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7 Customer Service Tips for your Supply Chain

expectations Meta description: As supply chain disruptions continue, customer service still spearheads CX. Discover 7 customer service tips for your supply chain and how to approach optimizations.
Archives, Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily

7 Customer Service Tips for your Supply Chain

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Between persistent worldwide labor shortages and supply chain disruptions, businesses are facing an unprecedented challenge. Almost 30% of directors surveyed by BDO identify chain disruptions as “their greatest business risk” ahead. Yet, increased customer demand and heightened customer service expectations remain factors to be addressed.

Supply chain strains in a new age of customer service

Saying that the global pandemic has strained supply chains would be a gross understatement. What Deloitte identified early as exposed vulnerabilities that “global supply chains at risk” is now verified and echoed by the U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who predicts that U.S. supply chain “challenges […] will continue into [2022]”.

Yet, between modern eCommerce’s sheer convenience and Amazon’s revolutionizing delivery, the average customer has come to expect excellence. Customer service strongly informs the Customer Experience (CX), with its effects rippling across satisfaction, retention, and advocacy. Studies find that 82% of customers expect supply chain transparency, consistent delivery updates, and swift, personalized customer service.

7 customer service tips for your supply chain

With this context in mind and seemingly no end in sight for global supply chain disruptions, customer service and supply chains must interweave toward a better CX. While the subject warrants intense
exploration, we may outline seven key steps in this process.

#1 Identify customer expectations and segment accordingly

As no two businesses or customer bases are identical, the initial step should be thorough data collection. For this phase, you may conduct surveys, engage in social media, and otherwise gather qualitative data on customer expectations. This will identify exact customer service optimizations you may deem desirable and profitable across your supply chain.

In addition, you may add customer service expectations as an additional segment filter for your audiences. Doing so will deepen your customer insights further, yielding more marketing and operational benefits even beyond customer service.

#2 Engage in business introspection

In turn, you may then focus your sights internally and examine your business’s inner workings. For this step, you will need to identify your business goals and positioning, so you may then weigh them against customer service optimizations.

Typical practices for this step include employee surveys and meetings with key partners and shareholders. How you do so will depend on your business size, scope, and goals, but you should, in all
cases, gauge your perceived customer service quality and supply chain collaboration levels, as well as the willingness to change.

#3 Align costs with service

Finally, before committing to changes to customer service across the supply chain, you may use your acquired insights to weigh costs against service improvements and expected gains. There is no quick
fix for the ongoing supply chain burdens, which you must account for.

This highly subjective step strongly hinges on your budget, exact customer needs and expectations, and internal sentiment. Still, going through it will help ensure you are not embarking on needlessly large- scale or otherwise ill-informed business journeys.

#4 Provide real-time order tracking

Once you have started implementing the changes you deemed appropriate, it’s highly advisable to provide customers with real-time order tracking. This practice is increasingly standard, but it also offers customers tangible transparency.

As regards CX, doing so meets near-universal customer expectations – as the aforecited MyCustomer study illustrated. It also helps combat the extremely common phenomenon of post-purchase anxiety. In combination, the two will, in turn, often ease the strain on your customer service departments as well.

#5 Automate customer service

Nonetheless, customer service queries will always pour in. For this reason, you may leverage technology to automate customer service and further ease the strain on your representatives.

For this step, you may consider chatbots, whose adoption rates and efficiency are increasing, live chat options, self-service resources, etc. Should your existing assets like Customer Relationship Management (CRM) allow it, you may also automate query acknowledgment and task delegation.

#6 Homogenize customer service across subsidiaries

As you do, you must ensure all subsidiaries offer a coherent experience regarding customer service. CX consistency is a critical component of customer satisfaction and can best inspire trust in a time when the Edelman Trust Barometer stresses it is sorely needed.

To do so, you may homogenize staff training and clearly and consistently communicate the values you want them to uphold. You may, by all means, adapt subsidiaries’ identities to meet unique location- based needs; still, customer service quality should remain consistent.

#7 Continue to monitor your efforts

Finally, as with all business endeavors, you should continue monitoring your post-implementation efforts. Doing so will help ensure you always have a clear overview of customer sentiment and brand perceptions, so you may correct your course as needed.

For this perpetual step, you may continue conducting surveys, collecting feedback across channels, and more. Combine qualitative with quantitative data, such as that collected in your CRM or other
databases, to refine and fine-tune accordingly.

In closing
To summarize, customer service across the supply chain has become a profoundly vital factor to consider. Customers expect transparency and swift, effective, personalized customer service more than ever before. For businesses, ensuring these qualities helps counterbalance the impact of supply chain disruptions on CX and customer satisfaction and retention. While rudimentary, this list hopefully substantiated this claim and outlined a safe process you may follow.

About the author
Brian Williams is a freelance copywriter and web developer based in Houston, TX. He is an avid SEO practitioner with a keen interest in CRM and its wealth of applications in modern business. He frequently contributes content to manhattanmoversnyc.com and other companies in the relocation industry, where he shares his insights on audience segmentation, branding, local SEO, and other valuable business practices. In his spare time, he enjoys the great outdoors no less than the vast digital world.

employee job accountability supply chain How to Identify and Address Productivity Gaps Among Supply Chain Employees
Archives, Global Trade Daily

How to Identify and Address Productivity Gaps Among Supply Chain Employees

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Productivity has always been a leading concern for supply chain companies. As the industry grows increasingly competitive and faces mounting disruptions, it’s become an even more pressing concern.

A recent survey found that nine in ten supply chain leaders say they need to increase hiring to meet peak demand. Ongoing labor shortages can make that difficult, so organizations must also make the most of their current workforce. They need to maximize their productivity.

Boosting productivity begins with finding areas where it needs improvement. Here’s how supply chains can identify and address productivity gaps.

Identifying Productivity Gaps

It can be difficult to know where to begin with productivity optimization. Supply chain leaders may feel they’re already at their peak efficiency. Alternatively, they may notice room to improve but not understand what specifically to address.

Supply chain organizations can identify productivity gaps through a few different means. Going through these three processes and comparing the results can help uncover where the most critical areas to address are.

Benchmark Against Competitors

The first step in finding productivity gaps is comparing key performance indicators (KPIs) to competitors. Recent SEC guidance requires KPIs to come with disclosures like clear metric definitions and how a company calculates them. Companies can take that information to understand their competitors’ success and how they measure it.

Once supply chain organizations have these benchmarks, they can compare them to their own KPIs. It’s important to account for any discrepancies between the companies’ metrics and measuring techniques to provide the most accurate comparison.

Comparing KPIs can reveal where some productivity gaps may lie. Even if a company outperforms competitors overall, it may fall behind its benchmarks in one or two specific areas. Those areas could be home to productivity pain points. While these differences can arise from many places, any shortcoming warrants further investigation.

Compare Goals to Results

Next, supply chain leaders can look internally. A company may perform well compared to others in the industry, but that doesn’t mean there’s no room for improvement. Reviewing goals and how recent results compare to those targets can reveal more shortcomings.

The easiest way to perform this analysis is to compare current KPIs to past goals. Has the company met the targets they’ve set in the past? Are they on track to meet future goals? The categories that show the largest discrepancies between expectations and results are likely where the largest productivity gaps lie.

It’s important to break KPIs into specific categories to isolate problem areas. At the same time, businesses must also map the relationships between KPIs to see how they affect each other. One category’s performance may hinge on another’s, so it’s important to understand these relationships.

Survey Employees

Employees are an excellent but often overlooked resource for identifying productivity gaps. While workers may not have a complete picture of management processes, they understand their specific workflows intimately. This familiarity can give them insight into areas for improvement that management lacks.

Studies show that happy workers are 13% more productive, so the source of lackluster performance may lie in employee satisfaction. Regular surveys and interviews can help reveal which factors impact this satisfaction, both positively and negatively. Common themes between workers’ responses are likely key productivity blockers.

Similarly, employee surveys can ask about workflow improvements that workers think could help. It’s highly likely that at least one worker has noticed how part of a process slows their work down. If multiple employees talk about the same process hindering their productivity, it’s worth looking into.

Addressing Productivity Gaps

After identifying productivity gaps, supply chain organizations must work to fix them. The most effective strategy will depend on the specific gap in question, but these generally fall into a few distinct categories. Adjustments in training, work environments and technology can maximize productivity in virtually every area.

Emphasize Training

Productivity gaps often result from skills gaps. That could mean that employees lack technical knowledge and abilities to streamline their work, or it could apply to soft skills. In either case, more comprehensive training can help remove these productivity barriers.

Seemingly small adjustments can make a considerable difference here. For example, teaching warehouse employees proper lifting techniques and the importance of using them can prevent burnout from repetitive stress. Employees will then be able to work longer before getting tired, maximizing their productivity.

Similar methods can work with office staff, too. Employees should look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds after every 20 minutes of looking at a computer screen. This will reduce eye strain, preventing the loss of productivity and focus that comes with it. Teaching office employees tips like this can help them consistently perform their best.

Address the Work Environment and Culture

A distracting work environment is another common cause of productivity loss in supply chains. Softer but more consistent lighting and comfortable working temperatures can minimize environmental distractions that hinder productivity. Similarly, white-noise machines can drown out distracting noise in office settings.

Workplace culture plays a substantial role in this area, too. One of the most important things to address in this regard is communication. Employees and managers must consistently communicate so everyone knows what others expect of them and people learn of changes or issues faster. Holding regular meetings and using instant messaging platforms can help.

Making sure the workplace is engaging and empowering is another crucial step. Listen to employees to learn what they need or would appreciate to feel more respected and engaged. When workers feel satisfied in their work environment, they’ll be more productive.

Capitalize on Technology

If workplaces face more concrete productivity challenges, technology may be the answer. Automation is one of the best tools for improving productivity, as it minimizes repetitive, non-value-adding tasks, letting employees accomplish more and remain engaged.

Some of the most valuable automation applications in warehouses are picking and material moving. Walking accounts for more than 50% of picking time, so these workflows are ripe for automation. Robots can easily handle many of these processes, and human workers can then focus on other, less inefficient tasks.

Automation can benefit office workers, too. Robotic process automation (RPA) can handle repetitive tasks like scheduling, data entry and file organization to give employees more time to perform more value-adding work. Programs that consolidate multiple processes to reduce clicking between windows are also helpful.

Optimizing Productivity Starts With Finding Gaps

Supply chains today must be agile, but to achieve that, they must address shortcomings within their operations. Recognizing where they can improve is the first step to becoming more productive.

When supply chain leaders understand and follow these steps, they can make the most of their workforce. They can then accomplish more work in less time, outperforming their competitors and ensuring future success.

Why In-Person Interaction Remains Critical In The Age Of Remote Work
Archives, Global Trade Daily

Why In-Person Interaction Remains Critical In The Age Of Remote Work

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Not long after the COVID-19 pandemic forced a shift to remote work, the internet security research firm Twingate conducted a national survey to find out what workers missed most about going to the office.

Heading the list: “Social connections,” followed closely by “human contact in general.”

Those answers aren’t surprising to Phil Kelley Jr. (www.philkelleyjr.com), author of Presence and Profitability: Understanding the Value of Authentic Communications in the Age of Hyper-Connectivity.

“Interactions with other people are essential to human beings and those interactions significantly affect our state of mind,” says Kelley, who is also president and CEO of Salem One, a company that specializes in direct marketing, packaging, printing and logistics. “We were built to interact, to socialize, to gather and sort ourselves into social groups.”

Kelley understands the need and advantages of flexible remote-work schedules. He just worries that if remote work isn’t handled correctly – and if trends continue such as hot-desking policies where no one is assigned a permanent workspace at the office – the big loser will be corporate culture. And when culture suffers, so does the entire enterprise.

“It’s well established that a great organizational culture – one where people feel engaged, connected, purposeful – helps achieve financial success,” Kelley says. “This is because the attitudes of the people in an organization ultimately reach and affect customers. To put it simply, satisfied employees tend to foster satisfied customers.”

Developing A True Connection

That’s why it’s important to promote the development of authentic connections and good relationships within a company, he says.

“Unfortunately, building and maintaining good internal relationships gets more difficult when those relationships are mediated by technology via email, texts, phone calls or video calls,” Kelley says.

While some communication is better than none, what’s ultimately important is making a true connection, he says. For that purpose, a phone call is better than an email, a video chat is better than a phone call, and in-person is best of all.

“If working from home is done in such a way that eliminates employee interaction, then you will lower the quality of your culture,” Kelley says. “That will in turn lower employee satisfaction and increase turnover.”

He says it all goes back to a saying popularized by writer and management consultant Peter Drucker: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Kelley says, “because strategy is about abstract ideas and culture is about the connection between human beings. The more business people are attuned to the human need for making connections, the more successful they will be, because the need for connection is one of the most basic human needs.”

Making An Appearance

In that regard, Kelley recommends that ambitious employees make appearances at the office as much as possible, even if they routinely work remotely.

“If you are the sort of person who wants to advance, wants to sit in that big corner office, or even if you simply want the next promotion or raise, it is always best to take the path of highest relational value,” Kelley says. “Go into the office if given the choice of doing that or working from home. Go in person to that group meeting if they will let you in the door.”

He also suggests businesses make the effort to connect their brand to community-focused initiatives. That enhances corporate culture while helping the company connect in a different way with the customers it serves.

“Having your employees working alongside impassioned community volunteers and leaders for the betterment of all should be on the top of every brand promotion list,” Kelley says. “Engage your company with industry trade organizations, civic and church projects, charities, educational events, and so on. These kinds of activities are communication-value multipliers.

“Relationships are so important to people that any company that makes a real connection with a customer can win that customer’s loyalty for life.”

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Archives, Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily, Warehousing

5 KEY FACTORS TO IMPROVE WAREHOUSE WORKFORCE MANAGEMENT

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The global e-commerce industry could grow up to $2.7 trillion by the end of 2021. Jobs must be filled, and warehouse operations will likely accelerate at an unprecedented pace. Yes, robotics and automation technology can improve the efficiency of the workforce, but the people working in these warehouses still represent the backbone of the industry. 

The five factors that follow are vitally important if you wish to improve your management scheme and enhance morale in the workplace. Do not be afraid to make changes—even if you manage a “well-oiled” machine. Society is changing by the second, and making progress at work requires a few changes from time to time.

Focus on Employee Engagement and Retention

Given the recent boom in demand for warehousing, attracting and retaining talent has become increasingly more difficult. What’s more, this comes down to a lot more factors than simply salary and benefits.  

The more intangible factors include recognition, personal development and opportunities. Or in other words, engagement. An emerging trend in this field is the gamification of warehouse work. Similar to fitness tracker apps, these digital platforms have goals and milestones for employees to achieve. Once achieved, they’re rewarded with both virtual recognition, such as topping a leader board or gaining badges, as well as more tangible perks such as reserved parking spaces and gift cards. 

The idea is to provide positive reinforcement to workers, so instead of doing the minimum required for their paycheck, they go the extra mile and earn lots of small perks along the way.

Aside from the more fun and inventive engagement tactics such as gamification, managers shouldn’t forget the basics. Being present on the warehouse floor for a portion of each shift pattern, and taking a bit of time to check in with staff, is still one of the best ways to build rapport. This also helps nip in the bud any issues that workers may have, before potentially becoming a bigger problem. 

Forming Strategic Partnerships with Staffing Agencies

As warehousing demands continue to increase and seasonality continues to drive peaks, forming strategic partnerships with staffing agencies is becoming more crucial. A good agency that you have a long-term and trusted relationship with can be relied upon to provide quality hires as you ramp up to manage increases in order cycles. 

The more agencies you partner with, the more you’re spreading your risk. Think about an extreme but possible staffing scenario, where order volumes spike to the near physical capacity of the facility. How many additional hires would you need to manage this? How many hires could each of the staffing agencies you partner with be able to provide within a few weeks to a few months? 

This is also where building strategic relationships with the staffing agencies you work with are crucial, so you have confidence that they’ll prioritize your needs above other operators that are also trying to staff for seasonal peaks. 

When it comes to striking the optimal balance between permanent, directly employed workers, and agency temps, the 80/20 rule is a good one to work to. This ensures that the majority of the workforce are committed permanent members of staff “in it for the long haul,” while the remaining 20 percent allows you to easily scale up or down with seasonality. 

Implement COVID-19 Screening and Security

With all warehouse operators having spent the past 12 months getting their premises COVID-19 secure, now is a great time to think about your screening regimen and any improvements you should make.

A debate you may be having right now is what the best type of screening process is for your operations, especially seeing as experts expect COVID-19 to continue having an impact on our daily lives for the whole of 2022.  

There are two broad options available here: symptom screening or virus testing. Symptom screening is the far more affordable option compared to testing and has the least impact on your employee scheduling. App-based screening platforms enable employees to self-screen for symptoms before they leave their homes for the start of each shift. This can also be supplemented by temperature checks on arrival. 

Virus testing, on the other hand, will detect asymptomatic cases and early infections, but the costs can be prohibitive for many warehouse operators. And of course, you need to plan regular testing around shift patterns and consider what the pay implications are of asking employees to report to work 30 minutes before their shift starts to receive an on-site rapid test.

It’s little surprise then that screening employees for COVID-19 symptoms is a more practical solution for many warehouse operators, who are looking for a cost-effective way to protect staff while also lowering a business’s risk of litigation and, potentially, its insurance premiums.  

Reassess Demand and Reoptimize Processes 

Demand for specific goods has shifted enormously over the past 12 months, which has had a big impact on warehouse product velocity. So, the products that were moved most frequently in the recent past may no longer be the case. Therefore, operators need to ensure they’re regularly reassessing their velocity slotting, at a much greater frequency than perhaps they were pre-pandemic, given how volatile demand has been for certain products since. 

As demand levels shift, distribution centers must become a lot more agile, quickly reassigning priority shelving and circulation flows, and relaying this information to employees as part of the process. Employees will then have an easier job on their hands hitting targets if products are being more frequently reassigned to shelving based on up-to-date movement flows.  

Invest in Enhanced Labor Management Systems

With the high demand for warehouse staff pushing up wages, especially with the likes of Amazon paying above average and inflating wages in the areas where they’re based, cost savings will become more crucial than ever throughout 2021. To this end, many operators are focusing on enhanced labor management systems (LMS) to deliver much of these savings.

With the ethos shifting from using these systems to identify underperformers, to instead uncover ways to optimize the workforce, an intelligently deployed LMS can help distribution centers to achieve more with less.

A big focus now with LMS is measuring and comparing the performance metrics across different facilities within the same organization. A few years ago, this would have been prohibitively expensive for many, but thanks to cloud computing and SaaS pay-as-you-go models, this is now easily affordable. And once you can measure something, you can improve it, such as focusing efforts on underperforming facilities.  

But of course, it’s not just at the macro level that LMS are increasingly being used to measure performance; the focus is also on the level of the employee. AI is helping managers to demand forecast in real-time better than ever before, based on pick counts and other KPIs during each shift. So, 2021 could be the year that we start to see fewer managers moving staff around on the fly and instead begin to rely on predictive modeling.    

Ultimately, the past 12 months were focused on survival and rapid-adaption for many businesses. Now we’ve made it through the tough part, it’s time to take a pause, take stock, reassess processes, and then begin optimizing for the new normal. And focusing much of that attention on workforce management improvements is a great investment for any distribution center.

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Adam Day is president & CEO of Time Rack, a time & attendance, payroll integration, and HR SaaS platform that provides warehouse time & attendance systems and HR administration services that create work-life harmony. Visit timerack.com to learn more.

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Archives, Commentary, Global Trade Daily

COVID-19, Remote Work, and Technology: Was 2020 just a blip?

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How did 2020 reshape your business?

While some organizations were better prepared for a shift to working from home, only 14% of businesses worldwide had fully remote workforces prior to the pandemic.

This means that, at some level, 86% of us had to make sudden, rapid changes to adjust to an entirely remote way of operating, communicating, and leading.

As Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella put it last April: “We’ve seen two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months. From remote teamwork and learning to sales and customer service, to critical cloud infrastructure and security—we are working alongside customers every day to help them adapt and stay open for business in a world of remote everything.”

Now that vaccines are beginning to roll out and the prospect of returning to our offices becomes more tangible, the next question we face is this: Which elements of 2020 will stick, and which will we discard as soon as it’s safe to do so?

COVID-19 ushered in 6 primary changes to the way we work

The most obvious change to our work environments is that we made a quick shift to remote work—with varying levels of disruption and success. If we zoom in a bit closer, we can pull out six major changes:

1 – We embraced collaboration tools.

Microsoft Teams has seen a 160% increase in users from March to October, Slack sold for $27.7 billion, and Gartner predicts the worldwide market for social collaboration tools to reach $4.8 billion by 2023. While these tools were plenty popular pre-pandemic, many businesses found themselves without a way to communicate with a fully remote team and quickly implemented one package or another (or, in some cases, multiple packages).

2 – Live document coauthoring finally got our attention.

With “old school” collaboration methods off the table, we finally jumped head-first into tools that many of us already had access to, but weren’t really using—namely Microsoft SharePoint and Google Drive. Instead of emailing documents back and forth or trying to whiteboard over Zoom, we posted links in our new Slack or Teams channels and edited our project simultaneously.

3 – Video conferencing exploded.

Between Zoom (up to 300 million daily participants), Teams (up to 115 million daily users), and Google Meet (up to 100 million daily participants), we were on so many video calls last year. In fact, we spent so much time using these tools that “Zoom fatigue” became a thing we say in real life. The market for these tools is expected to hit $50 billion by 2026.

4 – Virtual events… happened.

All of our networking, fundraising, recruiting, team building, and client appreciation events went virtual. We tried webinars virtual conferences, virtual happy hours, virtual magic shows, and on and on and on. These, from anecdotal evidence, were better than nothing, but generally hit or miss.

5 – We stopped caring so much about where employees and new hires live.

If we’re all working from home, “home” can be anywhere. With 70% of company owners open to letting their employees work remotely after offices can safely reopen, we open the door to hiring the best talent regardless of their geographic location. There are a few hurdles to clear when it comes to expanding your company’s footprint (taxes and healthcare, for example), but we’ve quashed all concerns about effective remote work.

6 – We took less time off and burned out more.

Lastly, the combination of working from home and diving into applications that generate notifications 24/7 has further blurred the lines between “work” and “home.” A recent Monster survey found that 69% of workers are feeling burnout, 59% are (still) taking less time off than they normally would, and 42% don’t plan to take any time off.

So, which of these trends should we expect to stay for the long haul? Which will go? Here’s my take.

Trends that will stick through 2021 and beyond

When it comes to practices that boost efficiency and expand access to something as invaluable as top talent, few businesses will scrap them.

We’ll stick with video conferencing. In the first few months post-vaccine, many of us will have been so starved for in-person meetings that we’ll schedule as many as we can. Over time, however, I suspect we’ll find a happy medium and balance video conferencing with face-to-face meetings—perhaps opting to make new connections in person and maintain them over video. This balance will be of particular value to those of us in metropolitan areas, where one hour-long meeting chews up half a day with traffic!

Document collaboration won’t budge. Once your teammates (and your clients!) have gotten a taste of how much more efficient real-time collaboration is, there will be no going back. It won’t be a matter of whether we keep this solution, but how we bolster it with the right policies and security measures.

Slack and Teams won’t either. We’ll see a new trend of businesses getting smarter with how they use Slack and Teams—and in cases where employees jumped into multiple platforms as a stop-gap, there will (should!) be some consolidation. But overall, we won’t be turning down the tools that have such power to amplify productivity and engagement.

We’ll expand our recruiting efforts. As long as a particular role does not explicitly require feet on the ground at or our office or at client sites, most of us will be much more willing to let go of geographic restrictions on our job postings in an effort to find the absolute best fit.

Trends most businesses will abandon post-vaccine

In other cases, our businesses will be happy to revert back to traditional approaches:

We won’t ditch our offices (at least not yet). Few of us are going to follow in Twitter’s footsteps and go all virtual all the time; we have years left on our leases, and will get our money’s worth once we can do so safely. When that lease is set to expire we’ll have a big decision to make as far as remote work is concerned. Even then, the majority of larger businesses plan to perhaps downsize, but ultimately keep a brick-and-mortar office as we still see value in the happenstance interactions and energy generated by working together in person.

Goodbye, virtual happy hours! To the business community’s credit, we have been getting extremely creative with virtual events that are fun and engaging. But once we can opt for an in-person happy hour versus a virtual happy hour, or a live lunch-and-learn versus a webinar… the choice becomes a no-brainer.

Hello, vacations! Finally—and thankfully—we’ll resume traveling and being more protective of our time “off the clock” once our options open up. This will be a welcome chance for our folks to step back from the many hardships that we’ve faced over the past year, rest, and reenergize.

Final thought

While these are my predictions on how these trends will fare over time, now is the time to crystalize the vision of what the future of your business looks like. Work with your leadership team sooner rather than later to address the following:

1. What is your stance on remote work post-vaccine, and how will you communicate that to your team?

2. How will you make sure you’re getting the most out of your collaboration tools?

3. What is your policy on file sharing, and does it take backup and security into proper account?

4. What guidelines will you set for video conferencing as communication, sales, and engagement tool?

5. Will you change your approach to networking, events, and celebrations?

6. Will you set geographic limitations on your hiring efforts?

7. What message do you need to send regarding after-hours and weekend work? Vacation?

We’re fortunate to be in a place where we can see the light at the end of the tunnel with regard to the pandemic. But even if we abandon some of our COVID-era trends in favor of more “normal” alternatives, the impact of 2020 on our businesses will not be undone.

We embraced new tools. We found new efficiencies. We know remote work works.

Why go backwards?

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Archives, Global Trade Daily, Stories

Want to Ride the Coming Gig Economy Boom? Map Your Processes First.

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Who sets workflow parameters in your business? Is it a control-heavy CEO? Department heads? The HR people who bring in the muscle? If it’s any of those three, your organization is overlooking the experts on what it takes to achieve goals and innovate: employees.

Trends in hiring options show big potential for companies to boost performance and nail objectives by augmenting permanent staff with project-oriented contractors. Project-based hiring promises greater efficiency and a chance to attract expert talent on a case-by-case basis, giving your workforce more power and flexibility. But to call this a move toward outsourcing is to simplify the job that business leaders and HR professionals face first.

Embracing new ways of hiring will depend on taking a fresh look at how work gets done inside your organization. In other words, to slot the right workers to the right projects, those projects need concise definition, so the right people can be found. The tool for that task is culture. Build transparency and acknowledgment into your company culture to fully identify and hone your job processes.

Transparency Helps Outline Job Breakdowns

The key to contracting specific projects to specific talent is, well, being specific. If you’re looking for a full-time employee to cover a number of tasks, the old, broad job description model still works. But if you’re looking for a series of experts to carry projects over the finish line, you’ll want to pinpoint what you want those people to do, for how long, and to what end. You can use your permanent and rotating staff to help draw those outlines.

Since you may have many microhires, the best way to manage knowledge of the processes they’ll follow is to let everybody on your staff know those boundaries. A project may wend its way through several departments and dozens of desks. When your whole team knows what everyone does and why, anyone will be able to point a person or a process in the correct direction.

Transparency brings this information to every manager and employee. In your regular team-building interactions, create a role-and-goal component. On its face, this is simple. What does each person in the company do? Why do they do it? What do they hope to achieve? At meetings or in internal communications, quiz the whole staff, from the CEO to direct reports, on these items. This is the beginning of mapping workflow and processes, and it should be a perpetual effort, as new people come in and new goals need to be met.

Acknowledgement Reveals What Works

With multiple contractors cycling through your workforce, you’ll want proven processes to guide them. Who decides what works? In a supportive culture, everyone should have a say. Analysis of growth and market share will back up how well the company machinery is working.

In your initial process mapping, you’ll survey each employee and departmental reps on how they do what they do, and how efficient and effective they think those methods are. Then, you can confirm or reject process steps via their outcomes. To keep all of this front and center with employees, use an acknowledgment system that is open to everyone.

For instance, if Kate finds a way to skip a step and hit a goal more efficiently, a colleague might notice and call attention to her improvement. Then, the department manager may take note and decide to implement that process across the board. This is why an open recognition system is important. When peers and those up and down the ladder see which current practices or new innovations aid in job performance, they can adopt them as well or encourage others to do so.

Contractors Help Pay It Forward

Have HR or department heads document your evolving processes, so that there is a map of best practices at any given time. Your hiring and onboarding procedures for contractors will reflect these tasks and techniques. You’ll also include these temporary hires in your roles-and-goals education, to whatever degree is relevant. This may seem like overkill, but it will create stability in what is necessarily a fluid situation.

Now you’re ready to use those expert contractors to their full potential. The new skills and talent they bring to the table will further innovate your job processes. And their knowledge of your internal structure will make them ideal candidates for future projects.

But keeping contractors informed and in the feedback loop does more than just positively affect your workflow. It helps reinforce forward-looking company culture. An organization’s culture is a living thing that transcends who is on the payroll at the moment. A strong culture that highlights how work is best performed will serve whomever you hire, well into the future.

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Chris Dyer is a recognized company culture expert among leadership speakers and consultants. He has channeled what he has learned in his business research and as Founder and CEO of PeopleG2, a leading background check company, into his best-selling book, The Power of Company Culture (Kogan Page, 2018).