So what can we learn from the gig economy? While flexibility and control are the chief reasons people freelance, the ability to choose projects is also important to them, especially for full-time freelancers. Furthermore, freelancers are 24 percent more likely to feel their work gives them the opportunity to pursue projects they’re passionate about or find meaningful, and they’re 14 percent more likely to feel their work provides them with opportunities for learning and growth.26
So two significant reasons for the increase in gig work in companies are freelancers’ desire to select what work they engage with, and the need for companies to acquire greater agility in terms of capacity and capability. With the barriers to free-agent or contingent work being low, talent demanding more diverse work and greater choice, and the opportunity for rapid acquisition of new skills, there is pressure to create an employee experience and mindset like that of a free agent inside organizations.
This is the question for companies to consider: Can you provide people with the experiences they want inside the organization rather than have them rely on freelancing to achieve greater diversity and choice in their work? We believe the answer is yes! The six core principles presented in Part Two create a foundation to attract the best talent, improve organizational productivity, foster innovation and enable companies to be more agile and stay ahead of the competition.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
•The global workforce is more diverse than ever before in terms of gender, age, culture, religion, sexual preference and identification. Creating a one-size-fits-all employee experience no longer works.
•The Fourth Industrial Revolution has created technological advances that have disrupted industries and the way we work, resulting in massive shifts in the skills needed in the workplace. Job losses due to skill obsolescence, though significant, will be surpassed by the growth of new jobs that never existed before, requiring new skills that aren’t widely available in the labor market.
•Organizations need to be more agile and responsive to the changes created by the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Organizational hierarchy and functional silos are being replaced by flatter, more fluid structures that rely on purpose-built networks of teams.
•The democratization of work puts more control in the hands of employees. These employees want more choice and diversity in the projects they work on so that they can continuously learn and fully utilize all of the skills they have to contribute to the success of their company.
•By creating an Inside Gig experience, a more agile work environment can leverage the full set of capabilities within an organization and unleash capacity by helping employees tap into their passions and fuel a continuous learning opportunity. This allows a company to build the skills needed as new technologies emerge in the workplace.
REFLECTION POINTS
How are the demographics of your company changing?
Has this change in demographics resulted in a shift in employee expectations? If so, how would you describe your employees’ expectations?
How rapidly are skills changing within your company (as a whole or in parts of the business)?
Are you experiencing a greater need for cross-boundary collaboration to solve business problems? How easily are you able to form cross-disciplinary teams?
PART TWO
The Core Principles
The man who grasps the principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.
—Harrington Emerson
CHAPTER 3
Principle No. 1: You Get What You Give
I have learned that the best way to lift one’s self up is to help someone else.
—Booker T. Washington
IMAGINE A CUSTOMER SERVICE team meeting. You’ve convened to solve a problem that has a direct bearing on the customer experience. It’s not that you haven’t tried before, but the fixes haven’t been working and customer complaints have not decreased. You are happy to see Lucinda enter the room and be warmly greeted by the team. Lucinda is from HR and has worked tirelessly on the employee experience. You ask a team member to outline the problem and the fixes you’ve tried to date. Can Lucinda shed any light on the challenge? She asks for 24 hours and to reconvene the team the next day.
At the next meeting, Lucinda offers some suggestions based on her work. Her perspective points to a communication issue that can be addressed by having a five-minute team huddle at the beginning and end of each work day to address issues that are affecting customers. You call Lucinda’s manager to thank her for Lucinda’s time.
The first Inside Gig principle, “You get what you give,” addresses the importance of creating a give-and-get model around talent, specifically how sharing talent across departments or functions optimizes organizational resources. This principle suggests that a manager should give employees time to participate in projects outside their teams, either to use skills they have but aren’t utilizing in their day-to-day roles or to learn new skills. Thus, managers give away some of their employee resources. What do they get in return? They are able to leverage talent from elsewhere in the organization to contribute to pressing business challenges they are facing.
This talent could perform roughly the same work employees lent elsewhere would do, or it might be to provide skills the manager needs but doesn’t have in the current team. So talent from elsewhere in the company (supply) is acquired in exchange for employees lent elsewhere to learn and apply all of their skills. An employee might have a critical skill set not available from the current team members, a gap that the company would otherwise hire for. By leveraging talent from elsewhere in the organization, the firm saves money; it doesn’t have to bring in a contractor, freelancer or consultant to assist on the project or spend resources onboarding someone new. Managers and team members, when working on a new team, enjoy the benefit of using their skills in a new context, learning from others and gaining new skills and perspectives.
In our work with progressive organizations, we have discovered that managers will share talent whether or not incentives are in place to do so. Creative problem-solving results from sharing talent, and lessons learned will continue to have long-term benefit. One company in particular reported significant savings and more customer goodwill, in addition to a marked increase in employee engagement.
THE PRINCIPLE IN ACTION
Let’s take a peek at how “You get what you give” works in practice. Juan is a manager of a team of five engineers. His boss has asked him to develop a solution to a vexing problem for one of the company’s customers. Juan’s team already has a heavy workload trying to innovate one of the firm’s current products. The timelines are tight for the special project, and Juan isn’t sure his team has the capabilities to succeed. And as is typical, Juan has no budget to bring on a new team member or contractor to help on this—or any—project.
During this high-pressure time, one team member, Kris, asks for permission to participate in a project with another team in a different department where she can learn a new skill related to technology the company is implementing. Juan understands that this initiative is important to her and to the company, so they discuss how work can be shifted to allow Kris one day per week, or a few hours per day, to contribute to the other project. In effect, Juan is “giving his talent away.” He does this