{"id":8103,"date":"2020-06-03T07:31:34","date_gmt":"2020-06-03T07:31:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/?p=8103"},"modified":"2023-12-08T12:39:41","modified_gmt":"2023-12-08T12:39:41","slug":"covid-19-employee-exchanges-may-foretell-the-future-of-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/future-of-work\/covid-19-employee-exchanges-may-foretell-the-future-of-work\/","title":{"rendered":"COVID-19 Employee Exchanges May Foretell The Future Of Work"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Last year a group of Australian CEOs pooled their collective intellect and resources to ponder a five- to ten-year scenario: how should they manage the people in their workforce as technology programs eliminate roles through automation?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One possible solution they came up with was to exchange, or loan, employees between member organisations as demand for their skills dialled up or down.\u00a0<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\u201cSometimes some of our companies are going to have more need for one type of person, and have less need for another type of person,\u201d Lynette Mayne, co-chair of the local chapter of a group known as the B Team,\u00a0told Which-50 at the time.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo if I\u2019m automating an area and I don\u2019t need those skills \u2014 but one of the other companies needs them \u2014 why don\u2019t we give those employees to the other company for that period of time until we have a need for bringing them back into our company?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Less than a year later that hypothetical question is being tested, as entire industries were brought to a standstill overnight while others faced unprecedented levels of demand and a requirement to transform rapidly to deliver new, socially distant, contactless experiences.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cause of the disruption was not the expected robot revolution, but a biological force which has infected 5.3 million people, killed more than 340,000 worldwide and crippled huge swathes of the global economy.\u00a0<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Employers, consultants and analysts argue much can be gleaned from the COVID-19 experience about the future of work, providing important lessons on how to reallocate labour when disruption hits and creating an imperative to invest heavily in digital skills.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to McKinsey,<\/a>\u00a0preparing for the \u201cfuture of work\u201d has gone from a distant hypothetical to a very immediate priority, describing COVID-19 as \u201cone of the biggest destroyers of jobs in human history.\u201d The\u00a0McKinsey Research found<\/a>\u00a0significant overlap between the workers who are vulnerable in the current downturn and those who hold jobs susceptible to\u00a0automation<\/a>\u00a0in the future.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The Great Exchange\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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COVID-19 has provided a preview of a future where some roles quickly become redundant, while other areas of the economy can\u2019t hire fast enough.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One solution put forward by McKinsey & Co to deal with disruption is to rapidly build online \u201ctalent exchanges\u201d to create transparency on job openings and facilitate redeployment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is an urgent need for transparency on changing demand, growing job opportunities, and information on existing skills that may be underutilised and for better, faster matching between job seekers and employers,\u201d the consultants write.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIndustry associations, labour agencies, and groups of large companies can quickly create exchanges or portals on which employers can post new openings and displaced workers, backed by their existing companies, can find redeployment and secondment opportunities.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Australia, a B2B talent exchange was spun up in just seven days at the end of March by Hatch, a\u00a0student recruitment platform founded in 2017 by The Iconic co-founder Adam Jacobs and Zip co-founder Chaz Heitner.\u00a0<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Hatch has focused on placing university students in paid placements with Australian employers, based not on their limited CVs listing babysitting and flipping burgers, but on their ability profiles, values and motivators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Early in the year, at the very start of the COVID crisis, the founders knew from their conversations with the companies where they had been placing students that 2020 would not be a normal year.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Dislocation<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\u201cWhat we are hearing is that there was going to be an enormous dislocation of the labour market and that a large number of those organizations were going to have to stand down a very high percentage of their staff,\u201d Jacobs told Which-50, citing Qantas as an example of a company with an early insight into the potential extent of the disruption.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd then on the other side were organisations where the opposite was true. COVID was causing a surge in demand for them and they needed to ramp up their teams quite quickly. For example, we\u2018be been working with Woolworths, which very quickly had to ramp up the fulfilment centre, delivery and logistics.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To help solve a part of this problem the startup created a new site, Hatch Exchange, which identifies stood-down employees\u2019 transferable skills and matches them to new roles, based on the existing smarts inside the student recruitment platform.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The B2B marketplace requires employers to register to facilitate a temporary exchange of workers. The arrangement, Jacobs explained, allows the exchange to provide a hiring organisation with matches in 72 hours.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are trying to facilitate a temporary exchange. We\u2019re trying to protect permanent jobs and protect organisations\u2019 IP by allowing people to go work somewhere else for a period of time and then come home again,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This allows workers to gain new skills in a completely different industry and continue to generate an income with the goal of returning to their permanent job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s really important because if an organisation like Qantas or David Jones loses 50 per cent or more of their workforce through this crisis, it\u2019s going to set them back years in terms of loss of talent and IP,\u201d Jacobs said.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the two months since its launch, over 400 employers have asked to join the exchange\u00a0\u2014\u00a0either looking for roles for stood-down workers or requiring temporary workers to meet new demand\u00a0\u2014\u00a0representing 150,000 stood-down workers. Eleven thousand of those workers have registered for redeployment and 500 have been placed with new employers.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The job seekers are predominantly from industries including travel and tourism, hospitality, retail and the arts, from organisations like Qantas, Virgin, Flight Centre, Crown Resorts, Merivale and Marriott.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than 50 per cent of the stood-down workers registered on the exchange have more than ten years of professional experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a real mix of frontline workers who have been displaced, but also corporate teams have been displaced as well,\u201d Jacobs said.\u00a0<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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WANTED: Customer Service Skills<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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One of the organisations that tapped Hatch Exchange to temporarily bolster its workforce is Datacom, a\u00a0multinational professional services outfit, which found itself urgently in need of contact centre staff to provide services for the Federal Government agencies providing frontline services for the country\u2019s COVID-19 response.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In early April Datacom announced that it would hire and train more than 2000 people to help with demand for government services during the outbreak.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stacey Tomasoni, Managing Director of Datacom, told Which-50 hiring on that scale would usually take six months.\u00a0<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The candidates were hired from every state and territory, directly and through a number of different partners, including 140 staff from one of Datacom\u2019s clients experiencing a downturn. The new workers have joined from industries highly impacted by shutdown measures such as the airlines, retail and hospitality.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhile you can say they are from very many different walks of life, I think the one thing that is the common thread for all of those people is that everybody was hardwired to service; to be in service of others,\u201d Tomasoni said.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the type of thing that I think is less easy to train and it was a minimum requirement for us that you had to have the customer focus.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The labour exchange playing out during the pandemic has newly highlighted the importance of recognising transferable skills.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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One of the key lessons Jacobs has taken away from the past two months is that people are more resilient and adaptive than he expected\u00a0and someone\u2019s transferable skills stand them in good stead to move into a different type of work. For example, cabin crew have transitioned into other roles where they are still running teams or serving customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve been working with customers on aeroplanes for a long time, so it was quite natural for them to still work with customers, just in a new format and a new industry, perhaps in a government call centre or in financial services,\u201d Jacobs said.\u00a0<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Identifying Talent\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Based on the feedback from employers on the platform, underlying traits are also a strong predictor of job success, Jacobs said, noting that high performers will kick goals wherever they are.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re a performer at Country Road or Flight Centre and now we put you into a totally different type of work in an operations team at an online retailer, you are still a high performer,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think we\u2019ve been getting it wrong all these years as a business community, and I think the rules are changing around how you identify talent.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Focusing on the information served up in CVs such as job background, title, previous company, qualifications and university are not \u201cparticularly reliable predictors of someone\u2019s fit for a job,\u201d Jacobs explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An alternative approach to talent management could focus more on traits which are described as: problem solver, tenacious in face of adversity, creative thinker, good communicator, brings people together. All identifiers that are transferable across industries.\u00a0<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Future Skills &\u00a0<\/strong>Lifelong Learning\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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The trends playing out across Hatch Exchange have brought into sharp relief the areas where\u00a0Australia is facing a skill shortage, predominantly along the digital value chain.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the first month of operating the exchange, Jacobs said the platform saw a big need for frontline roles like more contact centre operators, more logistics and fulfilment centre team members. With the demand for those frontline roles now met, the need is shifting to skills in the technology space \u2014 software engineers, digital marketers, programme managers UX designers \u2014 as more and more revenue comes through online channels.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The digital value chain doesn\u2019t exclusively refer to technology roles, but the jobs clusters that support a digital operating model. For example, a supermarket\u2019s fulfilment or customer service centres.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Meeting this demand for capabilities will require a greater investment in lifelong learning, Jacobs argues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve had calls from over 30 major employers in the last couple of weeks to understand what\u2019s on their mind in terms of the road ahead,\u201d Jacobs said.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSomething that\u2019s really standing out is the need to reskill workforces; both internal workforces in existing employees and external terms to the broader economy to reskill them into the type of capabilities that are going to be in demand.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To position Australia well in a post-COVID world will require partnering with education providers to build the \u201ckind of capabilities that we need to be a global leader when it comes to the technology space and the digital space.\u201d<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\u201cAustralia, as an economy, has an opportunity to come through this crisis in a position where we\u2019re more resilient for the future of work, where we\u2019re training our workforce to be more adaptive and to build new skills to particularly be focused on the digital value chain,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Accelerating Automation\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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The need for workers along the digital value chain is likely to be accelerated as COVID-19\u00a0is widely predicted <\/a>to accelerate automation, to de-risk operations and cut operating costs.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Research from Forrester argues COVID-19 has made automation a boardroom priority.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAutomation has been a major force reshaping work since long before the pandemic; now, it\u2019s taking on a new urgency in the context of business risk and resiliency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe recovery will come. And when it does, the adoption of automation will take on a new urgency in the context of enterprise risk and resilience. Leaders will rethink old ways of tying work to specific locations or types of labour, whether that\u2019s human or digital,\u201d writes author Leslie Joseph,\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The research also notes that historically, firms recovering from recent recessions have increased their investments in automation, which has prolonged high unemployment levels.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn the aftermath of recessions between 1970 and 1982, it took two to six months for unemployment to begin to recover. But in the wake of the three recessions between 1991 and 2009, this process took 17 to 23 months. And these jobless recoveries occurred predominantly in middle-skill, routine jobs due to increased effectiveness of and investments in automation technology,\u201d Joseph writes.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How should manage the people in workforce as technology programs eliminate roles through automation? One possible solution is to exchange, or loan, employees between member organisations as demand for their skills dialled up or down. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":821,"featured_media":8104,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[116,248,247,108],"ppma_author":[3954],"class_list":["post-8103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-future-of-work","tag-automation","tag-employee-exchanges","tag-employees-roles","tag-future-of-work"],"authors":[{"term_id":3954,"user_id":821,"is_guest":0,"slug":"tess-bennett","display_name":"Tess Bennett","avatar_url":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Tess-Bennett-150x150.jpg","user_url":"http:\/\/which-50media.com","last_name":"Bennett","first_name":"Tess","job_title":"","description":"Tess Bennett, an award winning Journalist, is Editor at Which-50, Australia's leading digital intelligence business information service for C-Suite executives, strategists, founders and directors."}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/821"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8103"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34774,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8103\/revisions\/34774"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8103"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=8103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}