The rise of Delivery as a Service and the new everywhere workforce

Not too long ago, most of us were going in and out of the office, having one too many meetings, and commuting for a couple of hours to get to a building where we did about the same thing we could have done from the comfort of our homes.

I mean, yes, you could probably say remote work was already “a thing” back in 2019 and yes, it technically was, for a select few, within a very small group of companies that dared to venture out of their comfort zone.

According to a study made by Global Workplace Analytics, in 2018, only 3.2% of the American workforce used to work remotely and another study conducted by Owl Labs showed that small businesses and start-ups were twice as likely to hire full-time remote workers.

Then came 2020 and everything changed. Suddenly zoom became a noun, the watercooler at the office became a life-threatening hazard and NFTs became a thing (sort of).

There were some positive changes. Companies that used to have an all-in-office philosophy realized the positive effects of having a full-time or a hybrid remote workforce once the pandemic reaches its inevitable end.

Karin Kimbrough Chief Economist at LinkedIn recently said “We’re seeing a huge increase in demand for remote work on our platform, one that will have a significant long-term impact on the labor market. Globally, we’re seeing four times the number of jobs that offer remote work since March. We also see that trend reflected from jobseekers: the volume of job searches using the ‘Remote’ filter on LinkedIn has increased ~60% since the beginning of March, and the share of Remote Job Applications has increased nearly 2.5 times globally from March.”

In other words, the pandemic has managed to break the cultural and technological barriers that prevented by-the-book corporations to even consider the possibility of going remote.

With that in mind, companies now face another pressing issue; adjusting to a new kind of work environment while keeping everything that made the old one attractive for highly skilled workers. This means corporations that used to own colossal, expensive buildings in some of the most coveted places in town will now have to manage and optimize a multinational, multilingual, diverse, and distant workforce with a completely new set of demands.

As with all new things, nobody can completely claim they have the know-how to make it happen, but some businesses are starting to realize this could very well be the dawn of a new and profitable business venture.

One of the most challenging aspects of the new “everywhere workforce” has to do with providing the right logistics and IT services. Two things that used to run in separate tracks, probably because shipping something and dealing with the details of that said thing were to entirely different businesses.

This niche will likely bring the dawn of a new type of business model designed for corporations seeking to expand and transform the way they hire, optimize and supply their staff without changing the fundamental way they do business. I call it “Delivery as a Service”.

An all full-scale solution to both technical and delivery issues that allows a business to hire anyone on earth without having to worry about technical, logistics, or scalability issues. A one-stop shop for hiring wherever, whoever, and whenever.

This trend is still flying under the radar since most companies are still debating about what kanban-style platform provides less frustration. But when the dust settles, the issue of how to manage an entirely new working environment will be the subject of many, many, board meetings.

In short, whether it’s five, three, or two days a week, the “everywhere workforce” is not going anywhere. So we better be prepared for it.

Does your company’s workplace culture fit in a box? (If not, it probably should)

Not long ago, I got a call from a key client consulting me on how to keep his company’s workplace culture while shifting to an all-remote system. My answer was “You can’t…But if you could, would you want to?”

Let me explain. 
Ever since Henry Ford developed its famous Motor company Sociological Department in 1914, western companies have treated their workplace culture as some sort of sacred intangible value backed by a life-long history of successes. Even tech companies that were born five-ten years ago quickly developed an obsession with establishing a reputable inner culture designed to attract the best talent available.

But with the rise of the everywhere workforce and hybrid workspaces, it has become abundantly clear that all the organizational theory books in our libraries can not prepare us for the challenges we have ahead of us.

In a recent survey conducted by MIT Sloan, 50 well-known executives agreed that establishing and maintaining organizational culture is difficult, if not impossible, in a virtual setting. They argued that the lack of a strong sense of culture is a particularly acute problem for newcomers. 

This means that, for some of the most prestigious executives in the land, constructing purpose and a sense of belonging inside of a remote network seems downright impossible.

This assessment presents a complicated scenario for companies in the post-COVID era. On one hand, a productive workforce that takes no physical space and no in-house resources, potentially saving millions of dollars, and on the other hand, the risk of destroying an identity they spent decades building both inside and outside their company. 

I don’t see this as a one-or-the-other dilemma. I think that what we are seeing here is a paradigm shift in which organizational consultants, HR experts, and tech gurus will have to start asking their CEOs a simple question; “Does our company’s workplace culture fit in a box?”.

With the rise of new hires for full-time remote jobs, part-time gig workers, massive infrastructure downsizings, and hybrid work schedules comes the need to start thinking inside the box, and I mean that literally.
New hires and customization services can create a new way of reaching employees, changing the impact their job has on their lives well beyond their paycheck.

There used to be a clear division between our home and the office. Now, the lines have started to become blurry and suddenly companies find themselves in the unique position to change not only how you work, but also how you live (hopefully for the better).

It is still a matter of debate how businesses will engage this issue. Some companies are already starting to develop new ways to create better working conditions for people in a fully remote scenario, while also developing trust through elements that can bring people together to build a cohesive company culture.

Designing an efficient onboarding process without the physical everyday interaction in the workplace will certainly be one of the biggest challenges, but I believe this problem will only be around until everyone adapts to new ways of building relations within collaborative work platforms.

Like I said to my client; There is no going back to the way things were, but there is certainly a way to move forward, adapting and becoming better for the benefit of our company and our employees.

In this moment of uncertainty, companies should remember every success story has one bleak moment when everything seems to be lost, and that usually comes right before the triumphant success.