How is Technology shaping the Future of Work?
In February 2021, Entrepreneur First Paris hosted a talk with Albert Reynaud, Co-founder and CEO of Semana on how technology is shaping the future of work, whether remote working truly is the new normal and Albert’s experience as a founder and alumni of EF programme.
Entrepreneur First has a deeply held belief that technology is a powerful tool that can disrupt the most aging industries and totally alter the way that societies behave. This has not been more evident than during the global disruptor of the COVID-19 pandemic. The last year has seen huge changes happen throughout the working world, as companies get used to remote working and its employees adapt to a socially-distanced way of life.
One year ago, Zoom, the tool used to host this session, was valued at €10 million. Today, it is worth more than the top 7 airline companies in the world. One year ago Albert met his co-founder Valerio Volpati at EF’s 4th cohort in Paris and began to build their company, Semana, together, while being in a full lockdown.
As Zoom shows, a lot changes in a year and now Semana, a Flex Office solution that organizes office life, has landed 7 customers.
Their tool has been recommended by Payfit as a top solution to organise workforce.
Semana is enabling HR managers to define remote working policy, plan employee presence across locations and optimise space allocation.
💡Why Semana and why now?
Albert and Valerio met each other quite early on in the programme, they were both interested in corporate mobility as an idea to build a company. However, with the EF team pushing them to get traction, they changed direction and gave themselves 2 weeks to reach out to 10 HR managers and compare their ideas. Those first customers came back to them with a ‘hair on fire problem’. The team decided to pursue solving this problem-space for a number of reasons:
- COVID had accelerated a phenomenon of remote working which was already present. This created an immediate need for HR managers to define a remote working policy and manage their workforce across multiple locations. In the years to come, Albert Reynaud the CEO of Semana expects “the average number of days worked remotely to increase by a factor of 6.”
2) The technology is ready for remote working and the ecosystem as well. 80% employees and employers want to work more remotely and the transition is now possible with 87% of the developed world having internet access. Also as Albert Reynaud mentioned:
“Remote working allows for more flexibility which increases productivity and improves the work-life balance”.
3) There is a strong financial incentive for employers and employees. With remote working people are spending roughly €3,000 less on commuting each year and employers could save €10,000 per desk.
“Remote working became a big enough problem to invest because of COVID and it became apparent that businesses will be looking at reducing office space in the future.” confirmed the CEO of Semana.
💡Will this truly be the new normal?
Big changes don’t happen overnight and the transition to remote working is happening in three phases:
- Handle the emergency. COVID placed huge limitations on office presence very quickly and businesses had to adapt to this emergency situation and deal with immediate issues. In this situation there are no ideals.
- Set new organisational rules. As remote working becomes a more cemented practice companies are needing to develop new policy, new tools and software that makes it comfortable and effective.
- Real Estate changes. Albert predicts that employees will work just 2 days per week in an office, resulting in 40% of unutilised office space. Organisation will be more and more distributed and employees will have many more options over where and how they work:
“There won’t be the disappearance of an office but there will be a choice”.
There are so many places that can represent the office of tomorrow: the home, the office, communal work spaces, transport and more. This leads us to question:
What is the purpose of an office and why go into work when it can be done anywhere?
Semana’s vision is not to make companies offices purposeless, rather it aims to optimise time spent together onsite and amalgamate business priorities and individuals preferences. Offices are better than remote working environments to do so many things:
“Offices are places for collaboration, creativity and socialisation and they will need to adapt to these new core purposes to attract employees”.
💡What remote working changes for Managers?
Semana is working closely with a number of managers to define a number of rules, parameters and preferences for each of their working environments. Each business has its own constraints and systems, and Semana helps diversify a range of options, but there are two aspects which all managers need to adapt and overcome in the coming years.
Firstly, communication. As work environments have digitised the anatomy of communication has vastly changed and expanded with more options such as call, text and direct speech. Written communication has made a resurgence within teams and interactions have become more structured. As Albert mentioned:
“Managers need to put in place rituals to keep the interaction and feedback effective”.
Secondly, trust. Managers can no longer keep an eye on employees during the working day and there is a tacit agreement in place that the outputs act as proof. There has been a rebalance in relationships and the way that performance is measured. As a result employees can have more ownership and there is the ability to set one’s own parameters. But this is not without its negatives:
“ Unlike ever before Managers need to take care of mental and physical health of employees”.
💡 Top tips from a Founder
As learnt during the EF programme, traction for early-stage startups is key. There is no investment without traction and there is no traction without placing the customer at the center, and this is something Semana understood and focused on from the beginning:
“You can’t be ready for VCs without customers and you need to give yourself time to reach certain milestones”.
The team identified their needs very early on in the process and didn’t want to talk to investors until they had a prototype, revenue and customers. Their intention was to build a product that was good enough to close clients and build revenue before talking to VCs. As Albert mentioned:
“EF taught us that what matters is defensible and byers of interest. We built this defensibility and defined our edge on a very hard topic with a problem as it was happening”.
EF is a Global Talent Investor that runs accelerator programmes across 6 countries which gather exceptional individuals who want to build a company & find a co-founder. The EF office in Paris opened 2.5 years ago and since then has created 40 companies in 20 different industries, see more here.
If you think you have what it takes to shape the future like Albert then apply here to our next cohort.
