Revealing a Critical Sharing-economy Paradox: Onboarding

Most of us have used, or at least heard of, Uber andAirbnb these days. And these are simply two of a growing cadre of thousands of “sharing economy”companies (aka “the collaborative economy”) that are taking hold, among themFeastly, Yerdle, and Instacart. Meanwhile, the space continues to grow each dayas new companies pop up even as marquee mainstays such as Uber branchout into complementary offerings (for Uber, this means taking on deliveryservices next).

There are different forms of collaborativeconsumption and multiple marketplace structures within the sharing economy. Becauseit is disruptive in nature, it is important for business leaders and managersto take the sharing economy into account in their strategy and planning.

Many companies with more conventional businessmodels, from Googledown, are finding there are collaborative opportunities within their markets.Moreover, the sharing economy is not “business as usual” for learning andtalent development groups. Here are some thoughts on the shifts involved.

The sharing economy

When we take a closer look at the companies in thesharing economy, regardless of size or level of success, we find two commonthreads. The first is that an overwhelming majority of them operate with a tinycore full-time staff supplemented by hundreds—if not thousands—of freelancers whoin reality are the face of the brand to consumers day in and day out.

The second is that these are companies that aretruly shaking things up, innovating new solutions leveraging leading-edgetechnology that today have become heavily integrated into consumers’ lives. Continuingour example of Uber, it shows a reported average of 1.1 million rides per week—asubstantial number considering the service didn’t exist just five years ago. This is great news for the typicalconsumer seeking a better way of going about life. Indeed, nearly one-quarter (23percent) of the US population has engaged with sharing-economy platforms withinthe last 12 months.

The challenge for learning and talent development

But for those of us in training anddevelopment roles, this begs one big question: as these companies build andgrow, how can they effectively onboard a disparate force of independent workers,spread out across the planet, all while shaping them into the best ambassadorsfor their brand that they can possibly be? The very fact that these“ambassadors” are not company employees is key to the lean infrastructure thatlends to the category’s success; yet, it may also be their biggest challenge inpresenting a unified brand experience, voice, and tone.  In fact it is because of this that onboardingis arguably an equally important underpinning of a sharing-economy company’ssuccess. If the people you’ve selected on the front lines can’t talk the brandtalk or walk the brand walk, that leaves consumers at best confused, but morelikely disenchanted and never coming back.

While this arrangement provides benefits to bothworkers and the companies themselves, when it comes to delivering guidelinesand best practices to its workers, companies in the sharing economy need to takegreater responsibility in ensuring their innovation is not falling apart on theground in Sioux Falls or Los Angeles or Tallahassee in the hands of itsindependent contractors. And with the small internal staff we often find, thiscan be a tall onboarding order.

Paradoxically, what we often find whenwe peek behind the curtain at some of the most innovative sharing-economycompanies is an archaic, and sometimes technologically backward, screening andonboarding process. How can it be that the very companies that have masteredthe complexity of delivering to you and me, with a few taps, a rental home, awarm meal, a cart of groceries, a housekeeper, or a personal driver are still deliveringonboarding and training to their workforces via live presentations in cold meetingrooms or at set times on a web conferencerepeated over and over again? Not only does this contradict the innovativespirit on which these companies were built, but also the very on-demand spiritthat attracts both workers and customers to them. And worse yet, it can substantiallyimpede their ability to scale and do so quickly and affordably.

Match customer-facing innovation with infrastructure processes

This is perhaps why ArunSundararajan, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business,contends, “The next wave of opportunities in businesses will be companies thatlook at how we support development of the sharing economy.” The good news is thatsolutions—from training to CRM—are already in place to help bolster the sharingeconomy into the next wave of growth and success.

The sharing economy is expected to be a $335-billion(USD) industry by 2020. How can companies set themselves up to take a largerpiece of this revenue pie? Surely continued innovation in its technology willbe vital. But I believe greater success will be enjoyed by those companies thatfocus on optimizing their business processes, of which onboarding is key. Whilethe sharing economy is in its adolescent phase, it has already offered thewider business universe key lessons in innovation. In order to mature, however,sharing-economy companies will need to match the innovation they deliver on thefront lines of the customer experience with the processes they implement behindthe scenes.