Each week I’m going to provide a round up of what I consider to be important and interesting articles on the future of work (not authored by me). These will include a variety of sources and topics ranging from workplace practices to robots and automation to leadership and everything in between. There’s a lot of information out there so I’m hoping that these weekly round ups will help make life a bit easier for you by giving you just the good stuff. Let’s get into it!
7 Communication Tips for Managing Remote Workers
Remote workers are becoming increasingly popular nowadays. In this article Larry Alton talks about the many advantages of hiring remote workers. Among the advantages mentioned are lower expenses for employers and more hiring choices. But along with the advantages come some challenges. One of the biggest challenges is communication between remote workers and their managers.
Alton gives seven tips on how to overcome this challenge. Some of the tips he gives are to set expectations early so that workers know what is expected of them, avoid interrupting the remote workers when you know they are working on a project, and keeping the communication line open by encouraging workers to ask questions.
The Huge Geographic Bias in Sharing Rooms and Rides: Where are Uber and Airbnb Growing the Most?
With Uber and Airbnb becoming so well-known, this article takes a look at a study done on the growth differences between traditional hotels and taxi services and non-traditional gig type companies in the same space. The study was done by Ian Hathaway and Mark Muro and they found that there are certain cities where gig type companies in ride sharing and room sharing had more growth.
As might be expected, the gig type companies grew the most in the 25 largest metropolitan areas. Surprisingly, the study also showed that the growth of the gig-type companies did not seem to affect the success of the traditional hotel and taxi services.
Artificial Intelligence and the HR World
With the strides that have been taken in the world of AI by companies like IBM and Salesforce, Michael Haberman asks if anything is in the works for AI in human resources. AI works now in areas such as sales and marketing, but is it even possible to create algorithms that would be able to assist HR?
One area where Haberman believes AI could work in HR is in recruiting, however he also believes there are a few challenges to overcome before we could get to that point. A few other areas that have been explored by experts are coaching, organizational design, and matching people to work. The main question is, are people at the point yet where they are comfortable having data collected from them by machines? Pretty much any area where AI could be used in HR would require data collection.
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