What can Uber teach us about the future workplace benefits?
Uber epitomises the disruptive company.
Firstly, technology has allowed it to completely change a long-established industry.
It has allowed it to steal a march on the traditional taxi driver, and change the pricing structure.
No longer do potential London Cabbies need to spend years learning ‘The Knowledge’. Any qualified driver can now simply plug in a satnav (GPS) to get you to your destination.
Technology will do the same to other well-entrenched industries and professions in years to come.
Secondly, Uber is one of several enterprises that make up the new 'sharing economy' where collaborative working rules.
Just as AirBNB doesn’t own hotels (clients share their homes), and Facebook doesn’t employ journalists (users write its 'news'), Uber also doesn’t employee taxi drivers (they work on contract).
Although this latter point about Uber could be in shaky ground.
For several months now, there has been a court case rumbling on in the United States where a driver challenged Uber about his employment status. A few weeks ago, a California labour commissioner ruled that the driver who filed the claim was, in fact, an Uber employee.
Last week a similar legal process started in the UK.
So the line between who is a contractor and who is an employee is going to get very blurry.
Which brings me to the third point, and one which benefits managers and suppliers may wish to ponder carefully: the Uber workforce.
These aren’t actually people who work for Uber. Rather, it is the nickname given to people who work as contractors or freelancers for employers. Sometimes for several employers at once.
They work when they are needed, so are called the ‘on demand’, ‘gig’ or 'Uber' workforce.
Already, almost 20% of organisations are made up of these 'on-demand' people.
Look around you. How many of your colleagues are on contracts (short, long or zero hours), temping or work for an outside company fulfilling a service on behalf of your own company.
The prediction is that the proportion of ‘Uber workers’ will rise to 30% of workforces in the near future.
The challenge for employers, and HR in particular, is how do you get these ‘Uber staff’ to live the ethos and culture of your organisation during their gig with you?
They will be dealing with your staff and perhaps even your customers on your behalf. So should you try to tie them in to your employer brand during their time with you?
Will you try to offer them benefits to achieve this?
Or should traditional employee benefits thinking be turned on its head for this transient workforce?
Perhaps workers should be empowered to choose the benefits they want, with no link to their employer(s). These benefits could be portable across jobs.
We might see suppliers develop platforms which Uber workers can sign up to to get the benefits they most need. The platforms would need a multi-payer option so that different employers could pay into the same worker's package.
The type of innovative benefits that might be needed by these workers could include risk insurances, perhaps a form of income protection, which could be used to replace wages from several sources if the worker falls in or is injured.
If not that exact prediction, then what? Because if a third of people are going to be working outside formal employment there is going to be a shift in the way they need benefits.
Worth a thought, isn’t it?
