The Last Mile of Employee Experience

I attended the 15th Annual Emerging Technology Summit in San Francisco, hosted by KeyBanc Capital Markets. Joined by the investor community as well as enterprise software and service providers such as Paycor and Cisco, the two days were filled with insights and discussions around the future of work. 

At the conference, I was fortunate to present a Spotlight series on how technology like on-demand pay is Enabling the Gig Economy. With the future of work moving in this direction, this topic might arguably be more important now than ever provided the COVID-19 global crisis and the environment our workforce must adjust to - working out of the home. 

The conference conversation revolved around technology disrupting every aspect of our daily lives, but in relation to the gig economy (and employees at large) three concepts are becoming increasingly important to both the consumer and the businesses offering products to consumers:

• Convenience

• Personalization

• Experience

The rapid rise of the gig economy is in fact a response to these familiar cultural shifts, and if consumer utility is directly correlated to convenience, personalization, and rich experiences, so must the jobs that support this new way of living. And this is where on-demand pay comes in, serving as the last mile of the journey that the gig economy is on. The way we think about it is that if the consumer has evolved, so must the payroll experience of the equally evolved workforce that supports new consumer demands.

If the gig economy employees are delivering real-time services to consumers, so will the demand for instant pay for those services rendered. On-demand pay will continue to both support and accelerate the gig economy, and other business models at large. It will be companies like our valued partners and their visionary leadership that will profit from responding to that voice, in particular during this heightened time of need. 

This is a challenging time for us all, and very well may get harder before things go back to normal, if they ever do fully. Thinking back, I may have attended the last major conference before conferences were officially shut down across the world. The topic was the gig economy but the concept is simple: payroll, the last mile of employee experience, has arrived to be on par with consumer demands for convenience and personalization. And despite the current crisis, this inherently makes for a stronger and deeper bond between the employee and her employer.