#76: Unions & Starbucks...The New Jake Paul, Benefits For Freelancers, Google Steps Into The 1950's By Revamping Performance Reviews
Hell yes to Braintrust for enabling transparency and benefits. Hell no to Google for prioritizing performance reviews. A very formal hell yes to John Garvey of PwC for framing the freelance potential.
It’s Saturday, Luca Musk says ‘put that laptop down ASAP’.
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🙌 Braintrust introduces full time benefits and web 3 partners. In their words, “the freedom of freelancing and stability of benefits”.
WTBFD 1: We’re in the re-build phase where low hanging fruit is replicating what worked well in full time employment into freelance models.
For companies hiring freelancers - this means replicating what worked with full time retention into your freelancer talent pool. Learning/development, community, potentially even benefits.
For leaders building freelance models - providing on ramps to steady streams of work (doesn’t mean always having work, rather providing visibility and means to applying for work), community (not just a generic Slack channel).
Check out Jon Youngers leader portal for tactical approaches here!
WTBFD 2: Think bigger than what we already have. If work were to be invented today, how would we organize it. Another incredible aspect of Braintrust is there transparency - check out below 👇👇👇
Important Updates
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💩 Inflation…
CPI increases 8.3%.
According to the New York Times, “The pressures that have kept inflation elevated for months remain strong, fresh data released Wednesday showed, a challenge for households that are trying to shoulder rising expenses and for the White House and Federal Reserve as they try to put the economy on a steadier path.”
🥩 Where’s the beef? It’s between the Unions and Starbucks/Amazon
Starbucks hit with over 200 violations of the National Labor Relations Act according to Regional director of National Relations Board in Buffalo. According to CNBC, “The NLRB says Starbucks interfered with, restrained and coerced employees seeking to unionize in various ways”.
WTBFD: This shows the risk and importance of prioritizing classification into hiring freelancers.
🥸 Where the 1950’s at? In Google’s new performance reviews…
Google revamps performance reviews after employees cite low pay compared to competitors. Reviews are now once a year, and leaders believe changes will result in higher pay.
WTBFD: Performance reviews are like saddles - they might incrementally boost the speed of the horse, but ignore the new normal of having a car (a car in this case is embracing Human Cloud models for employee augmentation).
What if instead of investing all that money into tech and consultants, you invested it in incentivizing the type of leaders you want to see.
What’s an example of this in action? Internal Talent Marketplaces to connect employees through collaboration.
And another? Give employees budget to hire freelancers.
💻 Remote Work
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky is thriving ever since he made remote the default for every employee. Recently he said in a post:
“If the office didn't exist, I like to ask, would we invent it?”
“And if we invented it, what would it be invented for? Obviously, people are going to still go to hospitals and work, people are going to still go to coffee shops and work — those spaces make complete sense. But I think that for somebody whose job is on a laptop, the question is, well, what is an office meant to do?"WTBFD: What more do y’all need to see the ‘choice’ of remote is essential to compete.
💸 Acquisitions
Ollo (creative freelance platform) acquired by Bpool (agency platform). Jon Younger gave a good run down in his Forbes column.
WTBFD: Enterprises, VMS’s, and MSP’s are quickly playing catch up, and acquisition can at times be a shortcut.
🙌 Leader Shoutout, John Garvey, Global Financial Services Leader at PwC, for writing “The biggest cost reduction opportunity in financial services? It’s the gig economy”.
Key Learnings:
Cost is the main driver for freelancers.
He says, “Moving say a $100,000 average contractor that has a 40% markup to a talent platform with a 10-15% overhead cost would be game changing for many firms. Further savings are also possible by using a portion of this talent only when needed as opposed to typical long-term contracting arrangements.”
Changes to demand are the secondary reason as “greater use of gig workers overall greatly improves the ability of the business to flex to meet changes in demand”.
Inflation and decreased growth prospects are a catalyst.
He says, “With increasing inflation and lowered economic growth prospects, the road will not get any easier for the foreseeable future.”
Stay tuned, next week we’ll deep dive »
😂 LOLS - from Freelance Writer Kat Boogaard
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