Finally, we are moving that conversation along. Because I think especially in certain parts of
the world, you know, there's this notion around the fact that certain types of work are better
than others. I think we need to move away from these labels around blue-collar work,
white-collar work. I've seen some people refer to it as gold collar work as well. You know,
there's work to be done. People have got different skill sets,
they've got different attributes. They've got different contributions to make. I think what I
love about the article that we are talking about is the fact that we are now starting to say that
regardless of where your work takes place and what's the nature of your work, there have to be
certain elements around you that are beneficial to you in terms of your employee experience.
Good day, everyone. It's really great to have you with us and welcome to the AIHR
newsroom. Before we dive into the topics today, remember to subscribe and hit the like button.
*MUSIC*
Welcome to the HR newsroom. I’m Erik van Vulpen and with me is Dieter Veldsman. And today,
as you’re used to in this format, we'll talk about some of the stories that we read in
the news in the past month. And we'll see how they impact the future of work
and the future of the HR profession. With that, we have some amazing, amazing topics coming up.
And I would love to kick off with our first story today. The title of the story is
“Grocery app Gorilla stops the 10-minute delivery pledge and adds store pickup option”. Gorilla is
one of the super fast delivery companies that promise to deliver within 10 or 15 minutes.
Personally, I have to admit, I'm a big, big fan and a big user, and I, frequently, in a week,
order through Gorilla. So I'm in that sense very much guilty. But specifically in New York City,
it became unattainable to keep that pledge because of workplace safety reasons. Delivery people would
be very dangerous crossing streets, not waiting for red lights. It led to a 54-year-old
woman in Queens passing away after an accident with an electrical bike.
So essentially, Gorilla drops pledge to deliver within 10 minutes, I think, Dieter, this opens
the discussion for us on where is the match between, on the one hand, the customer value
proposition and the promise you make to your customers - we deliver within 10 or 15 minutes.
And on the other hand, there's the workforce that needs to deliver it. Where's that balance?
And I think this is a tricky one for me, Erik, listening to you describing the process, because
I think on the one end, there's the competitor in me that says: Yes, but we will deliver, it's good
to strive and stretch goals, you know, how are we going to differentiate ourselves in the market?
And then on the other side, you know, I'm thinking about the delivery individual on the Gorilla bike
that is chasing down to reach your house at five to 11. Otherwise, you know, you're going to go
to the competitor. And I think there's something here about what is it that we can be delivered on
what we actually promised to the client? And do we understand what the internal consequences of
that particular promise going to be? You know, in the EVP world, employee value proposition world,
we very often talk about the fact that aligning your employee value proposition with your CVP,
with your customer value proposition, so that it's authentic, and so that it's aligned.
But what do we do when that leads towards - can I call it dangerous or detrimental behavior? Do
you think we should change our customer promise? Or should we do something different internally?
I think it's a good question. And it will always be a case-to-case decision. And the answer is
always it depends, Dieter. But I think what's interesting, of course, we had Tesla a couple
of years ago promising to create an X amount of 1000s of cars, even though they were at a very
small scale. And then you saw people working day and night. And I think most famously, Elon Musk,
not leaving the factory and sleeping on the factory floor in order to realize that promise.
And then we talk about an aspirational company that is changing the world. But on the EVP,
and on the employee side of things, there is a much darker reality. There are people working who
barely see their children because they need to deliver an X amount of cars. So I think there will
always be a tension between the ambitions and the competitor inside of you, Dieter, on the one hand,
and on the other hand, the realist and how far can you go with the workforce that you're leading.
I want to take it back to the role that HR plays in this conversation, because I can imagine a fast
company that has grown as quickly as an organization like gorillas have. Sitting
around that table, on the one hand, the company is still formalizing so not all your processes
and structures are in place. On the other end, you want to be a team player around saying: but yeah,
we are changing the world, we are changing an industry that for a number of years has lagged
quite a bit in terms of the digital online space as well. But then you also have to represent the
employee voice to say: Hang on, but are we really able to bank this in a responsible way, either
previous colleague that always spoke about what is the unintended consequences of the
decisions that we make around the boardroom type because I do think that it filters into, you know,
that balance that we say: but what is reasonable to expect from our people? And that doesn't just
go for this particular story. I think, in general, I think of big consulting firms, where for 2, 3,
4 years, people almost disappear out of your group of friends, because they join these consulting
firms with these great learning experiences, but they work literally, you know, 20 hour days? And
do you think that's sustainable? Do you think that's the right way to think about it?
On the business side, it is a winner takes all mentality, you know. If you are number one, you
will be sustainable, and the jobs will be there. If you're number two or three, you'll be bored, or
you'll have to bankrupt the company after a couple of years because it's really not sustainable,
the business they're running. And maybe that's a much more societal discussion that we should have.
Do we allow those kinds of businesses to operate that may outcompete many of the more traditional
taxi drivers, for example, when you talk about Uber or supermarkets? Because just you know,
there's a huge amount of money available at the moment in the market. There are billions being
invested in these kinds of companies, and they're able to just talk prices and make a
tremendous loss per individual order that they deliver. I think that's more of a societal issue
that we should have a discussion about how far we can go. And I think that makes it interesting that
New York is now also implementing legislation specifically to this point, Dieter. I'd be
curious to know how you think this will impact the management of individual employees? Say,
you're delivering these packages at 10:45 at a breakneck speed? What does that mean for
the way we talk about performance management for these kinds of employees?
I think, Erik, it poses an interesting question around what is it that you're going to measure.
You know, I think the age-old saying you get what you measure is still going to be very
true. Am I going to kind of almost markdown that individual because they've been 10 minutes late or
they couldn't deliver within the 10 minutes, but they did it in 12, or they did it in 13?
Or am I actually going to think about's a broader context within which this happens? But what is the
expectation that we have as an organization? And what is the expectation that the employee has?
I'm a very strong believer still in the psychological contract and the expressed
and unexpected expressed expectations between the two parties. I think if we are clear as an
organization around who we are, what we expect, what we do, and how things are done here,
if an employee then makes a realistic decision to say: you know, this is an
environment that I think is beneficial to me as well, and that I can live with,
can I call them the boundaries and the parameters that are in place? I think it's
a different ballgame. I think it becomes very interesting when these things start popping up.
That is unexpected. That wasn't explained, or that wasn't transparent in that way, as well.
This brings to mind, like certain delivery in China where individual
employees are punished or do not get paid if the delivery is a certain amount of time too late.
So then you have a very punitive individual impact on these delivery people, for example,
working as you know, in a kind of a gig, get construction and not getting paid, if they're,
you know, a couple of seconds too late, which I would feel, as a customer as well,
very guilty about because the place where I lived, the bell is very hard to find. So I have
people calling me asking: how do I get in? And but I think that the broader point is, you know,
how do we look at performance for these people? I think you shouldn't look at performance based
on an individual trip where you had bad luck or a flat tire, or, you know, there was an ambulance
crossing through. So you had to wait a couple of minutes longer. I think it should really be on an
aggregated level, if you want to say something about how fast someone is, you should take it
over 10, 50, or 100 delivery runs, and then you get a reliable average, I think so. Also in the
way you implement performance management, I think you should be very conscious of
the unintended consequences of the policies that you put in and the way you put it. So that's
really the tangible advice that I would like to give if you work in these kinds of situations,
do try to define a performance measurement system. A lot of these apps do pay quite
well. And they do try to hire these competitive young people who you know, who want to raise,
who want to beat the clock and will also have that aptitude. So in that sense, it might not be a
bad place to work, after all. So with that, we've good conscience, so I'll keep ordering with them.
And I think that's the right way to go about it, Erik, around the fact that
you know, I think there are solid processes and principles that we've learned over the years that
are still applicable in these situations. I think the employment conditions have changed.
And I know in a lot of these businesses, you know, whether you view them as permanent
employees or contract employees or gig employees, ultimately, it's a human to company relationship.
And there should be these things in place that treat everybody fairly
and in an equitable manner. And I think that's the kind of important thing to get back to.
That brings us to our next topic, where I think there's a big group that is there,
but that we often don't talk about, Dieter. And they are deskless workers, often referred to as
blue-collar deskless workers, which is the more modern term. This story is about the deskless
workforce management platform Connect Team raising 120 million US dollars as investments. They work
with companies like Footlockers, like Nike, like McDonald's. And they help to manage these deskless
workers, which is about 80% of the workforce. So eight zero. They enable the organization to
broadcast announcements, conduct surveys, schedule shifts, clock in, clock outs,
do training on an app, celebrate achievement, manage tasks, all mobile-first so that everyone,
even though you may not have access to a work email, if you work at McDonald's, you do now have
access to a cell service, a chant dashboard. And I like that and I think I'm wondering,
is it may be time to move away from the old blue-collar versus white-collar thinking and move
to a more universal way of thinking? Get rid of that blue-collar versus white-collar distinction?
Oh finally, I almost wanted to shout out, Erik, that I think finally we are moving
that conversation along. Because I think especially in certain parts of the world,
you know, there's this notion around the fact that certain types of work are better than others,
and there is status subscribed to it. And I think that's resulted in I can only use, you know,
some emerging economies as an example where people see the fact that I need a formal education as my
vehicle into knowledge work, which is the only way that I will move ahead and break out of the
poverty cycle that I'm in or be able to look after my family and look after myself in the long run.
I think we need to move away from these labels around blue-collar work and white-collar
work. I've seen some people refer to it as golden-collar work as well, which is kind of,
you know, a newer, flashier term around some of these things. I think ultimately we need to
ask the question to say there's work to be done. People have got different skill sets,
they've got different attributes, they've got different contributions to make.
I think what I love about the article that we are talking about is the fact that we are now
starting to say that regardless of where your work takes place, and what's the nature of your work,
there have to be certain elements around you, that are beneficial to you in terms of your
employee experience because as HR, we have been very, very guilty of designing solutions for
our traditional campus-based, office-based, knowledge-based environment, as opposed to,
you know, regional sales offices, or if you're working in mining or manufacturing sectors. I can
give a practical example, I was in an organization where we realized that 70% of our workforce was
deskless sales employees, yet 90% of our HR technologies and solutions - you had to be in
one of our physical office locations at that time, or locked into a secure VPN network via laptop to
be able to access HR services. Actually, we were not servicing the organization at all, we were
servicing a snippet of the workforce. So I think we need to move away from that, and we need to
stop subscribing these terms to things that are no longer relevant because actually, there's a huge
skills shortage for this type of work in terms of construction and infrastructure development. And,
you know, I think we need to make that attractive to people again,
because unfortunately, I think a lot of people say: you know, you do that because you cannot do
anything else. And that's not the right way. And we need to think about that, in my view.
And I think as well, with the increase in the shortage of more technical skills and technical
labor, I do think that a college degree in that sense is very overrated. And also
when hiring, that is not a criterion, you should focus instead more on, you know,
does this person have the skills? And does this person have the work experience that
is relevant? Instead of, do they have a shirt and certificate or diploma? At the same time,
I realized that it is hard, and especially, you know if you have to sift through 1000s of
applicants, you know, it might be a very easy criterion to use. But I'm very much not a fan
of this idea of with a college degree you may get in and without a college degree, you know,
what can you do with this thinking that you see more and more? I think that we really need to
move away from it. I don't know if I would use the golden color as a term but I do think that
that blue-collar and also in the work that we do at the Academy to Innovate HR, we are consciously
focusing more and more on the blue-collar worker or on the deskless worker in that sense, because
I think in a lot of the books that you read, and a lot of the articles that you read, there's a lot
of a focus on the white-collar kind of consultancy level employees that are professional service
who are gig workers, you know, who work from Bali and who produce knowledge and not on the majority
of the people are working like that as deskless people. So I think also for us at the Academy to
Innovate HR, I think that's a wake-up call. And that is something that we're actually actively
discussing on how we can do that. How can we do that better? So I look forward to that. And I
think this article shows one of the steps to move forward for these people, for deskless workers,
to also, through self-service, have an application that is not only designed for the
classical white collar that you just mentioned, Dieter, but also for the deskless workers.
Yeah, I agree, Erik, and I think
we've barely scratched the surface of the deskless worker topic. And I think it is a topic that
we will be talking about quite frequently as well because I do think that there's a very,
very strong movement in that area and that domain around where that's going to end up.
Erik, I can't believe it, but our newsroom is drawing to a close. So thank you very much,
thanks to everybody dialing in. Let us know some of the topics that you would love us to talk about
as we push the boundaries and push HR forward. Always a pleasure and look after yourselves as
HR professionals as well during the times that we find ourselves in, so thank you very much.
That's it for the HR Newsroom today. Thanks so much for watching.
Don't forget to hit the subscribe button, like this video and I'll see you in the next one.