Technology as a driving force to make work better

With the 2016 presidential race quickly heating up, the on-demand economy and labor legislation are slated to be hot button issues in this year’s political debates. With 53 million voting-age Americans working as freelancers, presidential candidates from Jeb Bush to Hilary Clinton have realized the importance of this population and are actively campaigning to appeal to this group of new-age workers. This conversation shows change is already here front and center, but how can we use technology to benefit America’s workers?

As consumers, we drive technological change – we demand the ability to buy anything online, at any time of day or night, and have it delivered immediately. The rapid adoption of mobile technology has only accelerated our need for instant gratification.  

{mosads}We cannot control the advancement of technology and globalization, driven by consumer demands. And as has been pointed out by Robert Reich, Thomas Piketty and others, technology does not have a moral anchor – “technology, like the market, has neither limits nor morality,” as Piketty said in Capital in the Twenty-First Century. 

BUT we can make a concerted effort to develop technology that improves the lives of people that use it for their work.  

Over the past 30 years, desktop has profoundly changed the productivity of office-based knowledge workers. Similarly, over the next 10-20 years mobile technology is poised to change the productivity of workers around the world. 500 million people have access to desktop and laptop computers for their work, but the number of people using mobile devices for work will be several times this large.  

In The Future of Success, Reich provided a broad economic history of work in the 20^th century, and several prescient observations about the collective impact of globalization, technology and consumer behavior on work as we enter the 21^st century. In his recent blog post and article in Salon, Reich points out the potential perils of unrestrained employer flexibility when empowered by technology.  The scenario presented by Reich is truly hellish – “Employers assign workers tentative shifts, and then notify them a half-hour or ten minutes before the shift is scheduled to begin whether they’re actually needed. Some even require workers to check in by phone, email, or text shortly before the shift starts.”  Flexibility is bad for employees in the extreme discrete case presented by Secretary Reich.  But mobile technology – thoughtfully implemented – can also be used to benefit employees. 

Employers struggling to meet the demands of the “I want it now” consumer need additional flexibility just to stay in business. Many employees also appreciate additional flexibility in working hours. Technology can bridge the gap – allowing employees to specify when and where they want to work, what work they are qualified for, and mapping this to the work requirements of one or multiple employers.

Even Reich might agree that we will not move back to the mass production/consumption model of the 20^th century, with the majority of the workforce working a rigid 9-5 Monday to Friday schedule. Technology and globalization have irreversibly changed the nature of work. There is no going back.

But in the words of one of my former professors, John Gardner, the world needs “tough minded optimists.” People need good jobs. I believe that we can build mobile technology that benefits employers AND makes work better for employees.

Hale is CEO of Gigwalk, a mobile workforce management platform with 750,000+ on-demand workers.