Flex-working: The Democracy of work
Tags: Innovation, Products, Startup, Flexwork, Remote Work

From Gig economy to Flex-work on-demand subscription economy

Early this year, the Grupa team wrote a guide to flex-work and also another medium post on the flexible trends we observed which will become the future of work based on the analysis of layoff data and how people wanted to work during and post-Covid.

Tech companies are trying to do a lot to attract and retain the best talents: great pay, benefits, ownership, mission-driven, and purposeful work. Daniel Pink’s book on the truth about what motivates us; he captured 3 intrinsic motivations Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose + Ownership. Flexible work is about the democracy of work which is about giving workers the independence to work at their terms without needing to “own” them, their time, or their lives.

The Innovation Economy

As the world advances from the Mechanical economy to the knowledge economy and now to the innovation economy powered by abstractions: work needs to evolve too! The 9–5 schedule and management practices for the mechanical era shouldn’t be applied to the innovation and abstraction economy where “the mind is the tool”. People need to be in the right environment, organization’s space, given the freedom, flexibility, independence, and self-directness to invent the future at their terms and work preferences. Employees want life in work, not life at work. Work is not a place, it’s a state.

Independence + Flexibility + Support Structure

People should not be in service to work for themselves; people should be in service to a mission and purpose to deliver products that help people make progress and service to this purpose is what commitment and work should be about. Companies should build cross-functional teams around products and customers and each team should be enabled and empowered to work at their own terms and use their discretion to serve the needs of & and invent on behalf of customers.

We believe that the future of work will largely be flexible & on-demand + outcome driven+ Rewards + Perks + Preferences (Freedom + Autonomy & flex schedule).

Remote, Distributed & WFH/=Flexible Work

Work mode flavors such as remote, distributed, split-week (onsite some days and distributed other days), or work from home. All these dynamics and work mode arrangements don’t necessarily mean flexible work. We have seen companies still implement the same in-office policies for such modes of work. Flexible arrangements involve people in charge of setting schedules, terms, and conditions for workers. It means they necessarily have complete control to define the work based on their preferences.

Rise of Flexworkers & Flex-working

Flexworkers are elite talents who want the full-benefits and privileges of regular/full-time employment and the complete freedom, autonomy, and flexibility of freelancers & independent workers who are integrated/embedded into companies to work on a subscription basis for as long as the company wants. We call them flexlancers and a team of flex-lancers is called flexteams. We believe that people don’t have to choose either or; people want the best of both worlds. It is also no news that flexible workers innovate better.

This new future will change how we see work forever: and how people interact with organizations in terms of work. We believe that we will see a trend of independent teams demanding flexibility and perks.