Worker Optimization

 

The nature of worker has continuously evolved since Egyptians create the age of Agriculture around 8000 BC.  The agriculture worker migrated into mechanical jobs and making paper and glass to factors that now produce smart phones. About 30 years ago we began the age of internet which has once again dramatically transformed the way we live and work. In February 2004, Facebook launched its social website and since then we have become not just a digital world but a social world where human minds are interacting virtually from dating to wisdom of crowd problem solving. We believe the Virtual Age is just around the corning where organizational structures are giving way to a fabric of services and enterprises are increasingly composed of an ecosystem of services rather brick, mortar, and parking lots.

 

Once this new model is better understood and early adopters show the way, a huge worker transformation is coming in the way we solve problems. People not Jobs will be categorized and optimized to drive speed, productivity, and differentiation.

 

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If spending on workers (people) for the average enterprise amounts to 50-90% of costs, why has the productivity of knowledge workers gained so little when compared to the 50 to 1 gain in automation productivity during the century? (Peter Drucker, 1999).  We believe the answer is the continued use of command and control organizational models where authority, roles, jobs, and processes are well defined. While this model has served us very well, it is too slow to adapt to take advantage of a socially connected virtual workforce. Knowledge workers are increasingly using devices, applications, and information and knowledge sources outside of their enterprise to solve daily problems. Starbucks and spare room at home are as much of the “office” as the assign cubical. Many companies are adapting “hoteling” models where knowledge worker come to work when and where they need to. Today, virtually every component of a business can be purchased as a service and much it on demand.

 

Below represents the model of worker productivity in a typical enterprise. The individual worker can internal or external and companies spend budgets each year to automate the worker.

 

Typical Enterprise

 

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Worker Productivity

           

There are over 4000 SaaS apps today. Top down approaches to software implementation will be increasingly sub-optimal. In the emerging Virtual Enterprise workers will know better in many cases the software they need than the IT organization. Worker applications are going to follow the path of consumers. Highly dedicated mobile apps tuned for niche functions and niche markets. Being to manage many different apps per worker will enable rapid onboarding and virtual projects. Workers will often discover their own processes and integration of apps and this innovation needs to be captured and shared.

The insourcing/outsoucing model is evolving from job definitions to service agreements. By optimizing the right worker to solve the right problem from a variety of internal and external sources talent can be more productively harness than typical job approaches. As further discussed in the WaaS section, optimizing the internal and external  Worker-as-a-Services alternatives enhances problem solving productivity in a similar way  as optimizing SaaS services optimizes worker productivity.

 

Optimizing Worker Productivity