So Andy, when I think of blockchain,
the first thing that comes to mind, really
is cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin of course,
bit annoyed that I didn't invest a few years ago.
So, yeah, what can you tell me about this?
Well, I think everyone thinks of Bitcoin, don't they,
when you say blockchain?
Bitcoin was probably the first and most famous use
of blockchain technology.
You know, blockchain technology
is a series of ledgers, where, you know,
everyone in the ledger has to approve a transaction
before it registers.
So, yeah, Bitcoin is one example, and yes,
I wish I'd invested six or seven years earlier, too.
Yeah.
But, you know, it does have wider applications.
It's being used at the moment for
tracking mangoes and blood diamonds
in the supply chain.
Yeah.
There are people talking about
giving bank accounts to people,
so they can exchange assets between each other,
without the use of a bank.
There's two billion people in the world
who don't have a bank account. Yeah.
So, in the zone of problems itself, with property.
Yeah, so maybe just a,
before we continue,
can you just quickly explain to us
what blockchain is,
or what blockchain technology is, in a nutshell.
Yeah, blockchain technology is really,
you know, a whole lot of ledgers,
a series of blocks,
and, where there isn't
a central intermediary
that needs to approve a transaction.
All the notes and the network
that need to approve a transaction
before it can be completed through.
So there are some features,
one is for, then it's immutable,
that everyone has a copy of that transaction,
so, there's a lot of disputes about
whether something happened or not.
So, that's an important aspect of it.
It's decentralized, you know,
so it doesn't rely on a centralized server,
and we know all about the hacks recently.
Yes.
I can talk about British Airways' Paydrop in HR.
There's been other ones, too.
So, you know, it helps in that respect, too.
So, Andy, when we look at the world of work, HR,
what would you say are the main issues at the moment?
Well, I think we're used to doing things
a certain way, so, you know,
applying for jobs on Word MS with CV,
and apparently, fifty percent of these CV's
or resumes have little white lies on them.
Obviously not yours or mine,
but apparently people do that.
Now, CV's aren't the be all and end all of recruiting,
they're just one aspect of it.
It just shows the verification of data,
and the poor data we've got.
The other thing is, centralized data models.
So, we all use LinkedIn, well,
600 million people use LinkedIn.
So, we update our profiles,
and, effectively, we do that for free,
but that data is then sold on to recruiters
so you can find good people in organizations.
We're cool with that, like, well,
with the other uses of software that we enjoy using,
they, you know, they use the data to sell products to us.
But in the HR space, that has meant
that certain people own all the data,
and we've got a sort of a situation
where the recruiters are spamming
very talented, in-demand individuals,
who are just signing off.
It's very hard to find people.
I think we need to completely rebuild
the whole work infrastructure from scratch,
and there's a hell of a lot of problems
around bias, discrimination,
and even just accessing, again,
the visibility of all the work out there.
If you're a worker, a graphic designer,
a coder, a writer,
it's very hard to see where all the available work is.
Same if you're an employer, to find verified,
trustworthy workers, so we need to fix the matching process,
I would say, and I think we need to re-look at that,
and blockchain can play a part, I think.
Can you give us a few examples
of how blockchain could, you know,
be used by HR, or in HR,
to help solve some of these problems.
Yeah, I think one use I particularly like
is the old-fashioned CV on MS-Word.
Actually, we need a digital version of that,
that is verifiable.
I think the future of CV's will be, you know,
we'll have our work references, certifications,
work history, references from colleagues,
psychometric tests, whatever,
that we'll control in a wallet that's encrypted,
that only we have access to,
and then we can share that data with parties that we trust,
and that could be a potential employer, recruiter,
somebody like that.
The difference is, we own it, and we decide
who looks at it, and whether we
want to monetize it ourselves.
That's really, really powerful,
and I think if we get our heads around that,
that could change the whole recruitment marketplace.
One of the, if we get to that point,
then we can more efficient work-matching platforms,
as I call them, and that doesn't have to be
for old-fashioned jobs, contracts,
it could be for hourly advice.
You know, there's companies in the startup space
where you actually get paid in crypto
or fiat currencies, for an hour of your advice,
through matching verification. Yeah.
I think it's got great potential.
The platform enables peer to peer transactions,
so you can find a job,
so what that means, is transaction costs go down.
I don't know what the fees are off the top of my head,
roughly 20 percent, down to below 5 percent,
where it's just peer to peer.
So there's some great advantages for employers,
for workers in this actual model.
And another advantage of that is around giving benefits
to the freelancers in the gig economy.
Maybe they could own or have a share in these platforms.
This is a very different model we're talking about,
and I'm seeing these being built today.
Another use case is about payroll, right?
Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Yeah well, if you think of all the workers out there
Not everybody gets paid on the fourth Friday
of every month, like in the UK,
or every two weeks in the US.
If anyone's worked in their own company,
self-employed, freelancers, you know,
it can take weeks and weeks to actually get paid.
So, one thing that blockchain can do,
verification, checking, and validation,
it's just make that process more streamlined,
with more trust in it, so there's a case
of a couple of companies, one is ChronoBank
in Australia, paying construction workers,
basically the day after they clock out.
You know, they actually have money in their wallet
that they can spend with fiat currencies,
Aussie dollars, in the supermarket that evening.
So, it's good for the employer,
because they can validate that that person,
on site, should be there, from that perspective,
and the worker themselves know they'll get paid
at the end of the day.
It's a win-win.
Obviously, we'd have to reconstruct
a lot of our accounts payable, finance,
and payroll processes.
You know, I see this as a decades-long playout.
Yeah.
Yeah, talking about playout, how do you think
that these developments that we currently see
regarding blockchain and HR,
how do you think they will play out?
What will the process be?
Yeah, I mean, here, we're looking in my crystal ball--
Yes.
It's hard to say, but I did a research report,
Don Tapscott, you might have heard of him,
has been talking about the ditch to the economy,
and wrote "Blockchain Revolution",
asked me to do a research report
on the opportunities of blockchain and HR,
and I described the use cases around more trust in CV's,
hiring, work-matching platforms.
Don said, "Yeah, I get that, but what happens next?
What happens to the firm
where we can easily source project teams and workers
from a liquid work force?
We have the visibility of that,
we can pay those workers more quickly,
we've got some AI to work out,
what makes great teams.
What happens to all those people
inside organizations?"
You manage all that searching and contracting.
I think the view is that the firm becomes smaller.
The firm becomes smaller, tapping in to
this liquid work force.
So, alongside that, we have to ask questions of society.
How do we provide financial security and welfare
to these groups of disparate workers?
And, in pieces of work, if you like.
So, that's the question that we need to,
as a society, different regions,
come up with some solutions.
I think it's perfectly doable,
but it'll take many, many years.
Yes, and, how can we get involved?
Oh, great question.
I think for HR, payroll, recruitment people,
or people who are just generally interested,
there's a few ways.
One is, I think, the biggest change
is a change in mindset.
It's probably to read up a little bit
about new business models created by blockchain.
There's no need to study about encryption,
and the mathematics around blockchain, actually.
Think about the business models, where we could do
without intermediaries, or these loads of
checking and validating required.
You know, in your business,
there will be loads of processes like that.
That's one thing.
You can actually earn a little bit of crypto
to understand about having a wallet
and having encryption keys, and hash keys.
You can do that with very low amounts,
I'm not giving you investment advice here,
but you could, with earn.com,
earn a couple of quids, a couple of dollars
worth of crypto, and hold that in a wallet--
To get a feel about how-- To get a feel for it.
I'm not saying that those companies
or tokens will do well or not.
It doesn't matter.
You get the opportunity just to
move the tokens around.
Okay, so that's one way,
there's industry groupings coming up,
there's retail industry blockchain consortiums,
and other construction blockchain consortiums in the UK,
looking at all the opportunities there.
Read my Medium publication,
Blockchain and the Distributed Workforce,
which is a hub of people writing
about the subject.
There's a couple of ideas.
Yeah, well, that's enough to be getting on with.
Definitely, that will be a really good start.
Thank you very much, Andy.
Thank you, Neelie.