The Future of Work

What’s the latest in one of our favorite topics, the future of work? Within corporate America, we are seeing a shift toward calling employees back into the office either on a full-time or hybrid basis. And then there’s the workforce itself. Some people like working remotely or on a hybrid basis. And what about the work itself? Are there opportunities for solo PR pros? You bet. Listen and get inspired.

 

Transcript

The Future of Work
That Solo Life Episode #199

Michelle Kane (00:02):

Thank you for joining us for this episode of That Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers who work for themselves, people like me, Michelle Kane of VoiceMatters, and my wonderful co-host, Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. Hi, Karen. It's another episode, another week.

Karen Swim, APR (00:20):

Yes. Hello Michelle. How are you doing this week?

Michelle Kane (00:24):

I'm well, I'm well as, as you're listening to this it is May of 2023 and things are popping all of a sudden. It's,

Karen Swim, APR (00:34):

Yes.

Michelle Kane (00:34):

I think with the, I don't know, event season’s coming, clients are just kind of shaking off the winter doldrums, and it's, it's not a bad place to be at the moment. How about you?

Karen Swim, APR (00:47):

Same. Lots of activities and lots of invitations, business and personal, but it's really, you know, it's an interesting time because we are still in this major period of change. And, you know, the economy is crazy, right? Like the numbers don't match the mood. Like, it's weird that inflation's declining, but when you look at those numbers, you're like, but really, is it?

Michelle Kane (01:21):

Yeah. I love that you said that.

Karen Swim, APR (01:24):

Yeah. Isn't really, because things still seem awfully high to me. And the Fed keeps raising interest rates and, and although there's a lot of activity, it also still feels very sluggish. Like things are just slow moving.

Michelle Kane (01:41):

Yes. Yeah. And it's so weird. It is weird. And we could probably do a whole episode on that, because I'm thinking too, there are the numbers, there's the reality out there, and then there's, like you said, the mood, and it's like, is the mood coming from what we're hearing of everything being bad, bad, bad. It's like, well, it's watchful. It may be bad, it may not be great. And I think once we get this whole debt ceiling, blah, blah, behind us, a lot of us will exhale.

Karen Swim, APR (02:08):

It's like a global mismatch in every area of life, you know, like this. But it's not really warm.

Michelle Kane (02:15):

We're all like, weird socks, ,

Karen Swim, APR (02:19):

But the ground is still dry, like , I don't know. Like, things are happening and they're not producing the results that we're accustomed to. So it's just almost like living in two dimensions.

Michelle Kane (02:34):

Speaking of, yeah.

Karen Swim, APR (02:35):

dimensions.

Michelle Kane (02:37):

So, we wanted to touch on the future of work. We discuss that term about in many of our episodes, but just thinking about, you know, with people being called back to their offices and employers, some employers not really aligning with the realities out there of how people function best in a company. And also, of course, seeing as we are solos, how do we fit into all of that, and how can some of what is happening really work to our advantage? Just a small topic, no big deal, but

Karen Swim, APR (03:21):

it is. Yeah. And future work is one of my favorite things to, yeah. Out in the world. I, I love this topic. Every aspect of it as it applies to corporations that applies to employees and also to solos. This is just one of the things that I love to talk about. And so the future of work landscape is, it's interesting because we have so many structural shifts in the way that we think about work and what constitutes work in the way that days are structured, in the way that jobs are structured, in the way that, you know, in the location, the physical location of where work gets done. And so we have this, of course, this divide with work that can technically be done from anywhere, and then work that really is location dependent. So for example, you can't at this point have, you know, doctors doing everything remotely.

Although there's a subset of services that can be delivered virtually or outside of a physician's office or a hospital. You have concierge doctors that are bringing clinics to you. You have a direct primary care that is that same model where rather than you going to a location, but you still need hospitals, you still need ERs, you need places where people can go. We're seeing lots of things go to e-commerce, but then people still need some places where they can physically touch or try on things. And so it's just a really interesting time. But as we talk about some companies pulling back on their work from home policies and forcing a return to office, some forcing a full-on return to office, others going with sort of hybrid policies, it's easy to think, well, everything's changing for the traditional work landscape and not realize that solos have a huge role in the future of work.

And so, yeah, one of the things we wanted to talk about today are the opportunities. Yes, there is so much data to support that when companies outsource and leverage people like us, Solo PR, small agencies, they actually have a competitive and a financial advantage. We are hugely important to those companies that truly are intentionally integrating people like us into their workforce plans. We are that resource that allows companies to hire for things that are not in their core competencies. So they get the efficiency of having a workforce that's wholly focused on things that are the most important to them operating. But then they get to leverage an outside expert for the things that they don't, that's not core to what they do. It's not central to their mission. And they get the advantage of bringing in a person or a team, if you're a team that knows the business that they're in, has that expertise, can jump in, ramp up quickly, and just do the work that is definitely needed as we move forward into the future.

And, you know, we see things like AI and people waging war against AI. It is a mistake to think that you can replace all humans with AI, right? It is not a mistake to believe that AI is forcing us to think about how we use people more efficiently. I think that's the real message of AI is that, not that it replaces people, but how can we make the most of human beings and what we have to offer? So for example, yes, you can use AI in your writing and you can use it for ideation and for draft creation and for finding sources. But you need the human creativity, the human intellect and experience to fact check, to verify, to add humanity, to copy. Otherwise, it'll be just dry and boring. Even when AI is trained to do your brand voice, you still need a human, right?

So I think that as we lean into that theme of optimizing human resources, solos are a huge part of that. Yeah. And we should, we should sell that as part of what we do, but we also need to, to recognize that there are many employers who seek to be employers of choice. And part of being an employer of choice is leveraging the independent workforce. So there's space for us. And, I guess I say that because sometimes it can feel like we're on the outside of all of that, right? And we're cool with it. Like, you know, we're cool being the hippie kids over here doing our own thing, making our own way. But we actually do have a role in the traditional landscape that does not require us going back to corporate America, sitting in a cubicle and being told who the work that have to do and for a fixed set of hours. We really are part of that bigger work ecosystem.

Michelle Kane (09:03):

Oh, completely. Completely. And you know, I love what you're saying with optimizing efficiencies, especially when, you know, companies are really still having difficulty hiring. Now, the dark side, the Darth Vader in me feels that that could be because you aren't paying people and maybe experiment with your wages and see what happens. But I know that's not everyone. But if you are short staffed, or need to add people in your core competencies, then my goodness, why wouldn't you avail yourselves of the gifts that a solo professional can bring you for your marketing, your public relations?

That's really one of my main pillars - I tell clients and prospects all the time, You may be frustrated trying to do this on your own. Well, first of all, I'll gently remind you, it's not your profession . And secondly, you already have a job, you already have plenty to fill your days with. So yeah don't feel bad about not being able to hit your marketing goals. That's why you bring in someone like a solo or a small shop. They can act as your defacto department. And, that way also, I mean, let's just cut to the bare bones of it. You're not paying overhead for a solo. You don't have to worry about insuring a solo or providing a solo with paid vacation or all those things, or worrying about those slow periods. You know, we work out our agreements with you. So we are really, I don't want to say we're, you know, a stealth weapon, but in some circles, it maybe it just hasn't crossed the minds of a lot of companies that “Oh yeah, you know what, that could work.” And it can work without imposing a threat to your current employee base. Just say, “No, they're here to help with X, Y, Z,” and it should lift everyone up.

Karen Swim, APR (11:11):

And I think the younger, the new generation workforce could care less. They're used to, they have a side hustle, they could care less. They're not threatened. It's interesting that even as we are fully seeing this future of work and this new landscape, and I think there's a lot more changes ahead, there are still many companies that treat hiring independent contractors like an embarrassment. They won't talk about it, they won't talk about their policies, they don't embrace it openly. They do it and it's fine and it works, but they don't go on record about it. And I think that that will shift in in the future. Corporate America is like a big old train and it just takes a long time to switch directions. But it's really weird to me, in this day and age, it's like, why are you embarrassed about that? That's just so random.

Michelle Kane (12:21):

That's crazy. That's wild. It's like why? It shows that you're smart.

Karen Swim, APR (12:26):

And probably for for public relations, less so for our sector, because hiring outside agencies has been something that has been done for decades, and there's no embarrassment about it. It's really the norm. Even when you have internal PR people, or an internal team, you still need outside agency help. So in our sector, we don't see that embarrassment, but, you know, I deal with this larger future of work landscape. And when you're talking about other types of contractors, companies don't want to talk about it. I promise you, they do not want to go on record and talk about any of it. And I hope that that changes. Because the more the companies are willing to step up and talk about the value that they get from hiring experts, and you're hiring people like you're scoping out work and you're hiring people to do it, and you're paying them.

It's just such a beautiful, simple proposition. You don't have all those extras, and as you said, Michelle, they're not having to take care of our needs. We're businesses, we're businesses who take care of ourselves. But I also want to note to any companies that are listening to us, the reality is, is that please don't believe that hiring an independent or small agency means that it's going to be cheap. You're not getting a bargain in terms of rates. What you are getting is that you're saving a lot of time and money because you don't have to train them. You don't have to teach them how to do their job. And you're getting the value of not only their expertise within the sector that you're hiring them for, but you're also getting something that companies are losing. And that's institutional knowledge.

Michelle Kane (14:17):

So true.

Karen Swim, APR (14:18):

We've had the Great Resignation. So many people have come and gone. Every time somebody leaves your company, they take a little bit of the secret sauce with them. It's gone. Unless you have set up infrastructure to capture that information you remember working and all of the little, and, and even now when we work, we have shortcuts. We have hacks, we have things that we know, we have things that we know about clients that we've worked with a long time. So we possess that institutional knowledge. When you lose that, it's almost like starting over every time your workforce turns over. And that's happening a lot. And I do not believe that that trend is necessarily going to change in the short term, because you have a younger generation. As I said to my sister-in-law yesterday, they're comfortable meandering for a long time.

They’re in their thirties and long ago, that was an age where you really were kind of settled into your career. But the newer generation of workers, they're quite comfortable not having the things that we valued when we were coming up in our careers. And they're perfectly happy to go and take any job and they could care less. They don't care about owning a house. They just, a lot of the things that, again, were important to my generation are not important to them. And so you're going to still see turnover because they're not going to stick around for five or seven years. And so they're going to come in and they're going to learn those things and they're going to hopefully add some value while they're there and they're going to add some practices and they're going to leave and that's going to walk out of the door with them.

But as solos, we bring not only the value of, especially when we have those long-term relationships. So we bring the value of not only preserving some institutional knowledge for your company, but we work with lots of companies. And so we have the benefit of being able to bring all of the best practices that we've been exposed to, to any individual clients. This does not mean that we're giving away trade secrets, it's just that we've seen ways that things work better. So we incorporate all of those things into our work. We learn from our clients, too. We see something, a process is being done well, and we adapt that, and then we're able to be more efficient for the next client. And so, you know, that's valuable and it's a value that internal teams don't have because they're working in a singular company. They only know how things are done in their company, in their industry, and that's it.

Michelle Kane (17:06):

Yeah. And, I'll reverse that too. You know, as our own businesses we're exposed to people and experiences that they may not be exposed to. So, you know, case in point, just looking for opportunities where a client might be able to shine, whether that's events thought leadership, anything, we bring that back to them. Not only do we do that, but with our longer term clients, we're going to know, we're going to be able to do those initial gut checks of what's a good fit for someone. If you're approached about a program or something and you just think, mm, no, but here's what they would like, can we make that happen? And take that back to them. It's truly so much to your benefit if you're out there listening. If you do have a need within your organization and it's something where you're either having a difficult time hiring or you're just not really sure how to solve for x in that given situation to reach out to a solo. What's the worst that could happen? We say goodbye after a couple of weeks? Okay. And that's how we learn.

Karen Swim, APR (18:14):

Another value of, honestly, I mean I I adhere to this practice in, in my own business as well, is that it's a professional contract. It's a business to business contract. You are not, I'm not stuck with someone for life. If I bring somebody on for a scope of work and it's not the best fit, then we part ways, you know? They get paid for the work that they did, and you move on. And so that is another benefit, is that you're not making this decision to be married to this contractor for the rest of your time in business. It really can be, it's a great way to trial people. Sometimes there's such a great chemistry between contractors and clients that there have been solos that do go back into the corporate world for something that really moves them. So it's a great way to have a bench of talent by working with independents as well. Not every independent wants to remain independent for the rest of their life. People can move in and out of independence. And so sometimes your next best employee may actually be an independent.

Michelle Kane (19:24):

Right. So true. It's so true. So, you know, we hope this has enlightened you or made you think in new and different ways, which is always fun. And, you know, let us know. Let us know what you're thinking. Check us out solo pr pro.com. We, we definitely want to hear your feedback. So please, please, please provide it. If this was of value to you, please do share it around. And until next time, thank you so much for listening to That Solo Life.