Dive Brief:
- An article in the New York Times suggests that in the aftermath of the California labor commissioner's ruling on Uber, some "sharing economy" start-ups are realizing that hiring full-time employees is not such a bad idea.
- For example, start-up called called Enjoy sends experts to deliver and set up tech products in homes and offices. Enjoy, along with a "handful" of other "app based" start-ups, see the traditional model as workable.
- Hiring workers as employees, some experts say, go a long way in creating a good customer and company experience.
Dive Insight:
“We’re providing a personal service — our product is a person,” Enjoy CEO Ron Johnson told Times tech columnist Farhad Manjoo. “The vision says that it’s really smart to make them employees, so we can get the best people to deliver the best service.”
Manjoo reports that the on-demand companies that have embraced the old-fashioned employee model all say they aim to deliver an experience that wows customers. The best way to do that, they say, is to train and systematically deploy their workers — a practice that can be accomplished only with actual employees.
“This is M.B.A. 101 stuff,” M. Diane Burton, a professor of human resource studies at Cornell University, told the Times. “When people are your source of competitive advantage, it’s clear that a long-term employment relationship and what we would call a ‘good job’ is good for the workers and good for the companies.” While the jury is still out, this could be the ticket for success for smaller start-ups willing to front the costs.
