Guest Post by David Stephen who looks at Labor Economics
Tech work should be tiered, with the lowest tier for just 2-hours per shift, where the pay is considerably low, but output in that duration is sizable enough to match efficient productivity. The recent layoff in tech that many have said would continue through the new year is an opportunity to reorganize what it means to work in tech and for labor to be far more affordable.
Labor Economics, Layoffs: How Tiers can save Tech Jobs
There are already remote work, gig roles and well as freelance, but tier, with capped hours, pay and consistent intervals, for roles is a direction that could increase productivity and cut costs without layoffs.
People can work for just 2 hours, in 3 shifts every 12 hours, making work and offs, 2 hours each. In that time, responsibilities via itemization and breakdown would likely be met, cutting out lost time during work, shared time with random stuff, distractions or multitasking inefficiencies.
Those to take over can continue where the last person stopped, or can continue where they left from their last shift, but work and stop is to shape deliverables, to be underscored by the freshness or energy bump from the shift’s break.
Work is still mostly the traditional 8-hour shift, with pay and compensation at a level that makes cutting costs means to cut jobs, or outsource. Instead, with this new tier model, it is possible to have people work, pay them far less, and let them have breaks to rest or do whatever they choose, outside the area.
This model can begin with tech jobs, but percolate to manufacturing, construction, small businesses and others, even as discussion of migrant workers and labor policies around the world are scrutinized. There will be people hired on higher tiers where they can work for regular hours, to design and coordinate work for the lower tier.
The tier role will be arranged by software, to partition duties, contracts and chunking for tasks. There are regular maintenance and operation roles where 2 – 4 people can work on rotation within a day, spreading out what would have been for 1 person for a longer duration or 2 for the whole day.
There are some cases the model will be applied, outside of tech, where lower than the minimum wage can be paid, by SMEs, just to reduce labor cost, while the intensity of what should become stressful is tapered.
The other purpose of this is to explore free time, so that creativity and observations can improve, as an alternative to sole focus on assigned tasks, to see things differently, which could become helpful in seeking out new frontiers in the field, or for novel products and services to win competition.
David Stephen does research in theoretical neuroscience. He has a research experience in computer vision at Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona. He was a visiting scholar in medical entomology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He blogs on troic.medium.com
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