The Cars Aren’t Driving Themselves Yet

The On-Demand Economy (ODE) is about connecting people to goods and services. It’s about rewiring the world with decreasing friction, and opening access to new experiences. AirBnB made it ok to stay in a stranger’s home; UberX made it ok to get in a stranger’s car; and strangers deliver and do all types of tasks at the push of a button. Yet these are not just transactions with “strangers”, but connections to People. A challenge our industry faces is how we hold our workforce. At the heart of the On-Demand Economy are people and we seem to be forgetting this.

The trouble is, ODE companies turn interactions into transactions. The dialogue is focused on numbers — how many bookings, how many rides, how many deliveries, how many stars? These metrics do not talk to the hard working individuals that power our apps. Because to be honest, there is no magic to ODE. Burritos don’t just appear, and self-driving cars don’t shuttle you home each day. More often than not, ODE businesses are simply people providing you a service (albeit in a more organized, scalable fashion).

This challenge is reinforced by the legal relationship many ODE companies take with their workforce. The use of 1099 contracts is common, and while applicable in certain circumstances, designs a transactional relationship between a company and its worker. It places liability, planning, and costs on the contractor in exchange for “job flexibility”. It also prevents ODE companies from investing in training, support, and progression programs that advance the people delivering their services. This legal construct sets us up to over emphasize technology and undervalue the human interactions that make these platforms work.

Ask any ODE leader “What is constraining your growth, demand or supply?” and most will answer “Supply!” Why are we so afraid of emphasizing the people? Look at Starbucks, McDonalds, Aramark, Geek Squad — all successful businesses powered by the collective force of People.

At Alfred we take the approach of emphasizing our relationship with our people. We give our members a single point of trust across other ODE and local services. You get a dedicated Alfred Client Manager that visits each week to take care of your home, your to-do list, and you.

We strive to do things the way you would yourself, so intuition and training is incredibly important. The relationship members have with Client Managers are critical to delivering on our customer promise; so we designed a system that reinforces this. All Client Managers are W2 employees, receive ongoing training, career path options, and benefits where appropriate. We have chosen to make this investment because we recognize people — not just technology — power our business. For those crunching the numbers because employees cost more: the data speaks for itself. We have seen very high Client Manager retention rates and maintained high customer satisfaction.

So, treat your workforce as the primary customer. When you make tradeoffs that prioritize your employees’ experience and success you will organically have happy customers.

It’s time for us in the ODE to view our labor force as People to invest in and not the means to growing transactions. Technology has not eaten all the jobs yet, so let’s stop pretending it has. Instead, let’s celebrate the real jobs we create for real people and bring them back into the conversation.