The end of work?
Many VCs and entrepreneurs, including Fred Wilson (here) and Bill Gatesare warning us that automation, fuelled by fantastic advances in Artificial Intelligence, may wipe out most workers from their jobs, and mention that there could be a tax on those robots to help mitigate socially negative impact of such an increase in productivity.
Interestingly, Marc Andreessen highlights the fact that for the first time in history, automation concerns high-skilled jobs as well. Indeed, it’s easier for a machine to replace a lawyer (given that law is very standardized and codified, making it easy to grasp for an algorithm) than a garbage collector, whose movements very random.
New job models
For sure, the nature of work as we know it is changing dramatically:
- We’re probably transitioning from a 1-job model to a x-tasks one
- Competition on talent is increasing, be it a sectorial one (traditional jobs at corporates are gradually seen as boring as compared to startups) or between startups (as VC funding flows, the fight for talent increases)
- Hence, employee satisfaction has gone from a non-existent topic to a crucial issue
Many startups in France are trying to take there share of this opportunity, below is a mapping of these startups. It’s an iterative project, so please feel free to suggest some additions, modifications in comments.
Atomisation of tasks, rationalisation of processes, employee satisfaction
Some key learnings from my work about these trends work mentioning:
- Promoting employer branding becomes a key issue. As competition for talent increases (see above), startups and corporates are trying hard to become appealing to as much candidates as possible. WelcometotheJungle and PathMotion are truly interesting examples, with different focuses (Media vs Software)
- Job listing platforms are increasingly specialised and employee-centric. Also linked to competition for talents, and to very different supply-demand dynamics (scarcity of supply of software engineers, for instance), job listing platforms focus on a narrower subset of jobs and job-seekers (talent.io UK for developers, for instance)
- Job matching is becoming increasingly data-driven and algorithmic. Be it at the moment of job application (Riminder) or for employees already part of the company (Clustree)
- Employee satisfaction is paramount. As it is getting harder to hire new talent, it is now more important to keep A-players and to make them as productive (read: happy) as possible. A number of employee engagement software publishers are trying to take this nascent but growing market
- Continuous training and learning are ‘startup world’ values applied to traditional jobs. As technology and the business environment are evolving quickly, keeping employees up to date with bleeding-edge skills becomes critical. Besides, the regulatory environment in France fosters even further corporate training
- Regarding temporary work, three main trends are worth mentioning:
- Increased ambition to find small jobs for students, which is a highly qualified, hard working, highly available but cheap workforce
- The hospitality sector is being disrupted by digital models (holiday rentals, Airbnb, food delivery, etc.), and hence increasingly needs to be able to adapt its workforce. A growing number of startups use data and software to automate these short-term jobs
- Finally, living 100% from freelancing is now possible thanks to an increasing number and professionalism of platforms and to an increased willingness from established companies to outsource technical or creative tasks. Those platforms can now ensure a constant flow of projects for top-performing freelancers, who can in addition benefit from full-time job-like employee protection and productivity tools
I tried to map independent French startups in the HR-tech sector (hence the absence of companies like Breaz, Multiposting, etc. which have been acquired). Please let me know if I forgot or located one in a wrong box.
If you are an HR-tech startup or would like to share views on this market, please let me know in comments or on Twitter @bartjjj
