This article is originally posted on Gigster.com
"Excellent description by Gigster CEO Chris Keene on how the enterprise's gig economy is changing work by making it more customer-centric and high performing. Don't miss the stories of companies actually doing this. "Dion Hintchcliffe, Constellation Research Vice President and Principal Analyst.
As software keeps eating the world, businesses have to find ways to build more innovative teams. Now, The Future of Work is here for those businesses. How companies reshape the way digital talent is engaged will have a huge impact on their ability to innovate. Here are six ways digital leaders can now create The Future of Work.
1. Remote workers and work from home teams are the new normal
The best talent is not always placed where you are. Even within a company, silos can prevent the right people from working on the most critical projects for innovation. The best way to free up resources around the organization is to make it possible for team members to work remotely. Like AI / ML engineers, this is also the only way to build vital capability holes that aren't accessible inside the company. Supporting distributed teams requires the adoption of a common set of processes and tools for collaboration, including Slack, Github and Jira.
2. Hybrid teams beat monoculture teams
Innovation demands a complex blend of talent. The most creative teams combine in-house staff with business experience and global professional expertise with specialized technological skills. That's the opposite of the traditional model of system integration that outsources innovation. Hybrid teams also have the advantage of helping businesses develop in-house expertise by working side by side with professional freelancing talent.
3. Elastic Staffing beats fixed staffing
4. Employees want to be treated more like freelancers
Top employees want the freedom and flexibility of choosing how to work and what to do. This does not necessitate radical changes in organization. For example, applying the Google 20 percent rule, where workers can choose 20 percent of the time to pick their own projects, can increase morale and build skills. This allows more senior peer review staff to reduce risk from other projects. This also helps more younger workers flourish by being exposed to the complexities of modern business and technology.
5. Freelancers want to be treated more like employees
Top freelancers want the benefits of stability and work without sacrificing their flexibility. Companies that learn to work with freelancers effectively will have their pick of the best global talent. This includes setting up projects for success with distributed teams, incorporating advanced technologies, and providing predictability for freelancers that helps them plan effectively. In California, laws such as AB5 are beginning to mandate to provide more benefits for freelance workers, and to put them more on par with the benefits that full-time employees are getting.
6. Automated team and talent assessments are here
Technology would eventually reshape work, but now, technology is reshaping talent ratings. Every collaborative tool – from Slack, to Jira, to Github – has open APIs that can automatically collect data about the productivity and quality of work being produced by people and teams. Tools such as Pinpoint can gather that data. Applying analytics to this data enables the development of “karma scores” by individual and by team, to provide accurate and trusted assessment of skills.
Examples of The Future of Work today
A global telco has built hybrid teams that mix in-house staff with top global experts to speed up their machine learning projects and predictive analytics. Following Silicon Valley best practices, they manage these distributed teams and have been able to produce new applications that exploit AI up to twice as quickly as conventional in-house design teams.
An entirely new digital transformation business unit was created by one of the world's largest digital agencies using hybrid teams that blend employees and global freelance talent. This approach enabled them to onboard over 100 engineers in less than six months, with minimal recruiting costs.
Summary
The Future of Work describes a cultural shift that businesses need to adopt in order to grow their capacity for innovation. The pace of those changes is accelerating as more firms adopt new domestic work rules that support remote workers. Companies embracing an innovation culture in the Silicon Valley style can become more customer-centric, more able to tap new pools of talent, and dramatically reduce risk.
Original article by: gigster.com
Author Bio:
As the CEO, Chris is driving the mission of Gigster to de-risk digital innovation. Chris was previously VP Cloud for VMware, where he led Pivotal's $400 million spinout. Chris also founded and took Persistence Software (NASDAQ: PRSW) from the public
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