon be necessary; and that employees’ skillsets will need to “evolve much more rapidly” than they do today. 35% also said that society will “ need a complete rethinking of the education system” in order to prepare for future trends in work.25

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24 Automation and Artificial Intelligence: How Machines are Affecting People and Places (Brookings Institution, 2019).

25 The Fourth Industrial Revolution is Here — Are You Ready? (Deloitte, 2018).

26 See p7 of The Art of Leadership San Diego 2019: Conference Summary.

Beyond the actual working relationships and communicative approach taken with freelance employees, issues regarding office location and layout, personnel hiring decisions, contract negotiations, brand identity, strategic direction, customer interaction, and more will also need to be resolved internally.

Incremental problems in business can typically be addressed by adjusting the usual variables, but radical new challenges require open-ended thinking that begins from first principles. Focusing only on narrow issues, such as the cost of hiring employees, may lead to solutions (such as outsourcing work internationally) that only create even worse problems, such as a rapid corrosion of team cohesiveness. Platforms such as Glassdoor, where employees leave anonymous but public reviews of the companies for which they work, can create further headaches if the employee experience is not carefully addressed.

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27 The Dos & Don’ts of Managing Independent Contractors (Inc).

28 The Only Guide You’ll Ever Need for Managing Remote Teams (Glasscubes, 2019).

29 Beyond Office Walls and Balance Sheets: Culture and the Alternative Workforce (Deloitte, 2017).

First and foremost, a decentralized approach to business operations is essential in times of rapid change in order to keep individual employees and departments working together towards a common goal. For everyone to remain on the same page, however, they must understand why they are doing what they are doing. As author and leadership consultant Jocko Willink stresses, only a bird’s eye view of the mission can empower individuals to make the right decisions in real time, while also maintaining engagement with their task and a sense of ownership in the project as a whole.

Hierarchical management structures block initiatives from individual team members who might otherwise find better ways to achieve an objective.26

By clearly framing each deliverable work output and setting simple boundary conditions, managers can give their subordinates (freelance or otherwise) the freedom to use their expertise creatively and act on their own initiative. A precondition for such a framework, of course, is an effective project planning process and an onboarding process together with a clear and concise work performance objective.

Aligned goals and incentives can go a long way towards establishing the right preconditions for successful collaboration. Culture and motivation must therefore receive consideration right from the start, with employers demonstrating to new hires the real-world benefit of the business’s stated goals.

Such efforts, together with standard concepts such as establishing a personal connection with each new worker, are familiar to managers in traditional work environments, but often overlooked when taking on independent contractors. Other common managerial strategies fit the same mold: Delegate rather than micromanage, keep everyone oriented as to standard work processes, offer more praise than criticism, try to keep teams together for as many projects as possible, make everyone feel welcome and cared for through regular communication, set up stretch goals for outstanding performance, put trust in their talents, and pay on time.27

Geographical differences between employees reinforce, rather than remove, the need to ensure that the above business practices are followed whenever possible. Yet some adaptations will need to be made due to new circumstances. Cultures, languages, and time zones can create obstacles if they are not adequately accounted for.28

Extra time should be set aside to bring independent contractors into the fold, via face-to-face online check-ins as well as frequent acknowledgement of their contributions within company meetings and newsletters. Workflow and communication arrangements should also be designed with an eye toward keeping external team members in the loop, in ways that are analogous to physically adjusting the layout of an office to facilitate collaboration between traditional team members.29

After projects have been completed and launched, the employees who worked on them — whether or not they remain in a working relationship with the company — should be contacted with a note of thanks, as a reminder that their efforts played an important part in making the entire endeavor possible.

These simple courtesies boil down to emphasizing the individual value and humanity of each employee — partly to counterbalance the impersonal nature of the work transaction, but partly also because a restoration of trust will be necessary in a potentially volatile employment market where positive brand reputations take a long time to build, and a short time to collapse.

Even temporary hiring should therefore be placed within the domain of HR and senior leadership, rather than the purchasing department, to ensure that talent management is given real priority.

A consistent approach should be developed to guide the company’s decision-making for hiring questions — particularly on which types of positions merit long-term hiring, and which should be reserved for temporary hires. Workflow management software should be updated and adapted to the company’s new practices, to allow for simple, smooth and intuitive team communications as well as operations.30

Where possible, a strictly bottom-line approach should be avoided in favor of (or at least paired with) ethical leadership that emphasizes employee well-being.31 Open communication and opportunities for collaboration should be maintained between permanent and independent workers, with regular reviews to ensure that existing systems contribute to a positive, productive atmosphere that respects the company’s values and reputational goals.

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30 The Pixelated Workforce: A Job for Almost Everyone (Josh Bersin, June 2019).

31 Supervisors Driven by Bottom Line Fail to Get Top Performance from Employees (Baylor University, July 2019).

Re-Establishing an Authentic Identity — Trust, Synergy, and the Road Ahead

Reputations are also formed by companies’ actions outside the workplace environment. Managing internal culture and behavior according to brand values is essential but expressing those values publicly through action is just as important. Companies should proactively answer questions about how they are acting to benefit society, both in terms of their main business model as well as through additional actions to establish themselves as a positive force in their community.

In terms of business models themselves, the geographical diversity of freelance contractors can be used to the employer’s advantage. Rather than maintaining a unified public-facing façade, companies can benefit from the skills, traditions, and cultural insights that their diverse employee groups bring to the table.32 Design and customization options for products as well as interfaces can be made to reflect input from a rich sample of sources. Contract work can also contain an element of market research for the benefit of the company, allowing new ideas to be proposed and then tested by people from various backgrounds.

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32 Ellen Ruppel Shell on Jobs and Work in the Twenty-First Century (Infoworks, July 2019).

Above all, the benefits of tomorrow’s employment structures should be understood and accentuated. Commutes, dress codes and office politics can be jettisoned through task-based hiring. People can stay at home with their kids as they work, attend to health issues or scheduling concerns, and give their careers a flexibility that might otherwise be unattainable through office work. Recent polling indicates that 76% of full-time freelancers are “very satisfied” with the direction of their careers, and a clear understanding of their wishes and mentality can help keep this number high.33

Likewise, automation should be introduced only in cases where its benefits are clearly understood and well-articulated to employees. In most situations, sensible implementation of AI-based technologies in a given department can free the workers in that department to focus less on repetitive tasks, and more on open-ended, “big picture” questions of strategy and vision for the company.

This type of framing represents a dramatic improvement over a context-free introduction of an AI program, where affected employees may let their imaginations interpret events in a negative way. Failure to communicate intent can lead employees to focus on gaps in their knowledge (why is the company changing how I work?) and fill them with their own deepest fears (because they’re preparing to replace me with a machine).

Transparency, communication, company values, community involvement, the promotion of initiative and teamwork — these are essential and timeless values, although efforts to preserve them must take new and creative forms as workplace environments undergo existential change.

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33 The State of Independence in America (MBO Partners, 2019).

Bringing the Revolution Home — The Future of Labor in Thailand and ASEAN

In September 2018, Cisco and Oxford Economics published a report compiled by a multidisciplinary team of experts from across the region, using data from 433 jobs across 21 industries to make a predictive model of the effect that advances in technology will have on the 275 million full-time equivalent workers in the six largest ASEAN economies — Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam — by 2028.34

In terms of demographics, the region is generally youthful. Half of the inhabitants are aged under 30, which bodes well for the adaptability of its workforce. Several ASEAN economies are supported by innovative tech businesses and strong manufacturing sectors that compete internationally. Many ASEAN workers and employers are poised to take advantage of the coming disruption. For others, particularly those lacking the requisite skills or education, it will be harder to adapt.

By 2028, 6.6 million of the region’s jobs are expected to become redundant. But as technology displaces workers, it also increases growth. The model used in the aforementioned report predicts that the same level of output produced by ASEAN’s industries today will require 28 million fewer workers in 2028.

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34 Technology and the Future of ASEAN Jobs (September 2018).

Singapore actually faces the most significant immediate employment upheaval, with 21% of its workforce affected in the next decade. But the city-state is ideally positioned to weather the storm. Singapore’s small geographic size, modern infrastructure, and highly educated populace mean that business leaders can quickly and effectively adopt new innovations as soon as they become available, without badly harming displaced workers who are likely to find new jobs relatively easily.

For other ASEAN members, the transition will not be as smooth. In Thailand, technology is set to displace 12% of all workers, many of whom come from the agricultural sector, are largely unskilled, and will be difficult to retrain. As disruption in the workplace looms ever closer, both public and private stakeholders will have to coordinate on policies that educate young people for the jobs of the future, while also helping current workers manage the transition process.

This will be challenging. Excepting Singapore, ASEAN education systems do not perform well relative to developed nations. Thailand, for instance, placed 55th out of 70 countries in the most recent set of global school rankings by the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).35

ASEAN governments will have to come up with more creative solutions in education. Otherwise, as the Cisco and Oxford Economics report warns, “we are in danger of educating a generation of children to become not very good at jobs that robots will do better.” Such an outcome runs the risk of widening the skills gap and exacerbating the disruption caused by increased automation.

Across ASEAN, much of the education is largely focused on rote learning at the expense of critical thinking and problem-solving skills. However, this approach teaches students to focus on the precise set of skills that robots already excel at accomplishing. By contrast, critical thinking will not be automated away anytime soon, and should become a focal point in education.

While Thailand is taking some of the steps necessary to prepare for Thailand 4.0, some of its initiatives are already in danger of failing. The Eastern Economic Corridor’s massive infrastructure projects are already threatened by lack of skilled labor; the EEC Office estimates that 40% of the 475,000 positions that will be created by 2023 will need to be filled by high-skilled workers with university degrees.36

One possible solution would be for Thailand to loosen its immigration laws to admit more foreign laborers but doing so could have the unintended effect of driving down wages. Here, as elsewhere, platform-based independent contracting may allow expertise to be shared, as specialists in high-demand occupations can offer temporary services to many employers.

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35 PISA Worldwide Ranking — average score of math, science and reading.

36 Lack of Skilled Labor Threatens EEC (Bangkok Post, May 2019).

The Other Employment Revolution — Overcoming Cultural Challenges in Business

Across ASEAN generally, and in Thailand specifically, there are significant cultural taboos that make workers reluctant to act independently without a clear mandate from authority figures. This hesitancy can interfere with attempts to inspire creativity and a culture where employees act on their own initiative. If Thai business leaders truly want to get the most out of their people, they will have to break down some of these taboos by openly soliciting input and demonstrating that everyone’s opinion is both valuable and desired.

For workplaces to adapt to digital disruption, they need to be agile. Business leaders must be able to trust their employees to make important decisions on their own — which in turn requires positive leadership efforts to promote engagement. Thai business leaders will have to be open to new ideas and may have to let go of some of the prestige afforded to them by Thailand’s traditional hierarchical attitudes, in order to pursue opportunities for greater business productivity under new workflow structures.

Businesses across Thailand and ASEAN have much to lose and even more to gain from the coming changes to the nature of employment. Outcomes will depend on the skill with which they manage their own internal identity and workflow processes during a time of unprecedented innovation in the private sector.

With so much at stake, companies should take a step back, survey the new possibilities available in the modern workplace landscape, and consider how best to incorporate contextualized employment solutions that dovetail with their own strategic goals. These involve making the right adjustments to find the right people — be they full-time, part-time, or on contract.

Managed correctly, temporary workers can bring unique skillsets into a work environment, vastly expanding its potential. No matter their experience, however, they should not be placed in the position of overseeing permanent employees; workplace balance, office culture, and company identity are too nuanced and fragile to sustain effective external leadership.

By putting the right people in the right roles, and getting them onboard with clearly articulated objectives, it becomes possible to trust even external contractors to make important decisions and take educated risks for the good of the company. With such a flexible foundation in place, Thai and ASEAN companies may well be able to weather the storm of disruption and emerge in a stronger position than ever before.

William Malek, Senior Executive Director,
SEAC-HMI Innovation Managment Research Center