Challenging the Foundation of Organisations — part 3

Robonomics of work and beyond

By Dr. Reg Butterfield
18-Minutes read

Image by Intographics via Pixabay.com

This is the third and last in a series of three newsletters exploring the foundations of organisations. In the first we discussed the role of the job (or role) description being the foundation of organisations and some of the difficulties this causes today. In the second, we discussed a range of situations and issues that need to be considered when exploring how to define and create the foundations of organisations to meet the current and future needs of all stakeholders.

Today we are exploring alternative approaches to the traditional job description. In doing so, we open discussion around what is becoming an increasingly difficult situation for employers — how to design and implement jobs that attract the right people irrespective of the organisation’s business, for profit or otherwise.

We are not offering a one-size-fits-all package, we know from the current organisational issues that this will not work. We remain open minded and are using different ways of thinking in an effort to break away from conventional and long-established traditional methods led by finance and HR.

We welcome any observations or ideas that you may have by commenting directly on our Management Minefields platform using the link at the end of the newsletter.

Organisations are continuing to learn how to capitalise on the use of automation, robotisation, other forms of technology such as artificial intelligence (AI), and improved use of information technology (IT). This means that not only are mundane repetitive jobs being replaced by non-human systems, the nature of work is also rapidly moving into a knowledge-based economy. This means that people now need to be seen as a unique resource. As discussed in our previous two newsletters, job descriptions have predominantly viewed people as machines that can be programmed to work in specific ways, within set boundaries, fed limited information and measured into compliance.

At one level, this narrowing of work undertaken by people has led to cries of a future with massive job losses (Ivanov, 2017; Crews, 2016; Leonhard, 2016; Frey & Osborne, 2013; and Barrat, 2013) and yet at another level it shows that in many areas of work, people are still essential. In this emerging robonomic world (robot-based economics: Crews, 2016), people are not only essential, but they also create successful organisations. In the foreseeable future technology cannot achieve this alone (Moyeen & Huq, 2001; Schuler, 1990; Werther & Davis, 1996). However, as the progress in robotics, artificial intelligence and automation technologies (RAIA) marches forward the nature of work will be more about harmonisation between RAIA and people with the people learning how to use RAIA and not being dominated or enslaved by it; at least in the short to mid-term.

The current approach of job descriptions is not designed to do this because it means breaking away from using people as the machine and seeing them as the controller and user of RAIA. This move also calls for decisions to be made in different ways at the source or point of impact as opposed to being made in some distant hierarchy, which is currently controlling the people-machine.

It is important to understand the impact of the emerging world of robonomics if organisations are going to survive and thrive.

Much has been written about job shortages, lack of skilled people, government wages schemes, and more. Some are becoming true, such as increased demand for knowledge workers, and the need for continuing education and personal development, whilst others are still in the pipeline and face significant hurdles such as universal basic income. As this newsletter is looking towards developing the foundations of future-proofed organisations, we are considering many scenarios that are potentially difficult for some people to imagine. We do so to avoid missing opportunities and surprises around the future of organisations.

Stanislav Ivanov (2017) provides some important Principles of Robonomics, which can help us in identifying the environment of work that will both dictate and inform the type of foundations needed for future organisations.

Principles of Robonomics: (Extracted from: Ivanov, S. (2017). Robonomics — principles, benefits, challenges, solutions. Yearbook of Varna University of Management, 10, 283–293).

· High level of automation of production — This is the fundamental principle of robonomics: all or most of the products (goods and services) are produced/provided by RAIA. People are used mostly to oversee the production process without much involvement in the actual production of goods or service delivery.

· Fewer but more knowledge-intensive jobs — Most people do not work, and those who do have predominantly highly paid knowledge-intensive RAIA-assisted creative jobs.

· Disconnection between employment and incomes — This is one of the most fundamental characteristics of robonomics. Due to the low number of people employed in economic activities, employment is not the major source of incomes for households. Governments provide universal basic income to the citizens.

· Active use of variety of single- and multi-purpose industrial, service and social robots — Robots are not constrained to manufacturing, warehousing, or transport, but provide services and act as companions to humans, including sexual partners.

· High cost-efficiency of production — New technologies allow economically efficient on demand single/few unit(s) production of (most) goods. Society will reach the stage of ‘radical abundance’ (if we use the terminology of Drexler, 2013:) or ‘abundance economics’ (Swan, 2017)

For short video explanations of radical abundance and abundance economics, respectively see:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylOCEmlnyHk&t=1085s (5 minutes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuxMJ8lnYA4. (1½ minutes)]

· Small and dispersed factories, close to consumers — This is a direct outcome of the high cost efficiency of automated production processes, which allows smaller producers to enjoy economies of scale, be closer to consumers and save on product delivery time and costs.

· High level of standardisation of services — Strict algorithmisation of service provision due to the use of RAIA.

· Labour and capital abundance are not sources of competitive advantages, but knowledge and creativity.

Except for the ‘disconnection between employment and incomes’ (in this context) we suggest that all the Ivanov Principles have emerged in one form or another. Allied to this we are already starting to see the benefits of ‘low-cost’ developing countries being replaced by automated factories and bots in the developed countries.

Robonomics is an inevitable economic system that will have a direct impact on the social systems worldwide. Whilst it is not in the scope of this newsletter to examine the timing and ramifications of its social impact, much of which may be considered negative using today’s measures and mindsets, it will be remiss of us not to comment on the social changes around work that are already happening.

Taking social factors into account

The robonomic impact on organisations makes sense and is to a large degree unavoidable at the local level as society progresses. However, current, and emerging social factors have an immediate and direct impact on the ability to hire and retain people in work and organisations can develop ways of managing these if they are flexible enough to react accordingly.

We are seeing a wide range of social changes that are important to understand and capitalise on irrespective of the size of the organisation. Diversity across all levels of an organisation is now happening. Allied to this is the need for sensitivity at work where bullying, harassment and other forms of anti-social behaviour are not only being called out, but also leading to dismissal from employment. This focus on diversity and sensitivity has led to a new range of training as well as employment of diversity officers. As we discussed in our 15 May 2022 newsletter, the workplace now has a wider range of age groups than ever before. This means that organisations need to understand how to attract and manage multi-generational workforces. Currently, the views of what work means, when and how that work is delivered varies significantly between generations. Social responsibility is important for organisations to understand and react to in meaningful ways. Organisations that wish to attract and retain knowledge workers need to demonstrate their commitment to contributing to the well-being of communities and society through various measures such as environmental initiatives, charity work, ethical labour practices and volunteer projects. People want to trust companies that they work for or buy from, which means that transparency is important. Transparency manifests itself across a wide range of areas from where they source and manufacture, through working conditions, to finances, and more. Probably the biggest and widest change in society worldwide is communication. The use of smartphones has changed the social world like nothing before. Smartphones are owned by 6.64 billion people, which represents 83.40% of the world’s population. When extended to those who have a smartphone or a feature phone the numbers change to 91.08% (7.26 billion people). Unsurprisingly the areas where they impact society include business, education, health, and social life. Mobile technology has drastically changed cultural norms and individual behaviours. Recruitment and selection of potential candidates is increasingly undertaken using the smartphone. Recruiting companies suggest that Mobile recruiting is thriving, as job searches from mobile devices in 2020 exceeded 1 billion per month. Close to 90 percent of job seekers now utilise a mobile device when looking for a new opportunity.

Solid foundations are a challenge

In our 4 September newsletter, we laid out the role of the job description as a key part of the foundation upon which organisations are built; the structure and management systems are defined by this foundation. The job description is a very definitive document used throughout the life of the relevant work being undertaken by the job holder and as such needs to reflect the current and future needs of the job. Unfortunately, its rigidity and well-defined boundaries work against this in most cases in ways that we discussed in the earlier newsletter.

What is needed in an emerging robonomic and changing social environment is a way of attracting and retaining people, which requires flexibility. Flexibility means recruiting in different ways for different types and levels of work. It also means being able to ensure that the jobs that people do are not constrained by tradition and continue to develop as time and change unfolds; the traditional job description has met its limit in this respect.

The challenge for a new approach cannot be underestimated. As we discussed in the earlier newsletter, in some countries sections of the employment laws are built upon the job description. For example, the hours and extent (boundaries) of the work, together with remuneration are bound together; to change one affects all. For example, at the time of writing this newsletter, the current UK transport worker strikes are in many ways a result of trying to change all three of these areas of the job descriptions, particularly the work practices, which were apparently designed for the age of steam and not robonomics. The UK example is a system of collective bargaining through trades unions, which has a direct impact on the flexibility of organisations to change their ways of setting out work for their employees. In parts of Europe there is industry-wide collective bargaining, which can be seen as a more difficult hurdle for change because the job description tends to be an integral part of a legal contract that crosses organisations within an industry; gaining multi-union agreements is a challenging and often a long task.

Challenges can become opportunities

If management are risk averse and operate in a predominantly causation style that tends to be linear, (smart) objective setting, and treating risk as a threat or something that needs to be removed, then changing how they approach recruitment and work activities may well prove too daunting. They will use current approaches and fish in their normal pond(s) to find and catch their people. There is also the risk that they will be more inclined to try and shoe-horn existing methods into outdated structures and operating systems, which is happening in most organisations in respect of WFH and Hybrid approaches that have increased post-Covid.

Those managers who take a more effectuation approach to challenging situations tend to see problems as opportunities, see risk differently with the affordable loss as an important benchmark in decision-making, they use their existing resources differently, and as a result tend to be more able to adapt to changing organisational environmental landscapes.

In this newsletter my colleague Dr Ross Wirth and I are not providing a recipe on how to move from the current job description approach to a new one. However, we are developing a methodology on how to make such a change, and this will be published in due course.

Today we are discussing how a different way of thinking can change behaviour and result in outcomes such as not only more recruits, but also the type of recruit that suits the organisation’s new way of working.

Current process of recruitment

The job description is the initial building block for the recruitment process. Ideally, a collaboration between the hiring manager(s), recruiters, and compensation function takes place to find appropriate applicants. From this discussion around the job description emerges a Job Posting. This job posting has at least two forms, one for internal use to attract candidates and one for external use. The job posting internally typically contains everything that is in the job description, whereas the external job posting may have some details omitted such as salary. The job posting then often becomes the job advertisement (or job ad) and the content tends to remain the same. This approach has remained static for decades except where the job ad is placed has moved more towards Instagram and social media. Some people are creative and use a ‘front page’ to attract candidates to their advertisement, particularly if they are looking for a specific type of candidate in a small pond.

This recruitment process reinforces the foundational job description approach that leads to structured organisations of the more traditional type discussed in our September 4 newsletter “Challenging the Foundations of Organisations”. https://managementminefields.substack.com/p/challenging-the-foundation-of-organisations

This approach also raises the question as to whether it will attract the knowledge workers now increasingly sought by organisations. Ross and I suggest that traditional delineated and detailed job ads reflect the type of organisational structure and hierarchical management system that the job description supports, which is almost the opposite to what knowledge workers seek. Some years ago, companies such as Google and Wordstream offered a range of perks such as unlimited leave, gym, sports equipment, cool offices and more to differentiate themselves and attract the key knowledge workers. Those days are now gone as the new generation looks for something else.

Yet not all jobs are for knowledge workers of the emerging type. Organisations still need people who like to have a stable, well described, and often a fixed hours job, albeit these are becoming less attractive to the new generation of employees. As RAIA increases, these jobs are becoming more repetitive in nature and/or minimal wage activities. These tend to employ specific groups of people such as less educated, immigrants with limited language ability or unrecognised qualifications, and those whose personal circumstances may exclude them from alternative forms of employment.

Moving towards alternative approaches to recruitment

As can be seen from the types of work mentioned earlier, not all fish live in the same pond and yet they can be active in the same organisational ecosystem (community) if the conditions are right. We contend that by attracting the most appropriate knowledge workers it is possible to move from a traditional hierarchical organisational ecosystem to one that is more suitable for today and the foreseeable future; our version of this is Futocracy.

Futocracy is an organisational framework that enables a more flexible and motivating approach to the nature of work. If this is to be the case, then it is necessary to have building blocks that are very different to those of the traditional job description.

This translates into building blocks that are less prescriptive, more participative, open for translation into what is needed to meet the organisation’s statement of purpose that we discussed in last week’s newsletter. It requires distributive authority and associated decision-making that enables people to make decisions at the point of impact of that decision while coordinating with all the stakeholders who may be impacted.

It follows that if the job description is the building block for traditional hierarchical organisations discussed earlier, then we need different building blocks for future oriented designs of organisations. These building blocks will need people who are able to understand and cope with some of the uncertainty that such an approach may cause because of a lack of structured ordered jobs and associated management found in traditional approaches.

If organisations are to attract such people, the job postings need to reflect this type of environment. We offer two different versions of the same Technical Project Manager vacancy by way of example in figures 1 and 2. In figure 1 the image is a standard approach taken from the internet as an example of a real and current (at time of writing) job advertisement. We have removed the company name for anonymity and legal reasons. It clearly stems from a detailed job description approach as described earlier.

Figure 1: Example of a real & current Job Advertisement

Figure 2 takes a different approach and relates to a role as opposed to a detailed job description. As the terms job and role are often interchanged in HR parlance, it is important to define what we mean by role and how it differs to job description in this context.

A role is a what an employee does in accordance with his or her key area(s) of responsibility. For example, a project manager’s work includes bringing a project to a desired outcome with and through the collaboration of a wide network of associated functional activities both within and outside of the organisation, including the client. It is a function or purpose that an employee does and not a list of assumed activities upon which a traditional job description is built.

This is important because each project will have different and often unique desired outcomes, which in turn require standard and novel activities by the collaborating functions involved in the project. The boundaries and relationships will vary over time and must not be constrained by the boundaries so often found in job descriptions. The collaboration with others defines the boundaries and flexibility of all the people needed to deliver the agreed outcome(s). In effect they become a collaborative network with inherent flexibility.

Allied to this flexibility is responsibility and accountability. This is an important subject directly linked to the distributed authority and decision-making we referred to earlier, which will be the subject of a future newsletter.

Instead of detailed information figure 2 contains an important behavioural message of responsibility, collaboration, achievement, and role design freedom. These are the elements of work that knowledge workers and other skilled people seek.

Whilst this focused, less detailed advertisement approach is suitable for knowledge workers and other higher-level work, it is less suitable for other forms of work discussed earlier such as repetitive low wage employment. In these cases, a more detailed and traditional style of advertisement may be necessary, depending on the nature of the work. Even in such repetitive work, responsibility and accountability is necessary and the selection process needs to consider these behaviours in all but the simplest process-driven work.

It is important to note that when recruiting people, the advertisement and associated role is a crucial link to create or maintain the behaviour that the organisation expects. In this way it is more likely to attract the attention of the people needed to take the organisation forward using the behaviours required for the future.

Figure 2: Illustrative example of a role advertisement

Image: Butterfield & Wirth 2022.

[In this example, the link in the advertisement takes the potential applicant to the company (or agency) site where more information about the company resides. It also enables the applicant to make an appointment for either an initial online discussion/interview or alternative connection points such as email or online chat function, for example.]

In summary

Over the last three weeks we have shown the significance of the job description when considering changing the way an organisation sees and manages work as opposed to focusing on the control of people doing the work.

The job description is the foundation of traditional hierarchical organisations and as such, we suggest that a different building block is required for the future if the disadvantages of current traditional bureaucracies are to be resolved. We proffer that this building block is based on identifying people to undertake roles that they collaboratively develop to achieve the organisation’s statement of purpose and associated business goals. In doing so, we contend that both the changing business landscape and the emerging needs of the people populating and/or needed by organisations can be met more easily.

In the process of developing the roles a network of interacting roles is also encouraged to develop and form a more flexible community of work as opposed to an organisation of control. A community of work has a common and motivational purpose to work together whereas an organisation in the common use of the word is a mandated, structured approach for compliance as opposed to motivation.

To read more about the community of work we refer you to our earlier newsletters of 21 and 28 August 2022 (Weaving Organisations and Communities, part 1 and part 2).

In our next newsletter we will continue to explore the world of organisations. In doing so, discuss the discoveries and novel ideas that can lead to new ways of thinking and behaving. We will also identify the challenges we face in taking the steps towards creating a future-proof organisation that treats change as just one part of its daily activities.