The Future of Work

Last week, Slack announced it had reached a deal with Atlassian to acquire its Slack competitors Hipchat and Stride.  First, it's important to note that as a part of this deal Atlassian made a small equity investment in Slack as well.  Imagine being so far ahead with your business that your competitor sold you their IP and also makes an investment.

While it certainly didn't generate the headlines of the Slack / Atlassian deal, Facebook acquired Redkix as it looks to take on Slack, Microsoft, and Google in the battle for workplace integration. 

Speaking of Google, they announced a new set of features including smart replies to both email and chat as well as grammar suggestions across all of their MS Office competitors. All of this on the heels of Microsoft making a version of Teams free even to those without an Office 365 account.

What does all of this activity mean in the context of our daily work lives:

• The tools are being developed are the beginning of a movement to free us from the most mundane tasks of our workday
  
  
• A change in focus from email and task completion creating value on a per employee basis

Why does it matter:

• Industries like energy (47), real estate (48.4), and agriculture (47) all have workforces that are significantly over the national median age of 42.2.  These industries are all large contributors to our GDP and face an impending labor shortage crisis or a large transfer of knowledge to new employees.  Either way, software is going to play a large role. 
  
  
• Consumer expectations for industries like healthcare and energy are changing.  We now expect all companies to engage with us and service to be completed as quickly as possible. SaaS companies that increase the efficiency of problem-solving for consumers while making employees happier (employee happiness is correlated with customer engagement) will be big winners in these massive industries.

Three trends worth monitoring:

• Can Google and Microsoft expand their footprint inside organizations outside of their 3-5 core products?
• Will Facebook be able to gain market share as it focuses on expanding Workplace in the face of slowing US growth? 
• When will we see these SaaS companies play a role in determining the optimal organizational structure for the large industries that impact us every day but are in desperate need of renovation?

One thing is almost certain, this space won't begin to slow down anytime soon.  Engaging and making employees more efficient is going to be big business. 

Employees have more information and choices than ever, the best talent will go where they are valued more on their impact than email output.  On the other side of the coin, organizational efficiency drives the bottom line which is obviously a decision criteria for any company looking to onboard new software.