Excerpt: Testing the Waters of the On-Demand Workplace

What we’ve learned in talking to Catalant customers is that even those at the top echelons of the country’s better-known, big-brand name companies are feeling frustrated. Recruiting and employee retention are huge pain points for just about any corporation located outside of a New York or San Francisco. As lovely as Cincinnati, Peoria, or Moline might be, most of today’s most coveted college graduates want to live in a short list of major urban centers. The action, it turns out, is a big draw.

We also heard our share of complaints about the inefficiency of the system under which large, unwieldy companies operated. Sometimes they felt as if they had too many people on staff. At other times it felt as if they didn’t have enough. One executive, who oversaw a staff that numbered in the tens of thousands, told us he often felt he didn’t have the right talent in-house to start with. Maybe the biggest surprise in our on-the-job education was that even the seemingly powerful inside most U.S. corporations felt powerless. As a result, when faced with a challenge, they turned to a giant consulting firm because they often could see no other way. Yet for all those millions of dollars companies paid, the consultants rarely delivered the news management most needed to hear. There’s an inefficiency baked into a company that can’t grow or shrink as the product cycle demands, and add or subtract skills sets as they are needed.

Technology is doing its part to usher in a more decentralized workplace. We can videoconference via Skype, Google Hangouts, or Cisco WebEx. It’s easy to share files using Google Docs, Dropbox, or Box—and for those who really are serious about online collaboration tools and networks, there are cool new products like Slack. There’s also been a corresponding rise in co-working spaces that allow people to rent a desk by the hour, day, or month. That strikes us as some of the early infrastructure work needed to build out the free agent economy, much like gas stations were needed to create a car culture.

The last technological piece of the puzzle? Unicorn stars of the gig economy have brought marketplaces up to speed for people wanting to sell their services to consumers. But what about those who want to sell their services to businesses? Fortunately for us, this notion of a human cloud that allows any company to find any expert no matter what the task or project was gaining currency worldwide.

It’s our view that much of what is said and written about the future of work seems overly narrow in focus. But it goes further than that. What we’re advocating for is nothing short of a complete disruption in the way businesses spend money on labor. A company needs permanent employees, of course, but technology allows for a radical shift in the mix of full-time and free agents. While one group may stay in-house and hold up the fort, there can still be a stable of regular go-to talent that is called in on a need-be basis. Think of it is as more of a Hollywood approach, where the talent is brought on board whenever a company needs the horsepower to take care of a given project. Companies will no doubt have their core of reliable stars. Just as a director tends to go back to the same cinematographer, fluctuate quarter to quarter depending on the project load. These stars can hunker down as full-time employees because sometimes that just works better for people. But others may want to test the waters of the on-demand workplace.

Managers don’t need to bear hug their employees and never let them go. What about giving them freedom, if that’s what it takes to retain their occasional services and keep them both happy and working part-time for you? Maybe a person wants to travel less for the job because of kids, or conversely, just likes the challenge and stimulation of working on different kinds of projects each month. These on-demand pioneers would be free to say yes or no to a project depending on what else they had going on and what else they needed. For us, the goal should be giving both sides the flexibility to operate at peak efficiency. Businesses have access to talent when they need it—and people are able to do their best work every day.