Is It the End of Employment as We Know It?

In this episode, Ricardo reflects on how the current disruption may affect employment, as we recognize it today.

Episode transcript

The transcript is generated automatically by Podscribe, Sonix, Otter and other electronic transcription services.

Ricardo (4s): Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Five Minutes Podcast. Let me ask you., do you think it's the end of the Employment model that we are used to seeing today? And let me tell you upfront. I'm not saying that I have good news or bad news. Yes. I'm not competent to make a food judgment on what will happen in the future. But let me tell you, I'm becoming very concerned. About the changes in the relationship between employer and employee. And let me tell you, I don't want to talk about, Oh, we have technology and technology, is taking jobs.

Ricardo (45s): No, I don't want to cover that. I'm talking about people working in different areas. Let me explain to you let's imagine and make it in a very simplistic way. Let's split the workforce into two types, physical workers. Okay. So those who need to use their skills, their physical skills to do something. For example, the manufacturing plant two control a machine, or to paint a car or to build a truck or to stay in front of the store, protecting the store or to stay inside a store to help a customer or a cashier in a store.

Ricardo (1m 24s): So you need to do this physically active work. Do you agree with me that Today there's a lot of technology being put in place? They talk about taking and reducing the need for human physical work. So for example, if we compare production lines 50 years ago, and now we see that usually 50 years ago, we used to paint cars, using a painter, someone to paint the car. Today there is a robot that paints the car and maybe you have two, three people just inspecting a whole line of production. So you need fewer people, for example, retail, we are seeing online shopping growing dramatically fast.

Ricardo (2m 8s): So we see these trends clearly, but now let's go to the order group. And this is the group I want to talk to more about. It's the ones that work on finance the finance area, marketing area, you know, sales, client management, and this kind of workforce. What happens is that you usually, they went to an office to work there to me, meet with people to talk with their colleagues, but right now something is changing because what happened recently is that COVID-19 forced a vast majority of the workforce to go home. I don't care if you like, or don't like, but you went home, all of us.

Ricardo (2m 49s): And then people start working and then if you can become not as effective, but good on working from home. I Raise a second question, where is home? Because for example, if you are working from home for a company, X or Y or Z, your home can be in Europe, your home can be in India, your home can be in Brazil, Your home can be in China, you know, there is this concept of geographic boundaries becomes really challenging to put in place. For example, I was discussing with a friend that just got a green card in the US what about a green card and visa. Ricardo (3m 30s): So a working visa. Okay. I'm expecting that you will work in the physical place to do something, but when you work from home, I don't care. I don't care who can work in China. And then look, please, I'm not a lawyer, I'm an engineer. I'm not a lawyer, I'm not an HR expert. But I'm really concerned in the bum, how things will unfold, because how will labor law work? If my workforce is overseas and, there is no look, I know that I'm not telling something that is new. Several companies already have that, but I'm talking if this becomes widely, spread it out widely.

Ricardo (4m 11s): I'm saying, imagine that not maybe 10%, but nine 90% of the workforce works this way. So how do you control immigration? You know, because there is no, I, I need to say, where is the brain old the brain to do that is in Hungary today? I just, of course, the challenge will be language, maybe time zone. But for example, I do webinars and I do meetings at 11:00 PM. You know, it's becoming normal. This is the new normal we are facing. And again, I'm not saying that I'm happy with that or sad with that, but is just a very clear trend. So you leading the project, or leading a transformation maybe very soon.

Ricardo (4m 52s): Your whole team will be working in a very different environment, in a very different. Maybe you will have a fully distributed team and these will become the biggest trend. And this will be our, I would say new normal, you know, this will be the way. And then there is a lot of implications on that. So how do you do to compete in terms of cost? Because some countries, of course, of course, they have much lower fees, so how this will work and how you will allow or not allow companies to do that. And you know, most of the time, and as I see with e-commerce and is the comes always one or two steps behind.

Ricardo (5m 33s): So I see a lot of challenges and a lot of disruption in the way people work, you work for each other. So I see a much more clear and temporary scenario behavior. So where you work for two, three, four different companies and your work remotely, something like that, then the traditional life work, you know, that you go to a company and you work there 30 years and you a bottle at the end and go home. I don't know, this is something, and I'm not here to answer you. This is something I would love to hear your thoughts. And I would love to learn from you on that. So something for us to think about because I think we are seeing a lot of transformations coming on this site very soon and very quickly, I'm not talking to 20 years from now, I'm talking two to three years maximum that we are living and seeing something like that.

Ricardo (6m 26s): I hope you enjoy this podcast and see you next week with another five minutes Podcast.

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