Peter Coy’s excellent NYT column “Working from home is here to stay (and for good reason) prompts me to repeat a column I posted to my arthurlipper.com/ blog in March 2022. Access to Peter’s column is available as follows: sign up here.

Piecework the Future Basis for Employment of Remote Employees and Contractors

It is likely the pandemic-originated practice of people working from their home or other than an office or central location is likely to continue. This observation excludes those directly involved in mining, fishing, farming, filming, construction, building security and maintenance and product assembly activities. It does include many of those working with their brains and communicating electronically.

Project leaders have an improved ability to assess the quality level of assigned tasks versus that delivered. Therefore, work assignments, which had previously been assigned to a group, may now be assigned to an individual or several different individual employees or to independent contractors. Task assignments will include delivery expectations.

This management and product creation structure will allow participants to be compensated based on satisfactory delivery, without an employer’s concern for the time spent by the employee or contractor. Of course, some of those producing a result will be in competition with others having received a similar task assignment. It is possible that those accepting the task assignment will decide to use the assistance of others to be more efficient and receive more assignments. Piecework allows those best at what they do to be rewarded and others to not be used.

Piecework was the basis for employee compensation in many industries in the past, and in a different form it is likely to become the basis for product creation in the future.

Clearly, piecework will be most efficient in cases where the individuals produce that which can be digitally delivered, as in contracts, fiction stories, plans, analysis, creative works of art, etc.

There are legal and management decisions necessary regarding employee health and retirement plans, ownership of both intellectual property and equipment of the employer.

The net result will be the identification and rewarding of those who are most creative and productive. Also required will be an employer’s ability to electronically communicate and put it all together for the final product to be produced and marketed. This all will work better for some industries than others, but effort decentralization is here to stay.

 

Arthur Lipper, Chairman                          arthurlipper@gmail.com
British Far East Holdings Ltd.