It doesn’t really matter where you are any more
How the resource model in technology is transforming.
My Dad, like many others, had a job for life. He started in an office in a reasonably sized company after he finished college and worked his way up in the same company over the following 40 years.
As I left school I naturally assumed this would be how my career would progress, find the biggest and most successful company I could and enjoy the ride.
How wrong could I be?! The workforce model, partly driven by technology, partly the global economy, has changed beyond all recognition. This blog explores agile working practices, the gig economy and where they leave our product delivery teams.
Global Talent
For the first couple of teams I recruited I focused on succession planning; getting the right balance of experience and enthusiasm to ensure that people could develop their careers whilst retaining knowledge within the team. Now when recruiting, only 5–10 years later, this is much more difficult. There are a series of factors that have influenced the market for talent:
- Technology. People are wanting, indeed demanding, to work flexibly. They have super-speed broadband, previously only seen in offices, available at home and through the internet they know that competitors are offering this ‘perk’. Laptops, phones, connectivity and energy are relatively cheap meaning that it is easier than ever to work anywhere (I’m writing this in a coffee shop) and the barriers to starting your own business are low. Tools such as Slack, Skype, Trello and Confluence enable people to work anywhere at anytime.
- Technical Skills Gap. It really is a suppliers’ market. For all the talk of automation, businesses are struggling to hire skilled people and Universities can’t produce talent fast enough. Skills like Selenium, Java and ’DevOps’ are in high demand and the cost of labour is rising.
3. Globalisation. 10 years ago, being in a company big enough to have remote teams in Eastern Europe or India was a rare occurrence. Now any company can outsource work to talent in distant regions. Furthermore, the reach of recruitment is now international to attract the best talent. Sites like Jobbatical (founded by the inspiring Karoli Hindriks) along with simpler visa processes are making it easier for people to work anywhere. Global talent also brings in the additional benefit of cultural diversity, a key factor in driving productivity.
Market Forces
Therefore, the economics of talent management have changed.
Whilst there is potentially more supply from globalisation, there is a greater increase in demand for technical skills and the price (wages) has gone up.
Agile skills sets especially are seeing an increase, about +5% year on year (https://www.itjobswatch.co.uk). Much faster than relative to inflation at +2% for the G7 economies.
The impact of this shift though is greater than just salaries. The remainder of this article will focus on understanding two of these: Agile Working Practices and Nomadic Working. We will see how both encourages and facilitates the other to promote a new future for resourcing.
Office Spaced — Agile Working Practices
It’s famously noted that McDonalds is actually a property company — but most businesses are not.
So it makes little sense for companies to be investing capital into estates when it is not their revenue stream.
Property is an increasing cost too. In 2010 it was about £12 per square foot. Now it is up to £28 psf (Source: headoffice3). That’s a hard hit on a business’ costs.
Alongside the adoption of Agile Delivery Processes has grown the prominence of Agile Working Practices. This is predominately the prioritisation of collaboration space over assigned desks and the typical ‘cubicle’ working environment.
There is a strong business case for this. Introducing an Agile working environment into your workplace you can make up to a 20% property saving.
Agile Future Forum research demonstrated that in the areas reviewed, agile working practices saved 3% to 13% of workforce costs.
The change in the physical working environment goes hand in hand with the organisational cultural change that is required. We will see later that this has challenges. From my experience I can tell you that taking peoples’ assigned desks away is not always popular (!). But it’s important to note here that a growing number of employees are beginning to expect hot-desking as part of their role.
The ‘millennial’ generation value connectivity and are blurring the line between work and home life. There is a move away from work-life balance with an ‘ideal’ of a 50–50 split; towards an culture of work-life integration.
A great example of this is the increasing popularity of family business trips as a ‘perk’. People recognise globalisation is happening even in small companies and are now expecting their employer to help them resolve the challenges of being away from their number one priority, their family.
Working at Sky
I was fortunate enough recently to be given a tour of Sky’s (https://twitter.com/workforsky) new office development in Leeds. Recently nominated for national awards, this workspace is playing an important role in fostering a collaborative culture and improved working practices.
Leeds suffers from a technical skills shortage and this space is central, not just for recruiting staff and building a culture, but more importantly retaining staff and building a legacy.
The Environment’s key objectives are:
- Focus on ability to push great products and personal development
- House pastoral care for staff and train up an academy as a talent pipeline
- Align to business values and demonstrate making fantastic products — highlighting feedback and awards
Building the environment and the culture has taken a lot of energy, but it is showing positive ROI. Headcount has grown from 43 to 600 in just 2 years and staff are feeding back positively on increased quality expectations, longer life expectancy in roles and a strong sense of achievement.
The next step: Virtual Offices
But why stop at physical workplaces? Innovative technology such as Mind Leap are starting to develop virtual, augmented and mixed realities that facilitate collaboration through global connectivity in digital space.
If communicating verbally and non-verbally can take place effectively without being physically in the same place, why do we need offices at all? The Slack and Trello avatars we use today could become our full workplace presence in the future.
“The dream of AR and VR, of allowing our human creativity to express itself in the ultimate medium of visual reality — that is freaking awesome”.
Roxy @ Magic Leap https://www.magicleap.com/stories/blog/the-mom-rule
Online tools such as google Tilt Brush are great examples of how virtual worlds, pioneered in the gaming community, are becoming the playground of mainstream collaboration already.
But it’s not all roses in the garden themed office…
Unfortunately, the design of (agile) operational practices are not inheritantly people focused. Everyone is different, there will be introverts and extroverts.
For your average office you should expect 10% of staff to be staunchly resistant to change.
There will always be people who want to work 9–5 at their own desk and just do what they are paid to do to achieve their objectives.
This is not a bad thing. But it must put a reality check on dreams of turning around a business just by transforming the environment and culture.
Most people are dissatisfied with having to work in an open plan office, University of Sydney research has found. Uncontrollable noise and loss of privacy are the main sources of workplace dissatisfaction in open plan offices.
Like it or not, ‘Work’ has a very set definition in many peoples’ minds. It is the place that you go to do an activity that you must be paid to do. It is distinct from play and non-work. This definition is very hard to change.
“The period of time one spends in paid employment.”
— Part of how OED defines ‘work’
Furthermore, increased productivity in open themed office is starting to be shown as a myth. Indicating that what may be saved on estate management is being spent on staffing costs.
“In fact the truth is that offices, cubicles and little spaces were far better for our productivity and for getting your job done”
Bruce Daisley, Twitter’s VP of Europe.
In the next part we will see how agile workspaces still play a part in bringing together teams who are no longer employed by the same company.
Nomads and Boutiques
In my earlier blog Army of One I referred to the practice of Guerrilla Working and breaking the link between where you work and what you do. The factors listed earlier have driven these beyond what we expected some two years ago…
Just as a business may not be a property company, it may not be an IT, HR or Distribution company either, yet rely on these services to deliver customer value. So why do companies still try to employ these functions? Or, to rephrase that question…
Can a business exist purely by focusing on it’s revenue stream and outsourcing all other components?
Again, the factors at the start of this article, technology and globalisation have made this a working possibility. By having specialists (also known as boutiques) provide the function, they are able to continually improve the quality and delivery processes to the benefit of all their customers. Increased competition in the supplier market also helps keeps prices lower, meaning there is an improved ROI for buyers relative to building and managing the function inside their own non-specialist organisation.
There is evidence of this down to the smallest level. The Gig Economy such as Deliveroo and Uber are providing services as individuals operating as companies. In the technology sector there is a growth in consultancies providing technical skills. They are building large headcounts and talent pipelines before contracting out services to customers.
With this mix of suppliers operating within a ‘host’ business then collaboration spaces become more useful. It’s not necessary to provide desks for 3rd parties but it is required that they are provided with a place to meet and collaborate for the benefit of their host. They need to work together.
The challenge then becomes for the modern organisation to have a flexible enough structure to let people move in and out of the organisation. The culture becomes a ‘perpetual beta’ negotiated hierarchies depending on who is in the office that month or even day.
It is the host organisation’s responsibility to have the flexible and effective HR, Procurement and PMO policies and procedures in place to enable suppliers to deliver outcomes and benefits.
Does this still make staff happy? Why not a job for life?
Just like business functions, staff are more commonly developing an individual focus and becoming nomadic. Operating their own boutique service to customers.
With so much job choice enabled by technology, a freedom to roam through globalisation and a talent shortage driving demand - people are mobile enough to develop their own careers and not rely on a paternal business.
If someone wants to work 4 days weeks, they can. If they want to work 80 hours per week before retiring at 50 years old, they can. There will be a business willing to employ them.
Role life expectancy at tech firms is dropping, to a point where if someone stays 3 years then they are considered loyal. It is being seen that many permanent roles are being vacated after only 15 months.
With this shift in resourcing there becomes added pressure. For employers it is how to make staff effective and productive as possible during their stay. Removing barriers to entry such as two weeks to setup a new laptop, or long corporate inductions — and moving towards much more task focused activities and hitting the ground running.
For individuals it is to be able to learn quickly and also deal with the stress of immediate delivery.
If a company knows an employee may only stay 3 years or if a project has only short timelines, then the temptation is to push for burnout.
This realises the benefits for the business at the cost of the staff. With the expectation that replacement staff can be brought in readily with a talent pipleline or alternative suppliers.
It’s not all bad news for those who want to be loyal. There is improved awareness that employers need to manage talent better.
The emergence of mental health first aiders is just one example of how business is working hard to support staff beyond their physical needs.
Conclusion — Should I Jump into Nomadic Resourcing?
Being an investor in people or having a large headcount are badges of honour for a business. But more often than not, when the bottom line is taking a hit staff costs will be first with the savings.
It is possible to bring in specialists to run those functions and departments that aren’t your area of expertise or revenue. To do this as a ‘host’ it is important to realise the following:
- People who have an idea are motivated by their own ideas and area of experitise. HR may not be your interests, but it is to someone else and you don’t need them to be a full time member of staff.
- There will be benefits from Technology and Globalisation. Be aware of them and how to take advantage of them.
- There are both introverts and extroverts in the workplace, both valid and valuable depending on busienss need.
- Are you trying to recruit someone with 10 years experience or 1 years experience 10 times? Your resourcing model should reflect your business values.
Thank you for reading this post, you are welcome to share your thoughts and experiences in the comments section below.
Further reading
Michael Church and Terminal juniority:
HR’s role in organisational agility:
How to retain permanent employees and skills when contracting pays higher rewards:
